#mikkosalo

For whom is The System designed?

The System is perfect for competitive athletes and people interested in competing. The idea is to create a rock solid aerobic base for athletes to rely on, while developing skills and strength numbers.

What is the goal?

The goal is to develop a big engine and skill base that enable the use of an athlete’s strength and power. To give an example, in the Open workout 16.2 you had to have a big engine to show your strength. The ultimate goal is to be in the best shape of your life at The Open 2017.

How does it work?

Mikko posts one week’s programming on WODconnect every Sunday. Every session is clearly described. When an athlete completes a session, she/he marks the result in the feed, with additional comments or questions if needed. As results are public within The System, athletes can compare and comment each other’s results and also cheer each other. Results can also be published so that only Mikko sees them.

How many sessions are there per day?

Always two sessions per training day – one AM session and one PM session. See examples of sessions here (scroll down).

How many training days / rest days are there per week?

A week consists of five training days (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday) and two rest days (Thursday, Sunday).

How long are the sessions?

Not very long, the aim is to keep the sessions short & intense.

How personal is the training program?

The program is designed to fit multiple athletes, it’s the same for everyone and takes place online. However, the weeks can be modified to fit one’s studying/work schedule and physical or mental stress levels. An athlete can also choose to do only the PM session, if two sessions is too much. Mikko, who still works as a firefighter, answers all questions assigned to him within 24 hours.

Is the program the same for all age groups?

For the Master athletes, the program is the same, but sessions can be scaled and the workload can be reduced.

Any training camps / seminars included?

The program doesn’t include any training camps, but there are plans to arrange an additional The System training camp in the future. Follow our Facebook feed for all possible updates.

How can I start?

Go to https://www.wodconnect.com/the_system and join the team!

We are waiting for Jonne Koski in Helsinki, but he is still hours away, in a bank in Pori. Our meeting is postponed, but it’s understandable. The fittest man in Europe is soon leaving to the US to compete at The CrossFit Games, but as the young man still has quite low credit card limits, he needs to raise them with his father before the trip...

In Helsinki awaits an evening workout, some mobility and on the next day departure to Stockholm. From Sweden Jonne returns to Helsinki before heading to Ohio. There is four weeks left until the CrossFit Games begin. This year Koski has reserved plenty of time to get used to the climate and the time difference.

It was last May, latest, that Jonne Koski became well known in the CrossFit world. He won the Meridian Regionals with a solid performance. He began with breaking the world record in the first event, and won four out of seven events.

Workout of the day

Regionals were only a milestone, the actual goal is in CrossFit Games finals. This hard goal shows in his training. The evening before our meeting, Koski tells in Instagram how he ran a half marathon instead of the originally planned 10K. His time was 1:44, a good time even for a runner. The morning of our interview he rowed 1.5K and did 150 wallballs (30 lbs). Now it’s time to do the evening workout. Koski does clean and jerks, thrusters and back squats with heavy weights. He is not happy with the performance – the clean and jerk stays at 140 kilos today.

For a regular crossfitter it would take days to recover from this kind of training day, but for Jonne this is only part of normal preparation for competition. On the opening day of the Games he will probably face first an endurance type of event on the beach requiring some lactic acid tolerance, and secondly lifting heavy weights in the evening. This means that also training has to be like that, he needs to be able to do reps with proper technique and strength with a tired body.

Koski has the advantage of being able to train exceptionally hard. For top-level athletes in any sport it is necessary to practice a lot, in order to grow work capacity and achieve the best level of performance in competitions.

Koski has the ability to gain strength and has great body mechanics. The benefit in being at his twenties is that he recovers fast and his body still naturally produces a lot of testosterone. He is also extremely competitive and trains with people that push him to go harder. This combination helps him grow to a top-level CrossFit athlete.

Athlete since childhood

Crossfit being a young sport leads to most of it’s top athletes coming from other sports. Koski was still a baby when he found his first sport. His parents have told him that he cried when a baby swimming session ended. He competed in swimming at national level until the age of 16. He’s specialty were sprints that require explosive strength and medium distances that require tolerance to lactic acid.

Koski’s parents have always supported their children’s engagement in sports. Sometimes supporting included  'forcing'; quitting wasn’t allowed, even when swimming tasted like chlorine… Afterwards, Koski says he’s thankful for his father’s perseverance.

It’s somewhat a lucky coincidence for the Finnish CrossFit community, that Koski’s swimming results started to come to a halt. There was many reasons. First of all, the crew that had been training together for a long time started to fall apart, and Koski trained by himself for a while.

“Swimming is lonely as it is, and training alone makes it even more boring.”

Koski started to lose interest in three-hour-long training sessions spent practising pulls and being in the water. He had always preferred hard, intense training and lactic acid threshold training that make you feel sick.

Swimming requires muscles, so Koski has spent a lot of time at the gym since teenager. At 15, he already bench pressed 145 kilos. That’s still his record, by the way. Indeed, his swimming background turned out to be a great advantage.

Tough mind and strong core of a swimmer

Many successful CrossFit athletes come from athletics, gymnastics and ball games, but swimming isn’t a bad base for a competitor either. Firstly, it develops body control in different ways, as every part of the body is moving in a foreign element. Secondly, it strengthens abdominals and back muscles, and all the small muscles in between.

What swimming and CrossFit have in common is the importance of core strength. In swimming, core muscles maintain the right position, which decreases water’s resistance.

“Another important thing is the core muscles’ tonus, a kind of activation. Among top swimmers it’s better than average, as water is moving the body in different directions” says Finnish Swimming Association’s national team’s and young swimmers’ olympic coach Jari Varjonen.

Core control is the key to almost everything in CrossFit as well. A CrossFit athlete moves the power of his hips and legs to the object to be moved through the core. When it’s in control, the movement is efficient. Another advantage in swimming is a small risk for injuries, which means unbroken training phases.

CrossFit started to sneak into Koski’s life in high school. His PE teacher made a group of competitive athletes do CrossFit type of workouts.

“Doing well in that kind of workouts got me thinking that it could be my thing, my sport.”

Koski didn’t feel that he was too old to switch sport. He believes that the human body adapts to different training methods. He also wanted to use his capacity gained from a 10-year-long period of training.

“I had trained hard all my childhood and given my all to be in as good condition as I could for every competition. It would have felt stupid to throw that away. Visiting the gym a couple of times a week didn’t feel inspiring when I had always been training two times a day, real goals in mind. CrossFit seemed like a sport that could motivate me.”

In August 2012, a 17-year-old accustomed to hard training stepped into CrossFit Pori’s OnRamp course.

Fast progress in a new sport

At the on ramp course Koski was one beginner among others. Tuomas Vainio, coach and nowadays also owner at CrossFit Pori (also Games 2011 athlete) remembers that Koski trained humbly.

“At the time Jonne didn’t stand out as a superstar, as we practice mainly technique and easy WODs with beginners. But of course I saw that each workout was a piece of cake for him.”

Soon Vainio started to coach Koski more. He invited Koski to his morning training sessions and helped him especially with olympic lifting.

“I had myself had the chance to train with Mikko Salo, and learned that training with more advanced company is great for progress. I thought that it would be a good thing for Jonne if he trained with me.”

Koski respected Vainio’s effort, especially knowing he had just started to manage his own gym and had all the other clients to coach. Vainio saw that Koski can work like a bull, but felt the need to hold him back slightly. As a coach he wanted to make sure that Koski wasn’t training too much.

“At the point where you only want to train and learn as much as you can, there’s a risk of overtraining. If you only follow a training plan and don’t listen to your body, your training loses its effect. When you’re tired, it’s better to focus on the following days and do a recovery type of workout, not some tough workout against time. Of course you need to be able to train CrossFit even when you’re tired, but if you do it all the time, progress isn’t optimal.”

Surprise, Regionals!

After a couple of months of training Koski registered to the 2013 CrossFit Games Open. He finished 52nd. Only 48 best get to go to Regionals, but as some of the individual athletes moved to team division, Jonne got a place. It was his first trip to Copenhagen.

“I didn’t know what to expect and I had no clue what type of events I was facing.”

The competition was a success. The 18-year-old that had trained CrossFit less than a year placed 10th. Koski remembers especially the deadlifts.

“The weights were the heaviest I had experienced. It was called 'a man test'. My back hurt for two weeks”

In the summer 2013 Koski participated to Karjalan Kovin competition. In the final Koski lost to Mikko Ojala in deadlift.

CrossFit had become the main thing for Koski. Towards the end of 2013 his everyday life started to build around the sport even more. Koski started to work at Rogue Europe’s warehouse, and began training with Rogue’s staff and Mikko Salo on the other side of the wall of CrossFit Pori, at CrossFit Varasto.

Learning from Salo

The winner of CrossFit Games 2009, Mikko Salo, had seen Koski and noticed his talent. When they started training together, gave Salo a few conditions. All training happens at CrossFit Varasto, and arriving late is not an option. A new phase had began in Koski’s training. Salo confirms the rumor according to which nobody spoke to Koski during the first six months, they just trained with high intensity. Mental toughness and testing is part of training. It’s about measuring if the newcomer has what it takes. Does he break, or does the stress make him stronger.

“Many break, but Jonne got strong. Everyone else couldn’t do it. We are not a social services, we are looking for tough guys. For regular training there are regular CrossFit gyms and regular methods.”

The young man had his hands full following Salo’s method. The days begun with long aerobic training early in the morning, evenings were spent practising strength and between there was a regular workday at the warehouse.

Salo noticed that Jonne got used to ‘training by feeling’ quickly. The idea is that training is planned only a day or two ahead. Of course there is a rough week schedule saying that two times a week there’s squats, but the schedule lives.

“Those who have weaknesses, have to have a tighter system. But when you don’t have them, training by feeling is a smarter approach.”

According to Salo’s view aerobic endurance is the cornerstone. On top of that basic strength levels must be increased to a level where the athlete can move 75-85 percent of his bodyweight easily. At that point the effectiveness is right. In addition to these the athlete needs to master gymnastics.

Koski’s aerobic capacity is huge and he’s a quick learner. According to Salo, Koski has also started to gain strength during the last 1,5 years.

“He also tends to perform well in competitions. Many athletes are the best in training, but suck at competitions. Jonne is a tough competitor.”

Mikko who?

CrossFit Varasto and Salo prepared Koski for the following year. In CrossFit Games Open 2014 Koski proceeded to Regionals easily. Before the final at Regionals it looked like Koski will take the podium. The event had gone well and also the last event included his strengths. A classic T-shirt was born.

At the warmup area, Koski’s team planned a little trick for the final. Mikko Salo coached Koski during the Regionals, and Koski being a newcomer it was still Salo that was posing with fans all weekend. Salo said that after the win, attention would shift and people would be asking “Mikko who?”.

The team found a Mikko Salo branded Rogue shirt somewhere, grabbed a marker and wrote those words on the back of the shirt.

Koski won the final wearing that shirt. CrossFit world’s attention was guaranteed.

First fail

After the Regionals it was time to get real again. Koski trained for the Games.

Preparing wasn’t going in the best possible way. There were different issues, and he couldn’t train at full effort. He traveled to the competition place a couple of days ahead. Performing in front of 27 000 people stressed him out. But Koski doesn’t have excuses.

“All I can say is that I sucked. I sucked at the events.”

On the second competition day, in Triple-3, Koski lagged behind. His self confidence dropped, he placed 42nd. After that, getting himself together was hard.

“I just wanted to get it done, the fire was gone.”

At the Games Koski underachieved, but also broke some personal records. He even came second in the second event, but it wasn’t comforting.

“I knew that I wouldn’t do very well, but I still wanted to be among the twenty best.”

The final placement was 32nd.

Practice, practice, practice

After the competition Koski returned in Finland, recovered for a while and got back to work. Weaknesses had to be eliminated. Competitive sports at the highest level require many kind of commitment. To get to the top, everyday life needs to be organized around training. You also need to train a lot, because CrossFit requires such diverse condition. CrossFit athletes need to be strong in every area.

Before, Koski wasn’t good enough in heavy lifts. Thanks to diligent training his deadlift maximum is 240 kilos.

Nowadays Koski makes his training plan himself with Salo – they compete with each other in training. Most of the time Koski trains six days a week, two times a day. The year is divided into basic condition training phase, preparatory phase and competitive phase. Regionals is the first goal of the year, and then it’s the Games if he gets that far.

During basic condition training phase Koski gains strength and aerobic capacity. Before the competitive phase he adds more metcons in the training plan and practices skills.

It’s said about Koski that he’s on top not only for his talent but because his body withstands huge amounts of training. On top of that, Koski is mentally mature. It shows when interviewing him – he gives calm, profound answers. There’s certainty in his views, and his results speak for themselves.

Even though Koski trains hard and a lot, he doesn’t really love it.

“Even the toughest guys want to quit, but the thing is that those who want to succeed, don’t quit. Most of the time it pisses off that everything doesn’t go as I would like to – that everything goes to shit. It’s hard to not think about what I’m doing wrong, when I’m in such bad shape, but then it’s only matter of attitude. Probably that feeling is related to that specific day, and the next day everything goes a lot better again.”

Koski doesn’t feel the need for a coach right now, he says he has a strong network of people surrounding him that helps whenever he needs something.

“I could call Mikko my coach, as he is always there in competitions and acts like a coach should. It’s a huge advantage. In the training phase we go back to being training buddies.”

Having a coach has also its problems, and it’s related to CrossFit being such a new sport. There hasn’t been enough studies on CrossFit training, and as a sport it’s also very hard to study, when you compare it to running for example.

“Swimming and running have their principles based on science. If you run 10 kilometers at a certain percent of your maximum heart rate, we know what it means. But nobody else knows how 150 wall balls have affected your body, when there have been other specific workouts before that.”

Towards top ten

The past year has been good for Koski. Regionals were a success. When this article will be published, Koski has already been in the US for a while, preparing for the Games.

Koski is full of strength. The young man who’s name refers to ‘a rapid’, a section of a river where water’s velocity and turbulence is higher, has made his way among the top athletes quickly. This time his goal is to finish among the 10 best CrossFit athletes in the world.

“All my records have improved. My running, rowing and all other ways I’ve tested my condition show that I’m ready. I’ve learned more about myself as an athlete, my performances are more effective and I know what’s coming.”

But what happens if there will be no success in competitions? Koski plans to have a full CrossFit athlete career, and possibly study. His interested in university studies in Stockholm, Sweden, with a major in sports science and coaching. The goal is to slowly move away from Pori. The city has been his home for all his life, and also many of his friends have moved away to do their studies or other things.

Mikko Salo gives his encouragement, having shared to him all his knowledge.

“After the Games it’s time for Jonne to go further. He won’t get anything more from Finland, his progress requires a step further.”

That’s Koski’s goal.

“Every year I aim to make as much progress as I can. Of course I seek to win and someday I would like to win as much as possible, which means winning the Games. But as long as I know that I’m making progress and I’ve given my all, I won’t be disappointed, even if I won’t win.”

If you don't know Jonne yet, you may want to read our previous interviews here and here.

WODconnect staff wishes Jonne the best luck to his first CrossFit Games!