Themes: The Foundation of Our Programming
Our programming philosophy, called LIT—Levels, Intent, Themes—has guided our approach for years. It’s comprehensive yet simple, providing the structure needed for athletes/members to grow and succeed.
We rotate through core Themes across the year, ensuring variety and balance, and have categories that are always present, these include:
- Electricity Discipline: Focuses on high muscular tension and rotates between gymnastics, bodybuilding, powerlifting, and weightlifting. Each style emphasizes unique contraction types—stability and control in gymnastics, the contraction-focus of bodybuilding, the grind of powerlifting, and the explosiveness of weightlifting. Separating Electricity from energy systems ensures a clear, constant focus on strength and tension development.
- Systems: Alternates between Plumbing and Ventilation to target these two systems in a concentrated way. Plumbing includes shorter, high-effort work (like lactic endurance and power) as well as stamina and strength endurance through tempo and higher-rep efforts (which has overlap with the bodybuilding world mentioned above). Ventilation focuses on longer, breathing-dominated, sustained efforts, balancing aerobic and stamina in a breathing environment.
- MAP/Strength Progressions: Focuses on progressing key strength movements present on the MAP (like deadlifts, front squats, pull-ups, presses, and the 20-rep back squat) over 4-5 weeks. Early Levels often improve with weekly exposure, while advanced Levels may need additional sessions for optimal progress. These progressions culminate in assessment opportunities to support consistent growth.
- Virtuosity: Adds variety and depth by emphasizing mastery across four categories/worlds: bodyweight/gymnastics, barbell, kettlebell/unilateral, and dumbbell/unilateral. From basic movements like air squats to complex skills like barbell cycling or Turkish get-ups, this theme ensures exposure to a wide range of fitness fundamentals.
- Fun Cool: Prioritizes enjoyment and engagement with Legion-submitted workouts, benchmarks, and themes like CrossFit Girls, HERO, or Strongman. While results are our top priority, this theme addresses the importance of keeping training exciting to maintain long-term client buy-in and satisfaction.
This framework creates a dynamic, periodized system while respecting the unique nature of group training.
Introducing the Quality Theme
This year, we’re taking a significant step forward by introducing the Quality Theme. These 'qualities'—Coordination, Range, Balance & Stability (remember them by the acronym CaRBS)— which focus on enhancing movement efficiency, safety, and performance.
Here’s how they break down:
- Coordination: Integrating multiple body parts and movement patterns efficiently, including rhythm-based drills, agility work, and barbell cycling.
- Range: Achieving full, controlled movement within an optimal range of motion. Think active mobility exercises like pass-throughs and overhead squats with a PVC pipe.
- Balance: Controlling the body’s center of gravity in both static and dynamic positions, such as single-leg drills.
- Stability: Maintaining proper joint alignment and resisting external forces during movement or load-bearing. Includes core work, anti-rotation drills, and single-leg or single-arm exercises.
Why Not Speed?
While speed is a valuable attribute, the risk-to-reward ratio makes it unsuitable for group programming. Sprinting, for instance, carries a higher risk of injury, especially for athletes who don’t sprint regularly. Speed work can be included on an individual basis, in individual program design with proper preparation.
What Makes the Quality Theme Unique?
The Quality Theme isn’t a dramatic overhaul; it’s a refinement. For example, the first week of January features stability work in extra credit, giving a focused and practical introduction; we will continue to refine the integration of these qualities.
Each quality has specific applications:
- Stability may overlap with balance but focuses more on resisting movement (e.g., anti-rotation core work or single-arm presses).
- Range emphasizes active mobility to build strength and control through full motion.
- Coordination challenges athletes with drills requiring rhythm and precision, adding depth to their skillset.
The result? A more rounded athlete with improved functional performance, balance, and strength.
2025 Programming Adjustments
To keep things fresh and engaging, we’ve made some schedule tweaks from 2024. Here's the thing, we refine and build on our lessons learned every year. We do not start from a completely blank slate, and cross our fingers and hope it works out. These adjustments add variety and avoid repetitive cycles, ensuring athletes continue to grow and improve... while not reinventing the wheel every year. We build on our good ideas and make them better.
Additionally, all 15 assessments from the MAP are still baked into our programming, and will each be conducted twice a year, providing a consistent measure of progress even if you don't do Global Assessments.
Looking Ahead: AI and Energy Systems
We’re always looking for ways to innovate, and AI is playing a growing role in Level Method. While you’ll already see it in tools like email generation, future plans include auto-scaling workouts to align with gym philosophies while retaining the benefits of Levels -- this is a long term vision of where fitness will be in 3-5 years, and because we have so much incredible data, we are perfectly positioned.
We’ve also launched the Energy System Blueprint Course, a free resource in our eLearning platform. This course provides an in-depth understanding of energy systems, offering layers of knowledge to help you fully grasp how and why our programming works so well.
Why It Matters
With our combination of Themes, the new Quality layer, and ongoing innovations, we’re ensuring that our gym programs, and subsequently members around the world are as well-rounded as possible and progressing safely. Whether it’s through warm-ups, workouts, or extra credit, every piece of programming is designed to help you improve.
If you have any questions about the 2025 programming—or want to explore how these updates can improve your progress—don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re here to help you grow stronger, more capable, and better equipped for the journey ahead.
Here’s to another incredible year of progress and performance!
