One Coach, Twelve Athletes, Twenty Minutes
It is the 9 a.m. Saturday class with 12 athletes and one coach. The workout is 5 rounds of 10 deadlifts at 225/155 lb, 10 burpees, and 15 wall-ball shots at 20/14 lb to a 10/9 ft target, with a 20-minute cap. The room has 6 barbells, 4 wall-ball stations, and enough floor for 6 burpee lanes. The group: 3 athletes who can handle 225 lb, 4 solid intermediates, and 5 in their first month, including a 62-year-old who has never deadlifted and an athlete with a history of low-back trouble. Two athletes will have to share each bar. Nobody has warmed up yet.
1. Lay out your plan for the 20 minutes - briefing, heat structure, equipment, and where you position yourself.
Read the worked answer
Briefing, 3 minutes. Whiteboard the standards and write three scaling tiers next to each movement so athletes can self-select. Assign heat one and heat two and pair each new athlete with an experienced counter. State the cap as a hard stop.
Heat structure. Two heats of six, staggered by 90 seconds. Heat one works while heat two counts and judges; then swap. Barbells are pre-loaded in lanes before the briefing so no one is hunting plates mid-workout.
Positioning. Start with the five new athletes in heat one so you see their first round. Then move a lap through the room each round, with deliberate stops at the two priority athletes: the 62-year-old and the athlete with the low-back history.
Why this order. Your scarcest resource is attention, not equipment. A structured stagger buys you a second look at every athlete and prevents the bar-sharing scramble that eats the first five minutes of the cap. The cap protects the class schedule and stops the workout degrading into a survival march.
2. How do you scale the deadlift across the three tiers, and what standard do you hold each of them to?
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The standard for everyone. Neutral spine from setup to lockout, bar close to the body, hips and shoulders rising together, and full hip and knee extension at the top. A rep that fails the standard does not count, regardless of tier.
Tier 1, the three strong athletes. 225/155 lb is appropriate when it is roughly 60-65 percent of a tested 1RM, so those three should be cycling 10 reps unbroken or in two quick sets.
Tier 2, intermediates. Pick a load they can do 10 unbroken with a stable back - often 155/105 or 135/95. If they cannot hold the position for 10, drop the load rather than adding rest.
Tier 3, first-month athletes. A kettlebell or light-bar deadlift, or a hip-hinge substitution, at a load that allows clean reps. For the athlete with low-back history, a lighter load with a deliberate setup each rep and no touch-and-go bouncing.
Why. The deadlift is where fatigue shows up first in the spine. Load selection is a position decision, not a score decision.
3. In round three, the newest athlete's lower back rounds on every deadlift rep and he says he wants to finish for the score. What do you do?
Read the worked answer
Stop the set. Not the workout, but that set. Say it plainly and without drama: 'Hold on - I need your back flat, not your score.'
Then fix the cause, not the symptom. Cut the load by roughly a third or switch to a kettlebell, and give one cue for the remaining rounds: chest up, bar against the shins, stand up with the legs. If the back still rounds at a lighter load, substitute a hip-hinge movement that he can perform cleanly and let him finish the burpees and wall balls.
If he argues. Explain the trade: a rounded deadlift under fatigue is how people end up out of training for weeks, and the cap is 20 minutes, not a competition. Offer to record one set so he can see the difference.
After class. Two minutes on setup position and a note in his file. This is a coaching moment that happens once, early; handle it well and he will trust the next correction.