Cardio….cardio…
For something that is so fundamental to success in CrossFit (it is, after all, close to the base of the Theoretical Hierarchy of Development), it’s funny how much we all actually kind of hate it.
To be fair, I guess I can’t say that we all hate it, but…like…for example, an affiliate I used to go to stopped releasing workouts online the day/night before (like most gyms do) because nobody would show up if some cardio-heavy piece was programmed.
The thing is, we all know that strong guy who posts crazy lifts on Instagram who got, like, 164 reps in 25.1…and we know that ain’t good.
So…we gotta get our metabolic capacity up…and we may as well do it right (Wagener et al., 2020).
Not do it so it feels “fun”. Not do it so it feels “easy”. Do it right.
Sentinel Training’s 200+ Machine Conditioning Workouts eBook is CrossFit cardio conditioning (specifically, as the name implies, machine (bikes, rowers, etc.) conditioning with some running sprinkled in) done right.
Taylor Self, the founder and head programmer of Sentinel Training, has one of the best engines in CrossFit. Even when it’s not enough to put him on top, his willingness to hurt more than just about anyone else keeps him in it, as evidenced at the end of this 2024 quarterfinals workout.
To be honest, I haven’t given that much effort to these workouts, but I have gotten solid results from honest effort. Let me tell you all about ’em.
Table of Contents
Why I Decided to Try 200+ Conditioning
Workouts
Truth be told, picking up this specific CrossFit cardio workouts eBook wasn’t a random decision. I have been following Self’s Sentinel Training program for over a year now and was quite familiar with him and, to an extent, these types of workouts, long before the eBook was on my radar…
…because these are the conditioning workouts we do every Thursday in our training.
In my experience, Thursdays are kind of unofficial “take it easy” days for most CrossFit training programs. In HWPO, Thursday was (is?) historically “Spin Bike Day” (which I can only assume that, like, 5 percent of subscribers actually get in on). In other programs it’s a straight-up rest day.
In Sentinel, Thursday’s conditioning workouts aren’t generally as intense as other days’ programming is nor are they as long…but they get results.
As you can probably expect, I can’t really isolate the results of these workouts relative to what other days’ trainings are doing for me, but let’s just say that those classic 15-to-20-minute CrossFit Open “tests” went a lot better for me this year than they have in years past (Bellar et al., 2015).
Feeling good about this progress, my wife and I were interested in incorporating more of these workouts into our training rather than limiting our “pure” CrossFit conditioning workouts to Thursdays. Also, being “limited” on machine equipment (I’m actually pretty blessed to have a Rogue Echo Bike and a Concept2 Rower and Bike Erg as well as a decently flat 200-out/200-in street out front), I wanted more non-scaled options on days where a Ski Erg as programmed.
Of course, it’s pretty easy to find long lists of rowing WODs, Hero WODs, benchmark WODs, and other CrossFit cardio workouts online, but understanding that there was definite attention paid to developing each workout individually as well as in relation to the other workouts in the eBook (not to mention each workout’s brief training notes) allows me to get way more out of them than by doing something random.
Length/Layout
The Sentinel Training crew lives up to their word, including exactly 212 total machine workouts in the 70-page eBook. The layout is incredibly simple with a brief introduction before launching into the different categories of workouts:
- 94 mixed-machine workouts (which, as the name implies, include at least 2 cardio machines in each workout)
- 23 fan bike-only workouts
- 27 Concept2 rower-only workouts
- 22 Concept2 bike erg-only workouts
- 15 Concept2 ski erg-only workouts
- 31 running-only workouts
Each workout includes a couple of sentences discussing either general strategy or the intended stimulus.
Not too much to say here; it’s about as straightforward as it gets.
Equipment Substitutions
Depending on your gear situation, there is a pretty good chance that you’re going to have to substitute equipment at som