Comparisons, Strategizing and Learning To Perform

Comparisons, Strategizing and Learning To Perform
Written by Tino Marini

“What is a good time for this workout?”
“How should I break up my reps?”

These are some of the most commonly asked questions we get from athletes and members of the online community when it comes to hitting conditioning pieces or benchmark workouts.

As both an athlete and coach I completely understand someone’s desire to have a goal for a workout and a time to chase. One problem which arises is that we program for such an array of athletes with varied skill levels, that posting times to beat may have the complete opposite effect.

Look at it this way, we recently re-tested 15.3; if we told you that the minimum standard for a competitive athlete was 471 reps for females and 500 reps for males would that have helped you? How would you have felt if you finished with 405 reps? Would you have achieved a better score if you had known what others were getting, and if so, why? Your goal in each session is to put forth your best effort, and it is the reason why we love Mahatma Gandhi’s quote – “Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.”

This principle applies to all levels of athlete, from those who are at the top of the sport, to those who have just started. Those at the top of the sport rarely have anyone or any time that can push them in the gym. It’s always tempting to compare yourself to others, but if you have to look outside of yourself for motivation then this is a problem that you need to be aware of and prepared to address. The best athletes in their sport will always be intrinsically motivated to be at THEIR best.

Your results in training will be progressive, and as you gain experience you will be able to set targets and goals based on your own abilities – not against the rest of the field. You should be motivated to beat your previous performances, which is a great indicator of how far you have come.

Part of training, is learning about your own abilities, how quickly you can go, and how long something should take. If you’re terrible at that now, we want to make a goal for you to learn how to view a workout or event as an athlete and know how long it would take you, where you would push, where you would gather yourself, etc…. That will come with experience in the sport. Most of my veteran athletes can tell you down to within 10-20 seconds how long a workout will take them because they know roughly their seconds per rep and can account for how quickly they will drop off in a multi-round workout.

We are not big fans of strategizing workouts in training. This is your time to push and learn about yourself. If you go into a training session with a planned strategy of when to rest and when to go unbroken, you’re no longer listening to your body and learning how to “feel” those things.

As your abilities change, so too will your strategies. The importance of “feeling” your way through a workout – understanding when you need a strategic break to avoid redlining or muscle failure – is that it allows for you to adjust on the fly. Let’s use the previous example of 15.3. Let’s say that in the 2014 Open you performed it and decided to take strategic breaks of 4/3 on the muscle-ups, 20/10/10/10 on the wall ball shots and 50/25/25 on the double-unders. In the 2015 re-test with another year of good training under your belt we would hope that you had improved in all aspects of the workout. Your gymnastics are better, and now at any point in time you can jump up and perform 7 muscle-ups unbroken, your max rep unbroken wall ball shots is 100 and double-unders are now a calm station rather than something that spikes your heart rate. We would presume that you are more fit and more prepared to post a better score, which would probably mean that your previous strategy was no longer the best option for you. From working with some of the best in the sport, we can tell you that these athletes do not have set, strategic rep strategies. They stay on until they “feel” that point to which they are going to redline and then take a break. Their sets are often broken at random reps such as 23, 42, 61 reps, etc…, and rarely at a round number. Unless a specific event calls for a set scheme (like having to move the barbell every 10 reps at a regional event), the best athletes are attacking it by feel.

Training is all about learning your body’s capabilities, testing your limits and enjoying the process. We think it’s important that you understand our training philosophy and why we want you to push as hard as possible in your training sessions. We want you all, as athletes, to feel as well-prepared to tackle any known or unknown event. This was the basis of CrossFit, and is still the basis of the CrossFit Games. Our athletes don’t know what events are coming, and they don’t know how long the event might be. They have to go by feel to achieve their best performance. We can best prepare you for that by helping you learn about your body and your capabilities in training, learning from that, and then setting strategies when the competition events are known.

I hope this helps explain a bit about why we like things done a certain way. If you have any questions or comments, please let us know below and we will answer to the best of our ability.