Greg Everett is the founder of Catalyst Athletics, a weightlifting gym that was an early part of the CrossFit movement. He quit the CrossFit staff because he didn’t like teaching the clean with a medicine ball. While he slowly fell off the radar of CrossFit coaches, Greg’s programming is some of the best out there–especially for clients who don’t want to lose their fitness while building their snatch.
Greg’s “8-Week General Cycle” is a solid weightlifting-specialty program that can be repeated over and over again. You can buy it on his site here: https://www.catalystathletics.com/olympic-weightlifting-training-program/49/8-Week-General-Cycle/
…and then run a weightlifting specialty program at your gym, making tweaks and changes to fit.
The program has a lot to offer for non-weightlifters who want to improve their lifts:
1 – you can complete the program in an hour each day, making it a great template for a specialty group;
2 – it won’t interfere with conditioning work (so your clients won’t pause their usual membership while doing this extra program)
3 – it relies on the basic lifts BUT incorporates enough novelty to stay interesting
4 – It gives you a LOT of opportunities to coach, by breaking each lift down into their component parts.
Fun story: when I became a CrossFit affiliate in 2008, I’d already been using the Catalyst name for over three years. I wanted my CrossFit name to match my gym name (Catalyst Fitness). So I requested “Catalyst CrossFit” on my affiliation application.
The person running Affiliates at the time said “We want you as an affiliate, but you can’t have ‘Catalyst’. Greg Everett owns that name already.” That was close to a deal-breaker for me, so I asked if I could call Greg Everett. She gave me his number; I called him; and he said “Sure, I’ll be Catalyst CrossFit and you be CrossFit Catalyst. How’s that?”
(Try to imagine that happening in 2021…I can’t.)
There are a lot of weightlifting programs out there. If you own a CrossFit gym, or a bootcamp, or run any other kind of functional training program, the Catalyst 8-Week General Cycle is a can’t-miss weightlifting specialization.
Want to get a taste for yourself? You can get Greg’s 4-week Starter Program for beginners here (it’s free): https://www.catalystathletics.com/article/131/Starter-Program-for-Catalyst-Athletics-Online-Workouts/
Though he split from the CrossFit mainstream after the Black Box Summit in 2009, Greg continues to publish the Performance Menu journal, and often appears on podcasts like ours: