'On the Minute' Drills Are Great, but Let's Not Overdue It!

I’d like to start by saying that using the clock to keep the class on time and/or to keep people moving at the right pace during lifting and drills is a great idea! We do these regularly for shorter efforts/drills and I encourage everyone to use it to help the lifting portion of the class on time.

For example, after some coaching and warm up sets, you should start the timer and say “Okay everyone! We have 20 minutes to do 6 sets of 3 reps. Complete one set every 3 minutes or so!”

This will give them a bit more time to get set up, and a bit of flexibility toward the end if they want to take slightly longer breaks between sets (if they start right at 0:00, 6 sets will take 18 minutes, but the last round will really be complete at more like 15:30 or 16).

Resting between sets is an important part of training. For the vast majority of the lifting that we do 2-4 minutes between sets is in the right zone. Too little rest, and it changes the stimulus. Too much rest and it changes the stimulus. That said, generally the smaller the set, the less rest is required. The larger the set, the more rest is required.

Side Note: I remember a time when gyms didn’t have clocks on the wall. We had to pay $500 for a large digital clock that had to be custom built. In fact, at the 2009 CrossFit Games, they reached out to us to work with our manufacturer to have clocks for the Games!

Before everyone had stop watches, or phones with stop watches/fancy timer apps, there weren’t many EMOMs and people didn’t pay that close attention to the clock when lifting. It was more of a ‘ish’ type of thing (“rest 3-ish minutes between sets”). Having timers has definitely pushed things in the right direction training wise, but I believe sometimes people get carried away with it!

The Issue with EMOMs

The mistake I see most people making with the EMOMs is, in classes with regular folk, is doing really long EMOMs and making everyone move exactly at the same time.

A common one that I see is something like 20 minutes EMOM of power cleans, or ‘Every Other Minute On the Minute’ (EOMOTM) do a set of power cleans and a set of HSPU, etc.

I believe this comes from competition world. People who are sufficiently advanced that are training for the sport of fitness can benefit significantly from these drills. It is a really efficient use of time! If you told them to do 20 sets of cleans, they would probably go too heavy and take 45 minutes or more (or the opposite, do it as fast as possible).

Using the timer will help them get a good quality of volume, while keeping the training time reasonable.

Subsequently, a lot of gyms/classes have started to include these in their regular classes, and it has a number unintended consequences.

First, it is not very ‘fun’ for the coach. They have to be watching the clock and yelling (or being interrupted by the buzzer) to make sure everyone is moving at the same time.

Next, it makes coaching more difficult from an observation standpoint. If you have people doing 20 rounds all at the same time, the coach can only watch 20 repetitions for the whole class (generally they can only really watch one person at a time). If you have a class of 10 people, you are only going to see 2 reps from each person (roughly 20%), and some of those people you will not be able to watch until their last set or two!

Then (possibly most importantly), it also makes it nearly impossible to actually COACH the movement. You cannot stand next to them and have them make another attempt so you can see it clearly. You cannot spend time giving them a coaching cue or have them practice some drills to get your point across. You will be halfway through your point when the buzzer goes off and they’ll stop listening to make sure they don’t get behind schedule.

On that note, you can’t stop the whole class to make a major coaching point about the movement to everyone. People will be watching the clock more than listening to you, and they will start to panic as the clock ticks over.

Lastly, it takes some of the ‘fun’ out of the class and makes it harder to build connections and community.

Who is supposed to be leading the class, the coach, or the clock?

When we are doing drills and strength work, it is the time for people to talk to each other and build relationships. It is a time for cheering each other on, cracking jokes, and dropping knowledge bombs.

When everyone is consumed with staying on time, changing their plates, hurrying to the next station, etc., they can’t enjoy as much of the community (one of the key things they get out of the classes).

Let’s Keep the EMOMs, but Let’s Not Overdue it

Use them with ‘seasoned’ folks who don’t need as much coaching. Use them when doing basic movements that aren’t too complex. Occasionally do the longer versions, but keep them short (6-10 minutes) for the most part.

The use of the stopwatch in everyone’s daily training has been a huge leap forward, but it needs to be used wisely.

Thrive on.

-jj