By: Andrew Dunavent
So you have all hopefully noticed the start of our new competition class on Sundays at 10:00am, but most of you are probably curious as to how it differs from the classes during the week. Through years of competition Clint and I are on the same page that competition draws on three different aspects of an individual, SKILL, STRENGTH, and WORK CAPACITY. In any given competition there will be workouts with muscle ups or chest to bar pull-ups, a max lift and then some sort of chipper that has become what seems like the gold standard. Clint and I also completely agree that the most important of the three aspects is SKILL. With skill, better movement is developed, more power is developed and efficiency is achieved. Looking at ongoing competitions and the athletes who win them, it is never the strongest or the biggest workhorse out there; it is the most skillful. When it is boiled down to the fact of the matter, we want to exert the least amount of energy to do a given task.
With the new competition class, we aim to emphasize the importance of quality of movement and skill building. This is where the competition class differs from the classes during the week. Weekly classes have am emphasis on health and fitness as a whole, whereas the competition class will focus mainly on movement and skill development. As a result, it may come across as not as fun or much more challenging. Sure you have muscle ups, but do you have proper muscle ups, why do you always fail at three when your body is capable of doing 10? The answer is skill and movement, which is the key to competition. Increasing skill is one of the most frustrating things we can do in a gym because it is so much more than a physical thing; it takes mindset too.
We aim to increase each and everybody’s skill but it takes two things. First thing is a knowledgeable coach who cannot only explain the how and why of each aspect of the movement, but also a coach who can demonstrate the movement and support each and every athlete through the learning process. The second thing is an attitude willing to embrace the fact that it may not be easy or fun at all times working on skills and improving skill. We have brought the first thing to the table and it is up to you to bring the other. This class is open for all gym members; there is no such thing as somebody who is not ready to get better. We believe that every athlete can benefit from this class and hope to see the faces of those who have competed, want to prepare for their first competition, and those who just want to learn new things for the heck of it.
The competition class will not be just skill building either. As always, we will ensure that you walk out of the gym nice and sweaty with the feeling that something was achieved by a great WOD to bring it all home. The WODs however will also have a slightly different feel than most of you may be used to. When training to compete, one of the best things I ever learned from one of my first coaches was that hard does not mean beneficial. Just because a workout destroys your butt and makes you lay on the ground for 10 minutes afterward does not mean it was a workout that prepares you that much more for competition. Now that is not to say that the WODs will be easy because there will be some workouts that will make you question life as we know it, but there will also be come workouts that have a skill and well thought out plan to them that may be hidden as you sit there and can keep a smile during the workout.
In addition, it is a fun opportunity to have athletes who normally workout a different times of the day to come together, mingle and push each other to set new limits and help each other improve along side of the Outlier family.