I followed HWPO Flagship 1.0 for two years. Flagship 2.0 is out now so maybe this is irrelevant. I didn’t do a good job of tracking progress so most of this will be anecdotal, take it for what you will.
TLDR: Strength wise, depending on where you are starting, you wont make much progress. You will get into very good shape cardio wise. In the end unless you are prohibitively week, you will crush traditional Crossfit metcons.
I became an absolute animal cardio wise. The programming has a ton of time on machines getting into shape. When I started, metcons would be challenging because I would be gassed and couldn’t breath. When peaking during the programming, metcons were challenging because I didn’t have the capacity yet to do such large sets unbroken. As someone who has never been in exceptional shape, it was incredibly fun to feel like that and I am so happy to know that level of fitness is achievable.
One might see this as a negative, but as someone who always just wanted more, this programming quenched that thirst. I would be very tired by the end and had enough. If you are someone who always wants to do a bit extra and is always winging it without a plan, Flagship will give you plenty and it will at least be structured so theres a chance you will be progressing.
You will get very good at Crossfit. I would guess if you are even middle of the pack at your gym in terms of times on true metcons, doing Flagship for a year will make you one of the top, if not the top amateur competitor at your gym. I remember doing a local comp (a small one relatively) in the Rx devision after one year and it was staggering how much me and my workout partner stood out cardio and metcon wise.
This is the big one for me and the reason why I am no longer doing Flagship. For two years I was hitting numbers. There were periods of high consistency, and low consistency (holidays, work travel etc). If I had to guess out of the seven phases I completed, only two of them had real inconsistency where I had to take more than one week off and fully missed lifting sessions. In the middle, after three phases and no real PRs I took a hard look at my diet. I started weighing myself every single day, tracking calories, weighing food, and cooking at home. I really tried to trust the programming here and even asked for advice in the community. In the end though, I am within 5-10% of the max numbers I had when I started.
At this point, I honestly don’t think its possible to achieve above average strength doing Flagship (without extra supplements). I don’t know enough about programming myself to say what the problem is, maybe its just too much overall volume. What I have theorized is the programming is affected by HWPO’s point of view. Matt was already a top tier strength athlete when starting Crossfit, of course it would not be his priority and he has even stated as such. If the programming is modeled off of what he did, it would be maintenance at best. Jake (who I think did most of the programming) is also already strong. I remember a post from him “not feeling that great so went off RPE” and hitting mid-high 300’s for a back squat. Who knows what he was doing beforehand but again, strength for the head coach is also probably not a priority.
On top of all that, in all my time checking the community posts, I would never really see anyone anyone discussing huge or consistent PR’s on the strength side. I know its not the focus of the program entirely and I did make gains elsewhere but by the end, it almost felt like the strength aspect was neglected (despite doing 2-3 lifts 5 days a week). I would also argue that a program designed to take you from casual to amateur competitor should have a huge emphasis on strength for long portions of it.
This almost made me quit multiple times. Maybe its changed in the past month or so since I have unsubscribed but for two years I would see the same questions over and over popping up in the community. They have no written information on workout intentions and you only might get lucky that someone states what it is in the day’s video (which also was annoying, have fun watching a 15 min video when you already have ~2 hours committed in the gym). It boggled my mind why the HWPO staff would waste their time and not just start editing the old workouts to have more information with FAQs or simply start an FAQ in the community.
The application was also heavily underutilized. Amongst other things, the paces for some cardio workouts would be written in (ex: row 2 min @ 10k pace) instead of automatically calculated based on PRs you have. This one was infuriating because some workouts would have it, others didn’t. The app was fully capable! What is going on?
The phases are also a complete mystery for some reason. It was asked so many times and they would write out a few bullets for each one. By the time I left they wouldn’t even state the intention but rather what days you will go for PRs and you should infer the intention of the phase based on that. Imagine you are time constrained and cant do all the programming for the day. Do you hit the lifts? maybe its a cardio based phase so its more important to hit the metcons. Who knows?
It amazed me how much time they wasted answering the same questions over and over and continue to leave some people in the dark.
You will be spending ~2 hours in the gym actually working out. Outside of the gym though it takes a big commitment.
There is too much volume in the actual programming to accommodate really anything else. You aren’t going to want to be playing recreational sport or going on hikes. Even a long walk might be too much depending on the point in training.
Recovery is also going to need to take priority. If I neglected mobility work for just a couple of days even I could feel the difference. Anytime my diet deviated from the norm or if I had poor sleep was all very apparent when following Flagship.
In the end I didn’t mind this part, but it might be extreme for some people even if they are ok with the time in the gym.
I think if I go do something else and get a 405+ back squat, and wanted to get back into Crossfit then I would. Otherwise its quite a lot of extra volume as a maintenance/conditioning program.