I’m going to ask a big favor from you. Please stop doing random workouts hoping that you’ll increase your fitness. You need a coherent plan, one that actually shows you more than one day of workouts at a time. With this 12 week functional fitness training program, I expect you to put in a lot of work, gain strength, muscle mass, and set PRs on your benchmark WODs. You’ll have access to the full 12 week functional fitness training program, as well as the PDF download. Keep reading for more!
As of this writing, this program is completely free, and I’ve tested these workouts out on my home gym. Most of the intermediate and advanced athletes showed great gains, and I expect you can do even better for a couple of reasons.
First, most athletes don’t actually come to the gym for every day of the program. I’m a semi-normal person, and I understand that life can get in the way. On average, most of my dedicated athletes are there 4-5 days per week, which is enough to gain significant fitness, but it does mean that you can miss out on some crucial programming on days that you aren’t there. Let’s get some of the program ground rules out of the way first.
The 12 Week Functional Fitness Training Program Ground Rules
First and foremost, I need you all to be adults with this program. I haven’t programmed in any rest days for you. Make sure that you never rest, because that’s just time wasted! Just kidding, that’s crazy talk. I’ve written this program sequentially, but I’ve left the specific rest days up to you.
I recommend that you go for 4-6 sessions and then take a day or two off. I find it to be somewhat counter productive to force athletes to rest that are still raring to train. Similarly, it can be equally detrimental to make you workout when you aren’t able to get a good session in. Think of this as a choose your own functional fitness training program adventure.
Group and Team Functional Fitness Programming
Once you get down to the program, you’ll see that I’ve included at least one session per week with a partner WOD. This was written with groups of two in mind, but it can be adapted for larger groups. I find that many athletes like to work in pairs, and this can be especially beneficial if you’re training up for a local functional fitness competition.
If you aren’t into group training, then you can simply ignore these days, or if you’re truly a strange one, you can try the WOD all by yourself. I personally wouldn’t recommend doing that every week, but this can be a good challenge for advanced athletes, every now and again. Otherwise, you should focus on the other sessions for the 12 week functional fitness training program.
Free Box Programming
For those of you who own gyms, feel free to use this program to run your classes. It worked out well for our gym, and this program is appropriately difficult to challenge everyone from fairly new athletes, to very experienced fire breathers.
I understand that running a gym can be a monumental task from a business perspective, and I hope having a good program can help you get going, and keep your athletes progressing. However, I would ask that you let your athletes know where you got the program!
We’ve gone over some of the preliminaries so let’s get right to the goals of this program.
The 12 Week Functional Fitness Training Program Goals
- Increase basic strength with fresh movement patterns
- Maintain neural efficiency with basic, compound, and olympic lifts
- Increase work capacity across the 8-12 minute time domain
My primary goal for this program was to increase your overall fitness. Said another way, I am trying to increase your power to weight ratio. I’m doing this predominately through less common strength movements. You’ll be doing less squats and more heavy lunges for example. This will do a couple of things for you.
First, many athletes start to incur minor over use injuries because they stick to the same 3-5 strength movements all the time. There are many more out there, and they will allow you to continue to improve your strength with something that you aren’t used to. This will also allow some recovery on your joints and tendons as well. It’s a win win situation.
You shouldn’t worry that you’ll be doing Turkish get ups all day, as I’ve still included normal compound lifts. Afterall, you need to maintain efficiency with the lifts, and keep them feeling fresh without growing stale.
Lastly, most of these WODs are focused on improving your work capacity in the 8-12 minute range. As a coach, I find this is the sweet spot for WODs. It’s long enough that you can go hard, but not agonizingly long. I have also included one long WOD a week, as well as a few short burners in there. Variety is the spice of life.
It’s the time you’ve all been waiting for the big reveal!
The 12 Week Function Fitness Training Program: Strength, Hypertrophy, and Conditioning
Each chunk of programming is a two week microcycle. The first two weeks of the 12 week functional fitness training program are an introduction towards this style of program. If you’re an experienced athlete, it won’t be anything earth shattering but this might be a little more volume than you are used to.
This is also a chance for you to figure out how many training days you want to do before you take a rest day. My general rule of thumb is if you aren’t really feeling a workout, and aren’t sure about doing an extra day, you at least need to go through a warm up. If you find that you aren’t as sore as you thought and you want to get into the session, then go for it. If you still aren’t feeling it, then you got some active recovery, and you can attack this session at a later date.
The 12 Week Function Fitness Training Program: Strength, Hypertrophy, and Conditioning: Week 1 and 2
I bet you thought Monday was international bench press day, well you’re wrong! It’s international heavy reverse barbell lunge day! All kidding aside, you’ll notice that I alternate between full body, and upper/lower body strength movements, for the first several weeks. It’s ok to go a little lighter this week, as you’re getting used to this program.
Most of the WODs are built to complement the strength movement. If you worked some olympic lifts in the strength portion, then you’ll likely have some additional work to build back strength in the WOD. I do this to make sure that you have enough exercise volume per muscle group to make progress.
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Week two starts out with a long WOD. On these types of days there is no specified strength program, just the long metcon. Make sure you are thoroughly warming up for this. If you’re doing this day correctly you’ll find you spend just about the same amount of time in the gym as a lift plus WOD day.
The 12 Week Function Fitness Training Program: Strength, Hypertrophy, and Conditioning: Week 3 and 4
By now you should have figured out how this program fits into your schedule, and about how many sessions you should do before resting. I caution you not to get greedy and go for too many sessions. This is still early days in the program, and you need realize that it only gets harder.
Each week I will add either some volume to the strength work, or some intensity, by asking you to lift a little heavier than last week. I want you to push yourself on movements that you may not traditionally do. I can’t tell you how often I see athletes ripping through light weight reverse lunges. These are heavy strength moves, and they should challenge you each rep. So add some plates!
Astute observers will note that I move the long WOD day each week. This keeps the program from becoming stale. I also try and change the WOD style. One week you may have a chipper, and another you might have an AMRAP of 21-15-9.
If you want to focus on building muscle mass then check out this program!
The 12 Week Function Fitness Training Program: Strength, Hypertrophy, and Conditioning: Week 5 and 6
This will bring us to our half way point in the program. By now I recommend that you start thinking about taking a deload week. You should continue to follow the program, but add in a few extra rest days. If you’ve been doing something like 4 on 2 off then I would simply add in an extra day of rest, and maybe do something like easy walking to enhance recovery on that extra day.
Week six is also the last week of working with these specific movement patterns. By now your body is becoming accustomed to these movements, and that means we need to switch the program up. You’ll continue to see similar movements next week but the pattern will be different, and the loading will change.
The 12 Week Function Fitness Training Program: Strength, Hypertrophy, and Conditioning: Week 7 and 8
Week 7 is the first week of fairly heavy loading. Sets of 6-8 AHAP should generally be around 80-85% of 1RM. The olympic lifting is still moderately heavy, as I’m not trying to build strength in those specific moves only. I find it best to build overall strength and maintain neural efficiency with the oly lifts. You feel less beat up, and still achieve PRs!
Remember, some of these days work the same movement patterns back to back. This is a strong indicator that you should take a rest day or two in between. For example, the last day of week 7 is Karen. This will make your legs sore, and the first day of week 8 is heavy front squats. As you might imagine, you won’t have a good front squat session if your legs are screaming at you the whole time. Make sure you look ahead and plan your rest days!
If you want to gain even more fitness then check this out!
The 12 Week Function Fitness Training Program: Strength, Hypertrophy, and Conditioning: Week 9 and 10
We’re entering the last phase of the program. Here we will be increasing our weights and really challenging ourselves. When you see sets of 3-5 reps AHAP, you should be working around 88-92% of 1RM, if not a little more. Obviously, you need to play this by feel, but don’t be afraid to challenge yourself.
Many of you will have observed that we have stopped doing the long WODs every week. Sure, they’re still thrown in there, but they can take a lot out of you, and I want you to have enough resources left to build some strength for this microcycle. This also means you need to pay attention to your recovery, and nutrition. Make sure you read that section below for some handy tools to keep you on track, and making progress.
The 12 Week Function Fitness Training Program: Strength, Hypertrophy, and Conditioning: Week 11 and 12
These two weeks are when we finally see the result of all of our hard work. Week 11 is a deload week where we will cut down our overall volume so you can get ready to set PRs in week 12. You can add in some extra rest days here if you want.
The final week is where you will set your new 1RMs, and PRs. I recommend that you take plenty of time warming up each lift. Most of my athlete do better with smaller jumps, as they work up to their 1RM than big jumps. For example, if you were aiming for 200 pounds as a new PR, I would go with 10-15 reps with a bar. I would then do 6-8 reps with 65 lbs, and add 10-20 pounds from there on out for singles or doubles. Remember this isn’t a workout, it’s a test of your strength. You don’t need to do a lot of reps at heavy weight as that will needlessly tire you out.
Functional Fitness Nutrition, Recovery, and Training Age
If your goal truly is to improve your overall performance and fitness, then you need to pay attention to what you are doing outside of the gym, as well as the program inside of the gym. It doesn’t have to be complicated, and most of the things you need to do to successfully complete this program are very simple. First and foremost, you need to pay attention to your nutrition.
Functional Fitness Nutrition
For this program I recommend you check out my Ultimate Guide to Nutrition, and download this nutrition calculator. Many of my athletes have some odd notions about food, and sports performance. News flash, you need some carbs to perform your best.
Notice I’m not telling you to eat a pizza every night! You should use common sense and eat like an adult. However, for many of you this program will be higher volume than what you are used to. This means you need to eat more food. Check out those articles and they will cover the details of eating so you don’t gain unnecessary body fat.
Functional Fitness Recovery
Because this program is difficult, I’ve noticed a trend that athletes start looking for methods to recover faster. Often times they ending up paying a lot of money for something that really doesn’t work. In general, things that are done to you are less valuable than things done by you.
There are only two things that have actual scientific backing to help your recovery. First, and foremost, is easy movement like walking, or easy cycling. Increasing blood flow without incurring muscular damage, is great for recovery. Check out this article on the most effective recovery strategies.
Secondly, wearing exercise tights can drastically decrease delayed onset muscular soreness. It can also help you build more muscle. Check out this article for the research behind wearing compression garments.
Training Age
Training age is a concept that highlights the importance of years in the gym. Actual age isn’t as important as training age, as new athlete always make great progress, regardless of their actual age. If you’ve spent years in the gym you have some advantages.
First, you can most likely handle more volume and intensity than most newer athletes. Secondly, you are likely to have safe technique and this will stress your joints and muscles less. However, you aren’t likely to make as much progress as a newer athlete. Beginner gains are a thing.
Regardless of wether you are newer to the gym or an old hand, you need to train according to your training age. If you find that you are constantly sore, not sleeping well, and missing lifts. You need to take more rest, and recover. It isn’t the work in the gym that causes progress. It’s the recovery from that work!
Final Thoughts
You now have everything you need to successfully finish this program. I expect most of you will have to modify this program at some point, so make sure you check out this article on scaling WODs and Metcons. The best athletes in the world will modify workouts, if it makes sense to do so. Make sure you are doing so correctly.
If you have any questions on programming, nutrition or otherwise, put them in the comments section and I will get you an answer. Now get out there and get training!
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Hi!
Thanks for the great article! I am an experienced lifter that has been stuck for some time in old tracks not gaining in any direction. I’m looking forward to testing this program but I have a crucial question before I can start:
The program outlines 7 sessions for each week and you note that the program is sequential and that rest days are taken when needed. Does that mean that I should perform every session (except partner wod which I won’t do) and that each “week” might end up being 8 days? E.g. 3days on 1 day off would give me 6 sessions in 8 days. Or am I missing something? 🙂 Cheers!
Yeah this program was orginally written for a gym that needed 7 days per week. One day per week is a partner WOD. If you’re training solo then drop that WOD and continue on sequentially. Take a rest day as needed.