The Ultimate 12 Week CrossFit Program (Free PDF)

We’re proud to announce our ultimate 12 week CrossFit Program that is designed to improve your cardiorespiratory capacity, stamina, endurance, and strength.

This program is for all fitness levels and abilities – beginners or advanced individuals alike. Whether you’re CrossFit-curious and thinking about joining or just want to get better at CrossFit in general, this workout plan is for you!

Jump to the program or download the free PDF using the link below:

12 Week CrossFit Program In a Nutshell

Program style	CrossFit
Program duration	12 weeks
WOD duration	1 hour
Scheduling	5 days a week
Goal	Increase strength and conditioning
Level	Beginners to advanced
Equipment needed	Barbell, bumper plates, pull up bar, kettlebells, dumbbells, rower, bike erg, ski erg, gymnastics rings, plyometrics box, medicine ball, ab mat, climbing rope, skipping rope, resistance bands, foam roller, parallette bars

Will This Program Help me Build Muscle?

This CrossFit Workout Plan can definitely help you build muscle mass. Look at these buff dudes below.

The guy in the middle is Rich Froning, arguably the greatest CrossFitter to ever live, won the CrossFit Games 4 times in a row. The guy on the left, Matt Chan and the tank on the right, Jason Khalipa are also both seasoned CrossFit athletes.

Now, we’re not saying you’re going to end up looking like these dudes after 12 weeks, but you’d be developing the foundational skills and strength to be able to!

CrossFit incorporates a plethora of traditional and Olympic weightlifting methodologies as part of its training as well as plenty of bodyweight and calisthenics type exercises that all lead to muscle gains and lean bulk.

Although this program is only for 12 weeks, you will notice a difference in your body composition by the end of it. Treat this workout plan as a stepping stone for you to take up CrossFit beyond this program so that you to take your muscle gains to the next level!

Can Beginners Do This Program?

Yes of course! This CrossFit program is for beginners as much as it is for seasoned CrossFit athletes.

We understand that not everyone will be at the same level of abilities. And it’s the reason why CrossFit is so awesome – it’s inclusive of everyone regardless of fitness levels.

If you’re a beginner and feel like some of the WODs in this program might be a little overwhelming, by all means, scale it! This just means modifying aspects of the workout to suit your current abilities. Examples include:

• Lowering the prescribed weights. If you can’t deadlift 100kg, change it to a weight you can deadlift.
• Lowering the number of required reps. If you can’t do 100 air squats, then do 50.
• Scaling the movement. If you can’t do a handstand push up, then do pike push ups instead.

So, we encourage you to please scale the workouts if needed to take full advantage of the program’s benefits. We would prefer that you did not miss any of the workout days if possible.

Program Structure

When devising this 12 week program, we found it imperative that we preserve the fundamental trait that makes the discipline of CrossFit so unique: constantly varied functional movements done at high intensity. At the same time we also wanted to make sure that the workouts we program all satisfy the following criteria:

• Promotes new skill development
• Combines multiple exercise modalities
• Includes technical movements, and
• Activates all 3 metabolic pathways

So we went back to the roots of CrossFit and obtained inspiration from the original CrossFit programming template[1]. This template not only embraces the criteria we listed above but also breaks down all CrossFit movements and groups them into 1 of 3 modalities:

1. Gymnastics (G)
2. Metabolic conditioning (M)
3. Weightlifting (W)

In the CrossFit program we designed, we will be referring to these modalities as G, M, and W, respectively. Each modality on their own improves one’s fitness capabilities in different ways. But as a combination, they form a potent mix that will help increase agility, bodyweight control and coordination, cardio capacity, and strength and power.

Movements Used in the Program

Below are the list of movements you will be performing as part of this 12 week program categorised into their respective modalities:

Gymnastics	Metabolic Conditioning	Weightlifting
Air Squats Pull-ups Push-ups Dips Handstand Push-ups Rope Climbs Muscle-Ups Sit-ups V-ups Box Jumps Lunges Pistols Toes to bar	Run Bike Row Ski Double Unders Wall Balls Burpees	Back Squats Front Squats Overhead Squats Deadlifts Cleans Presses Snatches Clean and Jerks Medicine Ball Drills Kettlebell Swings Thrusters Deadlift High-pulls Man makers

Program Scheduling

The scheduling used in this program will go by the 7-day week and will apply a 3-1-2-1 pattern. This means:

• 3 days on
• 1 day rest
• 2 days on
• 1 day rest

We split a two day rest after the 3rd and 6th days to break up the WODs because it’s important to allow time for rest and recovery.

The WOD formulated for each workout day will include 1, 2, or 3 movements from each modality and will be run in various formats that include: Tabata, EMOM, RFT, and AMRAP, just to name a few.

The entire program will run for 12 straight weeks and broken up into 3-week blocks where each subsequent block is progressively more difficult than the previous.

Each 3-week block will look like this:

The weekly WOD schedule is structured as follows:

• The first and sixth day of each week will involve a movement from a single modality.
• The second and fifth days of each week will consist of two movements each from a different modality.
• The third day will consist of three movements each from a different modality.

We believe that this workout structure and varied combination of modalities will allow for maximum intensity without overtraining the body as well as provide a perfect blend of skill, strength, and conditioning.

The daily workout will consist of the following elements in chronological order:

1. Warm up. Gets the blood pumping and stimulates the muscles in anticipation for the grilling it’s about to receive! We provide specific warm up exercises tailored for the movements to be performed on the day.
2. Mobility. Prepares the muscles that are going to be utilised for the movements to be performed in the workouts so that range of motion is maximised and risk of injury is minimised.
3. Strength/skills. Focuses on exercises that will help complement the upcoming WOD.
4. WOD. The main workout that implements the scheduled modalities for that day. This will be intense but the previous phases would have prepared you well to allow you to perform at your best.
5. Cool down. Helps take your heart rate back down to normal and usually involves stretching.

All of these elements work together to facilitate and complement the targeted modalities for that day.

Can I Scale the WODs in this Workout Plan?

Yes of course! Not everyone will be at the same level of abilities and we would prefer that you did not miss any of the workout days if possible.

That’s why we encourage you to scale the workouts if needed to take full advantage of the program’s benefits.

The 12 Week CrossFit Program

DISCLAIMER: We are not affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with the CrossFit brand we illustrate, and those listed here on our site.

References:

[1] http://library.crossfit.com/free/pdf/06_03_CF_Template.pdf