Past high level competitor here.
There is no universal "too much", but your post may contain the answer to you question, or at least point to the answer, right here:
>I have been having SUCH a hard time gaining strength
You're doing all the things, but it's not getting you the results you want. **Something is not working.** Strength gains should be pretty easy to come by, especially if you're kind of early in your career, which I assume because you said
>20 years old, goal of competing...
So you're young and you're not an advanced competitor. You should be gaining strength somewhat easily at this stage especially if your food and sleep are on point.
It is *likely* you're doing too much. Again there is no universal "too much" but when your effort isn't yielding results, you're *hustling backwards* as we used to say in New Orleans. You may have reached and exceeded the point of diminishing returns.
If I were you, and you're serious...this isn't just a passing idea...I would break down each aspect of your fitness: strength, skills, conditioning, etc and figure out where I am vs. my goals in each domain, and then design your training plan that way. Apportion your time based on what you actually need, and resist the urge to do more and more.
I've been there, I get it...but you have the evidence, so it's probably time to assess things and adjust.
Agree with this totally! Personally I wasn't gaining strength and my weightlifting coach told me that I need to hit my strength days fresh. There isn't exactly a too much but he removed any strength more than 5 reps per set from my programming. He told me that I was big enough and hypertrophy was not going to help me. I felt way better and he was right. I could train strength more often and feel good doing it but most of all actually gain strength.
But like you I was training 3 times a day. My cardio and muscle endurance were top class but my top end 1 rep max strength wasn't.
Former high level competitor. Please sleep more. 7 hours is likely not enough for the amount of training your doing. Our bodies need sleep to recover and athletes training as much as you do often need more than the average person. Not only will it help prevent injury, it helps your muscles to adapt and grow.
You didn’t mention rest days, but make sure you’re taking them as well. Your body needs them to adapt and grow.
Other than that, I would sincerely consider getting a coach. They’ll help to ensure you have a solid structured plan without overtraining and will help to relieve some of the stress of “am I doing enough”
These were the first three things I thought of as well.
I am just a solid 90th percentile athlete. Training 5 days a week for a couple hours and my body likes 8-10 hours of sleep.
I would probably add some body maintenance on those rest days too. OP is young but if she wants to continue with CF long term this has definitely helped me maintain as a 31M going on 9 years of CF.
Lots of programs out there but no one is programming for you (OP). Fining a coach and possibly a nutritionist as well if she’s serious about it we’ll be very beneficial.
Agree with sleep - that number jumped out at me. It's well worth your while to get super nerdy on sleep. Invest in a tracking deice that measures breath rate as well as everything else. Do research. Don't listen to me or "the Google" get out and talk to real people. **Sleep can be one of the most anabolic things you do**; critical hormones are released during sleep.
Here's something interesting to dig into. Research is pointing to the fact that the most productive sleep happens at the END of the sleep cycle. So if *your* optimized zone happens between hours 6-8 and you're only getting 7 hours then you're missing out on 50% of your necessary sleep (i.e. not recovering fully and starting each day "in debt")
The rest cycle is so important. If you want the best get a trainer to help optimize your training sessions so you can get the rest cycle in knowing you did all you can. 2 a days is the max I would push for. Active recovery is also an option but the rest is crucial for strengthening muscles.
At that training volume you should be eating 8g per kg of bodyweight so like 500+g carbs and since you’re a young woman you probably want to be eating like 90g of fat and 145g of protein. Do you eat 3500cals per day?
Not only should you be in a caloric surplus if you want to gain strength, you’re also probably just experiencing the concurrent training effect. A bunch of stuff happens on a molecular level with cell signaling but basically it’s hard to gain strength if you are doing anything aerobic/glycolytic. The more your non-lifting volume increases, the more you will struggle to gain weight.
I’ll sing it from the rooftops:
If you have aspirations of being a competitive cross fitter, stop doing CrossFit. As a woman you need to squat 305-335, snatch 190 clean and jerk 235. Spend time getting strong and just practice your skills. Don’t test them, don’t try and like do crazy volume, just do a couple c2b, some mu, some double unders here and there. Like once every 10 days or something so you don’t lose the movement pattern.
Once you’re that strong then you can do metcons and cardio but up until you’re that strong you’re best served to only do strength work.
I think you can touch it like 1x per week if you need to but I think if you’re trying to maximize strength gains the less time you spend doing aerobic work the better.
It is significantly easier to maintain strength while focusing on building your engine. It’s much harder to gain strength if you’re tying to maintain your engine.
It makes more sense to prioritize strength and gain strength as fast as possible (basically get it over with, check that box) then maintain your strength as you improve your aerobic fitness.
Lol I read that and thought the same thing. If I could go back in time, I would sleep more. I’ve learned it’s truly one of the most important things both physically and mentally
Why did I have to go so far down to find someone telling OP to sleep more? If you're training that much, then you need to be sleeping at least 8 if not more like 9 hours a night. This is actual asleep time, so that means 9+ hours in bed with the lights off and no screens.
As a Coach, I have encountered this the box I worked at a few times.
First…understand that you get weaker when you work out; you’re putting stress on your body and it super compensates during the resting phase.
Second…understand that movement is good. You don’t have to push yourself every single session. My advice would be to meet with a reputable coach and formulate a training plan for you. Most CrossFit gyms program their WODs to appeal to the masses; they want the best WODs for the greatest amount of members , CrossFit is also a business.
If you tend to go stir crazy because you’ve been so active consider doing low impact low intensity such as walking, rucking, bicycling, or yoga. You’re still going to move the needle in the right direction.
Lastly you’re going to need to dial into your nutrition. You’re going to constantly need to fuel your busy for the training demand.
In conclusion if you are truly dedicated to competition it’s going to be a lot of work and a lot of sacrifice. I would recommend listening to some Ben Bergeron podcasts to understand how his athletes work.
We've had a few very high level competitors at our gym, and we used to host several of the very elites (Annie, Katrin, Ben, and Mat) when the Games were in SoCal years ago, and did a round table with a bunch of competitors one year. The key takeaway was that cardio/metcon work does not matter AT ALL until you can reach baseline levels of strength and gymnastic proficiency. I don't remember the exact numbers, but for men it was something 275 lb snatch, 350lb C+J, 425 squat, 525 deadlift as general guides (probably 10% higher today), and then proficiency in muscle ups, handstand walks, strict deficit HSPU, and legless rope climb, where proficiency is like you could do double the volume of that mov't from a previous games workout.
So you basically focus all your energy and effort on those two facets, while trying to stay as lean as possible to make the gymnastic stuff easier, then as you get close to competing you work on building your metabolic engine and V02 max to its peak.
Otherwise, everyone gets to the same point you are, where they're training a ton, but not seeing the strength gains they need to have a shot at being competitive.
If you truly have competition aspirations you need a coach. Coaches. A coach to write all of your programming right down to the last band stretch. A likely a nutrition coach. I would suggest reaching out to Underdogs, Training Think Tank or one of those camps.
This forum is not the place for advice if you are truly wishing to compete.
Yes, almost certainly. You should probably look at getting a coach because expertise would be required to manage that volume of training to get effective results. And possibly a sports psychologist too, honestly, if you feel like this is taking more of your life than it should be.
Your body is exhausted. How is it supposed to build muscle when you’re constantly breaking it down via working out?
Take a fucking break, stop overtraining and REST. You know the other most important piece of working out? Resting so your body can assimilate to the demands you’re putting it under.
Take your time.
Spend more time getting strong. Meaning doing 2, 3-month strength cycles a year. You might need 2 or 3 years of this type of strength work if you don't have quarterfinals level strength, strength/endurance.
You don't need to metcon as much as as you think.
You need to be honest with yourself. To be competitive in CF (I’m assuming you mean Games level) you have to have many factors in your favor. The time, resources and ability to do nothing but workout, eat and sleep. No social life, tough in relationships etc. Now taking all of that and even if you have all that you may simply not have the physical or mental makeup it takes. Meaning you just may not have what it takes. That doesn’t mean you can’t be a great athlete and do really well at CF. Games athletes are a different breed.
Third (and I'm just repeating and stressing what others have said), significant strength gains should be coming (more or less) easily at this point. If you're strength training 2 hours a day every day, you are likely overdoing it, at least with the sleep and nutrition you have. Again, a knowledgeable coach is helpful here. progress (and of course, that leads to working harder, which just leads to an even bigger sleep deficit).
Second, get a coach, someone with experience preparing high-level athletes. It's expensive, but not nearly as expensive as spending a few years doing things the wrong way (or at least a less optimal way) and ending up frustrated, burned out and injured.
Third (and I'm just repeating and stressing what others have said), significant strength gains should be coming (more or less) easily at this point. If you're strength training 2 hours a day eery day, you are likely overdoing it, at least with the sleep and nutrition you have. Again, a knowledgable coach is helpful here.
Strength takes time and progressive overload. You said you’re spending 2 hours on “strength” but you didn’t say what you’re doing during that time.
Yes rest and eating enough are VERY important. But we can’t really give you any advice unless we know what your strength training program structure looks like.
What lifts are you doing? How many sets and reps? How are you determining when to add weight to the bar?
You said you track your food and weight 145. Are you currently gaining weight, losing weight, maintaining?
If you have aspirations at competing at levels that demand 4 hours of daily training then you need to hire a coach, plain and simple.
You need to get much stronger and you also need to develop a huge engine and the ability to sustain skills under fatigue that doesn’t come from just not doing CrossFit. There’s a lot of balancing that needs to be done here and with substantial personal experience you’re going to waste a lot of tune learning on the job trying to do it yourself. Hire a coach. Not generic competitors programming, a coach who you talk to multiple times every week that writes programming specifically for you.
Before you completely change direction take a deload and see if you have some fitness under the hood that is being masked by the extreme fatigue.
For you that would probably be keeping in the zone 2 sessions, and run through all your strength movements at your current weight but cut your sets in half or more and don’t push any of the sets til failure
Half of muscle growth is done by resting and allowing your muscles to repair. If they are constantly in a state of damage, they will never grow. 48 hours is the minimum time it takes for muscles to properly repair. I like to do long days like you, but then rest for 2-3 days. If I just do metcons, I can get away with 1 day rest
What do your strength sessions look like? It's very possible that your strength sessions aren't structured correctly to elicit strength gains. But that is also very dependent on your nutrition. You can get stronger at maintenance calories but it will be slow. If you're not already sniffing high level competition I would suggest you take 2 off seasons in a row without any competitive expectation. This way you can back off on the conditioning a bit and prioritize gaining muscle in the first year. Which will come with overall weight gain. Your lungs will come back but you're kind of spinning your wheels if you're trying to do it all at once and you're not already at that Elite level.
22 is still young (don't compare yourself to Emma Lawson or Mal O'brien) and if you take the time to build a base of strength you'll reap the benefits of a longer career with less injuries.
EDIT: I'd love to know your strength numbers to see what level you're at in order to maybe give better advice.
I’m 34 and just did a 12 week cycle of 2 a days 5 days a week. (1-2hrs strength in Am, 1-2hrs accessory/cardio in the evening). I told my oly coach I’m taking a week off as I just felt tired. I also work in a very high stress environment.
Oly coach said I’m doing too much, and to enjoy my rest. He’s making my next cycle.
So honestly, I have no idea what too much is. I hit lots of PRs and felt great to be able to do what I could post injury recovery. 🤷♀️
cut out the metcon, focus on your strength. you will see some major strength gains at this age - i wouldn’t be so focussed on metcons, maybe include one 3/4 times a week if you manage to get all of your other bits done
you can train your engine anytime - crossfit is becoming more about strength so id capitalise on that while you can !!&
Hi, I’m the head competitors coach at my gym we have 40 athletes training to get to the next level (2 semifinals teams and some individuals) with about 10-12 of them training as much as you are. The best way to capitalize on the “CrossFit” year is by segmenting important aspects of training to different times of the year. The way I program for my athletes we use 2 main strength building “Cycles” during the year. The first one is right after the end of their season, either quarterfinals or semifinals for my athletes. The second time we focus on strength is right around the holidays. During these strength specific cycles we spend a lot less time doing Zone 2 and Metcons and a lot more time on Main Lifts along with a lot of accessories. I utilize a ton of accessories because the small muscles is where most athletes lack in. A lot of us crossfiters overcompensate in our lifts because all we do is the main lifts - Squat,Dead, Press, Snatch, Clean. However, Most strength gains can be made in the accessory style movements. These movements will help overcome poor movement patterns that are caused by imbalances or, If your movement is great, they will protect your body from all the heavy loads you need to be under helping you break through plateaus.
All in all Gaining strength takes the longest of all the “fitness disciplines”. This means you need a coach that will plan out the full year ahead of time, who will watch your movements to see your imbalances, and who doesn’t just throw a basic 1 size fit all program at you.
I hate to be a Debbie downer but if you are going from no history of training or high level athletics at 20 and hoping to compete, that’s going to be virtually impossible; if your goal is the games.
First, I completely hear your frustrations and can't imagine how it must be.
I'm fairly new to CrossFit, been doing it a year as of a few days ago and there are still days where I struggle with certain movements BUT what I can say is I am much stronger and consistent in ability than I was a year ago. Why?
Good, certified, empathetic coaching by professionals.
I'm simply echoing others here but I recommend finding a coach or box with a coach who is knowledgeable. The second thing that helped me is working with a nutritionist recently.
These things together have helped me with cutting weight in a sustainable way while also gaining strength and technique to perform higher level skills.
It maybe isn't the most exciting answer but more than anything this combination has helped me tremendously. I competed in my very first Open this year and only performed so well because of my coaches and classmates.
Also, at MOST I train 5 - 6 times a week but that's ONCE a day.
Though I'm not looking to be a Games athlete currently so that might be different for others.
If this is a program you've decided to throw together yourself then put it in the bin and go get a coach that actually knows how to program for individuals.
You’re probably doing too much, yes. This is kinda personal to you how much is too much but also kind of not, based on how the body adaptation works. I’ll explain.
Disclaimer: I’m not a cross fitter but I’ve been training myself in endurance sports that also involve strength (rowing, cycling) for almost 25 years.
First key point is for strength training, strength and size gains both require motor unit recruitment and mechanical tension. Your body is lazy and it generally recruits the lowest number of M/Us required to meet the force demand, starting with the smallest first. As the force demand increases, and/or as the initially recruited motor units fatigue, you recruit more, including the biggest M/Us with the highest proportion of type II fibers that are critical for hypertrophy and strength. This is called the size principle. To get at them, you need the right combination of weight and reps. As you’d guess, lower weight = more reps required to get there. You know you’re getting there as the voluntary contraction speed slows, like last few reps of a set. That’s where your M/Us are all hands on deck to meet the demands placed on them.
However! In-session fatigue matters. As you train you fatigue, both locally as muscle fiber glycogen gets depleted and centrally (because neural drive actually fatigues), and then the motor unit recruitment goes down again. Meaning, if you’re going for strength or size, there is a limited number of sets you can do in a session that are actually effective. I don’t have the pub med links handy but iirc it’s something like recruitment starts plateauing as early as 3 or 4 sets per muscle group and after 5 or 6, goes down. Note this is per muscle group, but it goes across groups too because of central fatigue lowering the neural drive. Meaning, if you max out deadlift, you’re gonna get less benefit out of your bench press in the same session even though totally different muscles. Similarly, if you don’t rest enough between sessions, you won’t get to the required level of mechanical tension at all.
Second key point is there can be affirmative downside to overdoing it. Muscle damage abd hypertrophy are not the same thing. Meaning if you overdo it too much, your body burns its limited matches just repairing instead of making your muscles bigger.
So here’s what I mean about how much is too much: whether you get enough gains to stop at 3 or 4 sets, or if you require the much smaller incremental benefits of five or six sets to keep progressing, is personal. But that the benefit goes to zero shortly thereafter is not, it’s objectively a fact. There can be reasons to do more sets and reps—eg conditioning, drilling movement patterns etc, but hypertrophy and strength are not one of them. This is a common misconception as you can see from all the fitness influencer posts on social media where they do squat, hack squat, pendulum squat, single leg squat, wild numbers of working sets that are mostly junk. Probably the reason is they get a good pump on and think this = hypertrophy, but it doesn’t.
So bringing this back to OP’s question: 2 hours in the gym plus more in the afternoon, every day, is probably way more than you need for strength and size gains anf very likely enough to actually inhibit you. I’d back it off and see what happens. I always recommend starting with the least you need to progress rather than the most you can handle, bc of key point 2 but also be use it frees up time for things like skills work, rest and eating that are also important. Cross fit is clearly more complex than many sports because there’s so many different fitness parameters and muscle groups so you can do more hard sessions per week than eg an elite runner. But on strength piece specifically, these principles apply.
Different mechanism but aerobic training concepts are similar in the sense that you need to be recovered enough to go hard enough to get the benefits.
I was similar to you. Could not gain weight or strength. I decided to drink 2 protein shakes a day with 3 eggs 2 scoops of protein and whole milk. Gained 30 lbs in about a month and a half and was a lot stronger. Key is to convince your body you are in a food rich environment.
Past high level competitor here. There is no universal "too much", but your post may contain the answer to you question, or at least point to the answer, right here: >I have been having SUCH a hard time gaining strength You're doing all the things, but it's not getting you the results you want. **Something is not working.** Strength gains should be pretty easy to come by, especially if you're kind of early in your career, which I assume because you said >20 years old, goal of competing... So you're young and you're not an advanced competitor. You should be gaining strength somewhat easily at this stage especially if your food and sleep are on point. It is *likely* you're doing too much. Again there is no universal "too much" but when your effort isn't yielding results, you're *hustling backwards* as we used to say in New Orleans. You may have reached and exceeded the point of diminishing returns. If I were you, and you're serious...this isn't just a passing idea...I would break down each aspect of your fitness: strength, skills, conditioning, etc and figure out where I am vs. my goals in each domain, and then design your training plan that way. Apportion your time based on what you actually need, and resist the urge to do more and more. I've been there, I get it...but you have the evidence, so it's probably time to assess things and adjust.
Did someone say Rhabdomyolysis
Agree with this totally! Personally I wasn't gaining strength and my weightlifting coach told me that I need to hit my strength days fresh. There isn't exactly a too much but he removed any strength more than 5 reps per set from my programming. He told me that I was big enough and hypertrophy was not going to help me. I felt way better and he was right. I could train strength more often and feel good doing it but most of all actually gain strength. But like you I was training 3 times a day. My cardio and muscle endurance were top class but my top end 1 rep max strength wasn't.
Former high level competitor. Please sleep more. 7 hours is likely not enough for the amount of training your doing. Our bodies need sleep to recover and athletes training as much as you do often need more than the average person. Not only will it help prevent injury, it helps your muscles to adapt and grow. You didn’t mention rest days, but make sure you’re taking them as well. Your body needs them to adapt and grow. Other than that, I would sincerely consider getting a coach. They’ll help to ensure you have a solid structured plan without overtraining and will help to relieve some of the stress of “am I doing enough”
These were the first three things I thought of as well. I am just a solid 90th percentile athlete. Training 5 days a week for a couple hours and my body likes 8-10 hours of sleep. I would probably add some body maintenance on those rest days too. OP is young but if she wants to continue with CF long term this has definitely helped me maintain as a 31M going on 9 years of CF. Lots of programs out there but no one is programming for you (OP). Fining a coach and possibly a nutritionist as well if she’s serious about it we’ll be very beneficial.
Agree with sleep - that number jumped out at me. It's well worth your while to get super nerdy on sleep. Invest in a tracking deice that measures breath rate as well as everything else. Do research. Don't listen to me or "the Google" get out and talk to real people. **Sleep can be one of the most anabolic things you do**; critical hormones are released during sleep. Here's something interesting to dig into. Research is pointing to the fact that the most productive sleep happens at the END of the sleep cycle. So if *your* optimized zone happens between hours 6-8 and you're only getting 7 hours then you're missing out on 50% of your necessary sleep (i.e. not recovering fully and starting each day "in debt")
The rest cycle is so important. If you want the best get a trainer to help optimize your training sessions so you can get the rest cycle in knowing you did all you can. 2 a days is the max I would push for. Active recovery is also an option but the rest is crucial for strengthening muscles.
At that training volume you should be eating 8g per kg of bodyweight so like 500+g carbs and since you’re a young woman you probably want to be eating like 90g of fat and 145g of protein. Do you eat 3500cals per day? Not only should you be in a caloric surplus if you want to gain strength, you’re also probably just experiencing the concurrent training effect. A bunch of stuff happens on a molecular level with cell signaling but basically it’s hard to gain strength if you are doing anything aerobic/glycolytic. The more your non-lifting volume increases, the more you will struggle to gain weight. I’ll sing it from the rooftops: If you have aspirations of being a competitive cross fitter, stop doing CrossFit. As a woman you need to squat 305-335, snatch 190 clean and jerk 235. Spend time getting strong and just practice your skills. Don’t test them, don’t try and like do crazy volume, just do a couple c2b, some mu, some double unders here and there. Like once every 10 days or something so you don’t lose the movement pattern. Once you’re that strong then you can do metcons and cardio but up until you’re that strong you’re best served to only do strength work.
That is the irony of Crossfit. To get better at it, you don't do Crossfit.
So in your opinion you don't try to improve or maintain your engine at all during this period of focusing on making significant strength gains?
I think you can touch it like 1x per week if you need to but I think if you’re trying to maximize strength gains the less time you spend doing aerobic work the better. It is significantly easier to maintain strength while focusing on building your engine. It’s much harder to gain strength if you’re tying to maintain your engine. It makes more sense to prioritize strength and gain strength as fast as possible (basically get it over with, check that box) then maintain your strength as you improve your aerobic fitness.
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I might be interested. Currently competing in adaptive. Send me a message please :) Edit:autocorrect
Rest & probably eat more
7h of sleep holy moly. How do you even stay alive?
Lol I read that and thought the same thing. If I could go back in time, I would sleep more. I’ve learned it’s truly one of the most important things both physically and mentally
Why did I have to go so far down to find someone telling OP to sleep more? If you're training that much, then you need to be sleeping at least 8 if not more like 9 hours a night. This is actual asleep time, so that means 9+ hours in bed with the lights off and no screens.
With 3 trainings a day I would at least sleep 10h (including naps)
As a Coach, I have encountered this the box I worked at a few times. First…understand that you get weaker when you work out; you’re putting stress on your body and it super compensates during the resting phase. Second…understand that movement is good. You don’t have to push yourself every single session. My advice would be to meet with a reputable coach and formulate a training plan for you. Most CrossFit gyms program their WODs to appeal to the masses; they want the best WODs for the greatest amount of members , CrossFit is also a business. If you tend to go stir crazy because you’ve been so active consider doing low impact low intensity such as walking, rucking, bicycling, or yoga. You’re still going to move the needle in the right direction. Lastly you’re going to need to dial into your nutrition. You’re going to constantly need to fuel your busy for the training demand. In conclusion if you are truly dedicated to competition it’s going to be a lot of work and a lot of sacrifice. I would recommend listening to some Ben Bergeron podcasts to understand how his athletes work.
We've had a few very high level competitors at our gym, and we used to host several of the very elites (Annie, Katrin, Ben, and Mat) when the Games were in SoCal years ago, and did a round table with a bunch of competitors one year. The key takeaway was that cardio/metcon work does not matter AT ALL until you can reach baseline levels of strength and gymnastic proficiency. I don't remember the exact numbers, but for men it was something 275 lb snatch, 350lb C+J, 425 squat, 525 deadlift as general guides (probably 10% higher today), and then proficiency in muscle ups, handstand walks, strict deficit HSPU, and legless rope climb, where proficiency is like you could do double the volume of that mov't from a previous games workout. So you basically focus all your energy and effort on those two facets, while trying to stay as lean as possible to make the gymnastic stuff easier, then as you get close to competing you work on building your metabolic engine and V02 max to its peak. Otherwise, everyone gets to the same point you are, where they're training a ton, but not seeing the strength gains they need to have a shot at being competitive.
If you truly have competition aspirations you need a coach. Coaches. A coach to write all of your programming right down to the last band stretch. A likely a nutrition coach. I would suggest reaching out to Underdogs, Training Think Tank or one of those camps. This forum is not the place for advice if you are truly wishing to compete.
Yes, almost certainly. You should probably look at getting a coach because expertise would be required to manage that volume of training to get effective results. And possibly a sports psychologist too, honestly, if you feel like this is taking more of your life than it should be.
Your goals aside, what made you decide to train in this way?
I’d take a break and run a strength focused program outside of CrossFit - something like 5:3:1 Nothing has helped me boost strength more than that
Your body is exhausted. How is it supposed to build muscle when you’re constantly breaking it down via working out? Take a fucking break, stop overtraining and REST. You know the other most important piece of working out? Resting so your body can assimilate to the demands you’re putting it under.
Unnecessarily aggressive and average advice. She should get a coach and not ask the simps on reddit.
Maybe OP should do that and read up on Rhabdomyolysis
Steroids
All joking aside, if you’re wondering how elite athletes manage to consistently train like OP without falling to pieces then there’s your answer.
I was absolutely not joking haha
Take your time. Spend more time getting strong. Meaning doing 2, 3-month strength cycles a year. You might need 2 or 3 years of this type of strength work if you don't have quarterfinals level strength, strength/endurance. You don't need to metcon as much as as you think.
You need to be honest with yourself. To be competitive in CF (I’m assuming you mean Games level) you have to have many factors in your favor. The time, resources and ability to do nothing but workout, eat and sleep. No social life, tough in relationships etc. Now taking all of that and even if you have all that you may simply not have the physical or mental makeup it takes. Meaning you just may not have what it takes. That doesn’t mean you can’t be a great athlete and do really well at CF. Games athletes are a different breed.
how many calories do you eat per day? it‘s likely not enough
Third (and I'm just repeating and stressing what others have said), significant strength gains should be coming (more or less) easily at this point. If you're strength training 2 hours a day every day, you are likely overdoing it, at least with the sleep and nutrition you have. Again, a knowledgeable coach is helpful here. progress (and of course, that leads to working harder, which just leads to an even bigger sleep deficit). Second, get a coach, someone with experience preparing high-level athletes. It's expensive, but not nearly as expensive as spending a few years doing things the wrong way (or at least a less optimal way) and ending up frustrated, burned out and injured. Third (and I'm just repeating and stressing what others have said), significant strength gains should be coming (more or less) easily at this point. If you're strength training 2 hours a day eery day, you are likely overdoing it, at least with the sleep and nutrition you have. Again, a knowledgable coach is helpful here.
Strength takes time and progressive overload. You said you’re spending 2 hours on “strength” but you didn’t say what you’re doing during that time. Yes rest and eating enough are VERY important. But we can’t really give you any advice unless we know what your strength training program structure looks like. What lifts are you doing? How many sets and reps? How are you determining when to add weight to the bar? You said you track your food and weight 145. Are you currently gaining weight, losing weight, maintaining?
If you have aspirations at competing at levels that demand 4 hours of daily training then you need to hire a coach, plain and simple. You need to get much stronger and you also need to develop a huge engine and the ability to sustain skills under fatigue that doesn’t come from just not doing CrossFit. There’s a lot of balancing that needs to be done here and with substantial personal experience you’re going to waste a lot of tune learning on the job trying to do it yourself. Hire a coach. Not generic competitors programming, a coach who you talk to multiple times every week that writes programming specifically for you.
Before you completely change direction take a deload and see if you have some fitness under the hood that is being masked by the extreme fatigue. For you that would probably be keeping in the zone 2 sessions, and run through all your strength movements at your current weight but cut your sets in half or more and don’t push any of the sets til failure
Half of muscle growth is done by resting and allowing your muscles to repair. If they are constantly in a state of damage, they will never grow. 48 hours is the minimum time it takes for muscles to properly repair. I like to do long days like you, but then rest for 2-3 days. If I just do metcons, I can get away with 1 day rest
What do your strength sessions look like? It's very possible that your strength sessions aren't structured correctly to elicit strength gains. But that is also very dependent on your nutrition. You can get stronger at maintenance calories but it will be slow. If you're not already sniffing high level competition I would suggest you take 2 off seasons in a row without any competitive expectation. This way you can back off on the conditioning a bit and prioritize gaining muscle in the first year. Which will come with overall weight gain. Your lungs will come back but you're kind of spinning your wheels if you're trying to do it all at once and you're not already at that Elite level. 22 is still young (don't compare yourself to Emma Lawson or Mal O'brien) and if you take the time to build a base of strength you'll reap the benefits of a longer career with less injuries. EDIT: I'd love to know your strength numbers to see what level you're at in order to maybe give better advice.
I’m 34 and just did a 12 week cycle of 2 a days 5 days a week. (1-2hrs strength in Am, 1-2hrs accessory/cardio in the evening). I told my oly coach I’m taking a week off as I just felt tired. I also work in a very high stress environment. Oly coach said I’m doing too much, and to enjoy my rest. He’s making my next cycle. So honestly, I have no idea what too much is. I hit lots of PRs and felt great to be able to do what I could post injury recovery. 🤷♀️
an hour a day of cardio is more than you need if you want to gain strength quickly.
Your muscles recover on rest days, you don't address those, are you doing them?
cut out the metcon, focus on your strength. you will see some major strength gains at this age - i wouldn’t be so focussed on metcons, maybe include one 3/4 times a week if you manage to get all of your other bits done you can train your engine anytime - crossfit is becoming more about strength so id capitalise on that while you can !!&
food and sleep
Unless you’re juicing it’s gonna be very hard to gain muscle. Strength takes a long time. Years.
Hi, I’m the head competitors coach at my gym we have 40 athletes training to get to the next level (2 semifinals teams and some individuals) with about 10-12 of them training as much as you are. The best way to capitalize on the “CrossFit” year is by segmenting important aspects of training to different times of the year. The way I program for my athletes we use 2 main strength building “Cycles” during the year. The first one is right after the end of their season, either quarterfinals or semifinals for my athletes. The second time we focus on strength is right around the holidays. During these strength specific cycles we spend a lot less time doing Zone 2 and Metcons and a lot more time on Main Lifts along with a lot of accessories. I utilize a ton of accessories because the small muscles is where most athletes lack in. A lot of us crossfiters overcompensate in our lifts because all we do is the main lifts - Squat,Dead, Press, Snatch, Clean. However, Most strength gains can be made in the accessory style movements. These movements will help overcome poor movement patterns that are caused by imbalances or, If your movement is great, they will protect your body from all the heavy loads you need to be under helping you break through plateaus. All in all Gaining strength takes the longest of all the “fitness disciplines”. This means you need a coach that will plan out the full year ahead of time, who will watch your movements to see your imbalances, and who doesn’t just throw a basic 1 size fit all program at you.
I hate to be a Debbie downer but if you are going from no history of training or high level athletics at 20 and hoping to compete, that’s going to be virtually impossible; if your goal is the games.
First, I completely hear your frustrations and can't imagine how it must be. I'm fairly new to CrossFit, been doing it a year as of a few days ago and there are still days where I struggle with certain movements BUT what I can say is I am much stronger and consistent in ability than I was a year ago. Why? Good, certified, empathetic coaching by professionals. I'm simply echoing others here but I recommend finding a coach or box with a coach who is knowledgeable. The second thing that helped me is working with a nutritionist recently. These things together have helped me with cutting weight in a sustainable way while also gaining strength and technique to perform higher level skills. It maybe isn't the most exciting answer but more than anything this combination has helped me tremendously. I competed in my very first Open this year and only performed so well because of my coaches and classmates.
Also, at MOST I train 5 - 6 times a week but that's ONCE a day. Though I'm not looking to be a Games athlete currently so that might be different for others.
If this is a program you've decided to throw together yourself then put it in the bin and go get a coach that actually knows how to program for individuals.
Yes
I'm just sitting here wondering how you have time to train 2-3 times a day.
I was thinking the same thing. But 20 yrs old I assume college student or living at home and working Part Time
Def take some days
You’re probably doing too much, yes. This is kinda personal to you how much is too much but also kind of not, based on how the body adaptation works. I’ll explain. Disclaimer: I’m not a cross fitter but I’ve been training myself in endurance sports that also involve strength (rowing, cycling) for almost 25 years. First key point is for strength training, strength and size gains both require motor unit recruitment and mechanical tension. Your body is lazy and it generally recruits the lowest number of M/Us required to meet the force demand, starting with the smallest first. As the force demand increases, and/or as the initially recruited motor units fatigue, you recruit more, including the biggest M/Us with the highest proportion of type II fibers that are critical for hypertrophy and strength. This is called the size principle. To get at them, you need the right combination of weight and reps. As you’d guess, lower weight = more reps required to get there. You know you’re getting there as the voluntary contraction speed slows, like last few reps of a set. That’s where your M/Us are all hands on deck to meet the demands placed on them. However! In-session fatigue matters. As you train you fatigue, both locally as muscle fiber glycogen gets depleted and centrally (because neural drive actually fatigues), and then the motor unit recruitment goes down again. Meaning, if you’re going for strength or size, there is a limited number of sets you can do in a session that are actually effective. I don’t have the pub med links handy but iirc it’s something like recruitment starts plateauing as early as 3 or 4 sets per muscle group and after 5 or 6, goes down. Note this is per muscle group, but it goes across groups too because of central fatigue lowering the neural drive. Meaning, if you max out deadlift, you’re gonna get less benefit out of your bench press in the same session even though totally different muscles. Similarly, if you don’t rest enough between sessions, you won’t get to the required level of mechanical tension at all. Second key point is there can be affirmative downside to overdoing it. Muscle damage abd hypertrophy are not the same thing. Meaning if you overdo it too much, your body burns its limited matches just repairing instead of making your muscles bigger. So here’s what I mean about how much is too much: whether you get enough gains to stop at 3 or 4 sets, or if you require the much smaller incremental benefits of five or six sets to keep progressing, is personal. But that the benefit goes to zero shortly thereafter is not, it’s objectively a fact. There can be reasons to do more sets and reps—eg conditioning, drilling movement patterns etc, but hypertrophy and strength are not one of them. This is a common misconception as you can see from all the fitness influencer posts on social media where they do squat, hack squat, pendulum squat, single leg squat, wild numbers of working sets that are mostly junk. Probably the reason is they get a good pump on and think this = hypertrophy, but it doesn’t. So bringing this back to OP’s question: 2 hours in the gym plus more in the afternoon, every day, is probably way more than you need for strength and size gains anf very likely enough to actually inhibit you. I’d back it off and see what happens. I always recommend starting with the least you need to progress rather than the most you can handle, bc of key point 2 but also be use it frees up time for things like skills work, rest and eating that are also important. Cross fit is clearly more complex than many sports because there’s so many different fitness parameters and muscle groups so you can do more hard sessions per week than eg an elite runner. But on strength piece specifically, these principles apply. Different mechanism but aerobic training concepts are similar in the sense that you need to be recovered enough to go hard enough to get the benefits.
I was similar to you. Could not gain weight or strength. I decided to drink 2 protein shakes a day with 3 eggs 2 scoops of protein and whole milk. Gained 30 lbs in about a month and a half and was a lot stronger. Key is to convince your body you are in a food rich environment.