Looking Forward

This weekend marks the last of the five open wods.  Throughout the CrossFit open, we have seen a variety of movements from the simple burpee to the complex snatch.  Going into any CrossFit competition, every athlete will have his or her own strengths and weaknesses.   Some have the gas tank to go hard in long wods, while others have the strength or are proficient at skills and technique.

If you want to be great at CrossFit, you can’t be a one-trick pony.  You cannot rely on strength or endurance alone.  Sure it might carry you through a few workouts, but just as CrossFit always does, they will find your weakness(es) and expose them during a workout.

This happens to most, if not all CrossFit athletes.  Everyone has something that they need to work on.  It may seem overwhelming, especially as a beginner when there are several different skills, lifts, and movements that you are trying to learn.   You may feel like you will never string double unders together, get a muscle up, or learn how to drop under a snatch, but you will with the right attitude and hard work.  By tacking these one at a time, you will begin to master them.

Often we like to focus our training on our strengths.  It’s a lot more fun to do a wod with movements we are good at.  So when a wod pops up in the programming with movements we like, we have no problem getting to the gym to attack the wod, but what is your attitude when a wod with your weaknesses or a movement you don’t like appears in the programming?

Working on weaknesses can be very frustrating.   No one likes to fail over and over again, we would rather excel at movements we like and are good at.  However, spending time on our weaknesses is exactly what we need to do to improve.

After watching our athletes compete in the open there are a wide variety of improvements we can all make, and they are different for each one of us.  For some, time needs to be devoted to technique and efficiency in the lifts, for others it’s skill work like double unders, for some it’s strength, and others it’s endurance.   Devoting a little time every day to work on your weaknesses can go a long way.  It can be frustrating, but if you stick with it you will improve.  Coaches and other athletes at the gym can give you pointers.   If you put the time in, it will pay off!

Years ago at the Southwest Fitness Throwdown, Matt Booth struggled with his double unders.  So how is it that he is so good at them now?  He put EXTRA time in every day working on them and now he would no longer consider them his weakness.   For some of us it may only take a few weeks of work to master a skill, for others it may take longer.   You will get frustrated at times, but in the end the hard work will pay off.

So if this year’s open exposed a weakness or two (or three) for you, start approaching them with a positive attitude and devote extra time to working on them.  The coaches are always here to help, give pointers, or give you direction on how to attack these skills.  Use this competition for your personal growth as an athlete and next year come back stronger, faster, and more technically proficient!