To Wod or to Rest?
I see a lot of athletes in Precision day and in and day out putting in a ton of work. It is inspiring to see so many people have the passion to be great. It is difficult for the newer crossfitter to see some of the more experienced crossfitters at an incredibly high level and wonder why they are not there yet. Let’s just say this… it takes time. It takes time to be great at anything. You can’t get caught up in feeling like you have to train every day to get there better faster. That is not how the body works. If anything you will over train and get burnt out. Here are a few steps to understand:
Listen to your body
Don’t get caught up in the 3 day on 1 day off attitude. This is the work/rest days Crossfit created when the program just began and I think people read too much into and don’t just listen to their body yelling at them to stop. At Precision we lift and we lift a lot. The basis of our program will always be strength. We believe in building stronger people/athletes and the rest will fall into place. We work on skill and truly get better at basic movement every day. But in order to get strong you can’t get caught up in lifting every day and doing every workout in site to get better. You need to understand to build your strength you must rest. When you can hardly walk in the morning and you drag yourself to the gym and do a workout anyway, you’re not getting better. If anything you are decelerating the process. The body repairs and strengthens itself in the time between workouts, and continuous training can actually weaken the strongest athletes. Recovery days are the only way possible to restore muscle tissue breakdown to make you stronger. It is ok to take two days off; it is ok to only workout one day and need a rest day the day after. Listen to how your body feels. You should never be in perpetual soreness. Every now and then take the week off of lifting if you can’t catch up on feeling “normal”. Knowing your body is the first step. I used to have the “train at all costs” mentality and it slowed my strength gains way down and I wasn’t as good because of it.
Let injuries heal
With the amount of training we do it is easy to get small tweaks here and there or have an old injury come back because you are using more muscles than you ever have. It is beyond important to be healthy, not only to live a healthy life but especially in competition. Let those small nagging injuries get better. The more you do, the longer it will take. Don’t be too proud to scale/change a movement that may reactivate an injury or make it elongate the healing process. We are in this for the long haul and it is important to see the bigger picture as opposed to being a badass for that one day in the gym and being out of commission for a month because of it. Be smart.
Volume
Understand the volume that we are doing in the gym. As random as it may seem, there is a plan. Know how your body reacts to high rep squat workouts, high rep pressing workouts, running, rowing, gymnastics, etc. Keep a log if necessary. Start to understand how you feel after a ton of shoulders and legs. Start to understand your threshold per week where if you do one more rep you will be out of commission.
There is a huge learning curve in crossfit and everyone is different. It is not only learning movements but it is learning how your body reacts to them. In Crossfit when we undergo the stress of physical exercise, your body adapts and becomes more efficient. It’s just like learning any new skill; at first it’s difficult, but over time it becomes second nature. Once you adapt to a given stress, you require additional stress to continue to make progress. The only way to adapt to this stress is repetition and rest. Keep up the great work PC. Let’s work smarter not harder.
– Daniel Tromello
WARM UP:
4 x 500 M. Row
*On sets 2-4, Men try and maintain a 1:38-1:43 pace. Women 1:45-1:50. Do the best you can and have fun!!
Rest 1 Min.
Then: 5 Min. of Shoulder and Hip Mobility
SKILL:
3 x 5 Hollow Rock to Superman
LIFT:
Front Squat
4 @ 60%
4 @ 70%
2 x 3 @ 85%
WOD:
“QUICKSILVER”
100 Double Unders
Then:
2 Rounds
30 Wall Ball (20/16) (16/14) (14/10) (10/6)
30 Burpees
30 KB Swings (70/53) (53/44) (44/35) (35/26)
POST WOD:
Hip and shoulder Mobility
