We are two weeks in the CrossFit open and lots of people have had their dose of achieving movements or breaking through barriers. The first week brought us dumbbell snatches at a weight that most people were not use to using. I had lots of discussions with people about how it was a better idea to go for RX and use the prescribed weight rather than scaling. Getting people to overcome their fear of height and use the full size box and stick to jumps and not stepping up on the box. The second week the workout was a bit more technical. Athletes had to work through dumbbell lunges, toes to bar and dumbbell power cleans. After two rounds of the the toes to bar you had to fight for bar muscle ups. Whether it was the toes to bar, the dumbbell weight for lunges, or the muscle ups… athletes had to decide to fight with movements they typically would shy away from or go slow and fight for good reps. Today for this weeks write up I want to share the mindset and thoughts behind making the decision to have someone go the the full RX rather than scale down and maybe get more “points or a better workout.”
One of the key things that I keep in mind and try to explain when we are in the open and I am talking with people at the gym is that the CrossFit Open is a test of your fitness. When you look at the five weeks of the open as a test versus 5 weeks of “workouts” your approach changes a little bit. In traditional sports such as track and field or even team sports like football or baseball. In all of those other sports, it is well known that they take lots of time in training, running drills, practicing different techniques. Many of these sports have a larger “off-season” then they actually have as “in-season.” For sports like weightlifting the elite competitor may only “compete” in 2-3 events throughout a year. In the weightlifters case, they train year round to ideally complete 6-9 clean and jerks and 6-9 snatches. If you look at a track and field sprinter. They don’t do max effort sprints all year round. They work off percentages and do training to build and strengthen so that when they are in front of a stadium at a large venue they can go full tilt and the body can truly test what their training has been able to do to them. With that in mind, think of the open in a similar fashion.
We know that most all of us are not world class athletes training to make it to the games. The programming that we have at Outlier is actually geared to prep and build us up to make us the best possible for the open. We want everyone to have as much skill, cardio and strength possible. When HQ releases a “workout” for the open, think of it as a test for where you are at currently, not just another workout. Looking at the last workout we just did with the toes to bar and muscle ups. There was a lot of people that struggle with legit toes to bar but have the ability to do them. I encouraged those people to do the workout RX’d and sprint the lunges and cleans and just try their best to get through the toes to bar as quickly as possible. If/when they made it to the muscle ups, they just got to relax. Typically these are people that in a standard class setting would attempt toes to bar but let reps that don’t actually make contact with the bar count as “good reps.” For them this was a growth moment of being held to better standards. Even though they knew muscle ups wouldn’t be possible, pushing through the other difficult movements was their test. Of course they could have done the scaled version and “got a better workout” and got “more points” but if you have the ability to do RX’d then I would say push for RX and ride the struggle bus all the way home. You will have lots of other workouts this year to get more reps and get your sweat on. Remember this is where you see what you got!
Let’s take a slight tangent away from the CrossFit Open and compare how a competition like our Summer Smackdown can be assessed. When we are programming for our competitions we aim to find an ever so terrible middle ground of a test as well as an event the truly stress’ the body with a solid “workout.” We make sure to have each event offer ample time to get your sweat pumping and also test where your fitness is at. When people are trying to decide which category to enroll in, I typically will push people to jump to the higher category and fight not to be last. This is as long as the athlete has ample experience with the skill/strength level required for the wods. If you know you can hit the weights and complete the movements that is being asked, swing for the fences and go for RX’d, so long as you will be able to move. The winners of the spirit of the games award at our last competition are great examples of this. In the heavy thruster workout that we had, the clean portion of that wod was obviously a very challenging portion. They had to take time to rest between reps and do the thrusters one at a time. They did miss reps a few times but they pushed on and showed they could hold their own on the competition floor!
When Castro announces this week’s torture train for us, look at it and figure out if you can RX it not by whether the scaled will be a better “workout” but by whether or not you do have the potential to tally up reps with maybe a few no reps in the mix with the harder skills and heavier weights!
The struggle bus is a lot more fun when it’s a sold out ride!
Coach P