A common observation I’ve heard many times from more seasoned athletes (read: older) at the gym is a recognition that getting back into shape or generally maintaining their strength, fitness, and physique seems to be much more challenging than it used to be when they were younger. As the saying in professional sports goes, “father time is undefeated.” While it would be great to have the recovery capacity and boundless energy of our early 20’s, we can still maintain very high levels of fitness and capacity as we age, it just takes a more thoughtful and consistent approach.  

Here’s a simple analogy – think of aging as an athlete like walking up a hill. When you’re younger, it’s essentially a flat road – easy going, minimal friction or effort required to get better. As you get older, the hill begins to get steeper with time. The marginal effort to accomplish your task or maintain your physical qualities (strength, mobility, cardiovascular endurance, etc.) goes up considerably. Staying fit simply requires more effort with each passing year. With that in mind, we’ll cover the significance of making fitness and movement a daily priority to ensure we can both age gracefully and kick ass for as long as possible along the way.

As we age, our bodies undergo natural changes that can impede our physical abilities. Muscle loss, hormonal fluctuations, and decreased mobility become common occurrences. However, the old saying "use it or lose it" holds true. A sedentary lifestyle can have severe consequences, including an increased risk of chronic diseases, loss of independence, and reduced overall quality of life. Thankfully, if we never stop practicing our hobbies – lifting weights, yoga, cycling, golf, swimming, etc., we can likely continue doing them indefinitely provided we adjust volume and intensity appropriately and can manage to minimize the chance of injury.

Making fitness and movement a daily habit is the cornerstone of aging gracefully. Regular exercise offers numerous benefits for everyone as they age. It improves strength, cardiovascular health, flexibility, cognitive function, energy levels, stress reduction, and mood. By committing to a daily fitness routine, we enhance our physical well-being and maintain our vitality for years to come. Lean into activities that you find enjoyable and therefore are more likely to be sustained over the long term. Similarly, bodies in motion tend to stay in motion, so the best solution to lifelong fitness is to never let yourself get out of shape.

I came across a profile of Don Wildman several years ago after reading a blog post by legendary big wave surfer Laird Hamilton. Don was a lifetime athlete and embraced hard training and broad ranging adventure sports well into his 80’s. In the profile about Don, he provides valuable insights into defying the feeling of getting old that we can all benefit from. He trains with (much) younger athletes, showing that age doesn't have to limit us. He also took up new physical pursuits well into his 60’s and beyond, not letting his age be a deterrent to doing hard and novel activities. By embracing new and novel sports, we expand our horizons and keep our bodies and minds agile. Find people to work out with that can safely push you and make you forget your age, and don't be afraid to step out of your comfort zone and try something new.

The two most important qualities that will determine the quality of how you age are your ability to maintain muscle mass and joint mobility. Strength training with a focus on compound, basic movement patterns, and incorporating daily mobility exercises to keep your hips, shoulder, and spine limber will keep you feeling young and capable. Getting strong is a gradual process, but the benefits are both wide ranging and long lasting. Similarly, actively working on improving your ability to squat deep, hip hinge, rotate, press overhead and more ensure your body will have access to everything you may ask of it. This means we need to prioritize lifting weights to be strong and muscular, while also moving through full ranges of motion as much as possible.

Embracing the uphill battle of aging is essential for our overall well-being. Remember, it's never too late to start; take inspiration from Don Wildman's fearless approach and apply that to your own goals and pursuits. By taking a smart approach, prioritizing long term consistency over short term intensity, we can age gracefully and thrive in the face of challenges. Commit to daily exercise and movement, explore new physical activities, and cultivate a mindset of growth. The hill may be steep, but with determination and commitment, we can continue to stay in the game for a very long time. There are few things with greater upside or more worthwhile to pursue, so what are you waiting for?

By: Marcos Hernandez

Learning a little at a time, over a long time, is the key to continuing improvement. How far would you be in your job if you still only knew what you showed up with on the first day? Or even after the first month? 

Parents, how many books/articles/classes did you learn from before you had your first kid? Did you talk to other people, looking for advice?

In your pocket sits a device capable of letting you find information about any topic you choose. There’s influencers on social media, there are online courses, books, articles, and videos… some content’s better than others, but all exist at your fingertips.

When it comes to exercise/healthy living, I’m comfortable claiming the coaches at CFSS have likely forgotten more about fitness than most people will ever learn. Have questions? Let us share some knowledge or point you in the right direction! 

Whatever you are interested about, I’m sure we can recommend a resource. Often times, the material we present in our in Elements classes is a small introduction about a given topic. Take foam rolling for example: we showed you a series of 3-5 moves that you can use to improve your soft tissue quality. But did you know—wait for it—there’s more! Any tightness/movement limitation can be addressed and improved prior to class with one of the tools on the shelves, but if we don’t know what you need help with, how can we share our knowledge?

Want to learn more about nutrition? There’s books/podcasts/articles for that.

What about improving recovery?  There are books/podcasts/articles for that too.

As coaches, we are resources for you and we also possess resources for you to learn from on your own. Similarly, we can let you know if something is worth trying out or a complete waste of your time.

For example: I recently read about taping one’s mouth shut before sleep. Now, I’m all for nasal breathing, but this seems like overkill (I’ll admit, I have yet to try it.) I don’t think it’s worth the tape it requires BUT if someone was hell-bent on trying it, do some more research on the legitimacy and give it a go myself, just so I could make an informed recommendation.

The point is, we have advice and content about all things exercise and lifestyle that you may be interested in. This is part of the reason we’ve started the Sunday Skill WOD  program, which looks like it will be sticking around. We wanted to give people a chance to come in and gain a deeper understanding of some of the more technical moves we do in CrossFit, without the usual class constraints. 

Now, I want to know: What are you interested in learning about? Is there a skill you would like to practice, a movement you want to get better at, or a lifestyle topic you want to know more about?

Save yourself some time, use our expertise, and let us steer you down the path to success. You’ll be glad you did!

By: Josh Dempsey 

Back in middle school, I had a math teacher that would constantly harp on the importance of using our calculators as a tool for a specific purpose, and not as a crutch we were dependent upon. In hindsight this was clearly smart advice, but at the time it was much more convenient to become expert at using the calculator to outsource any long form problem solving needs or critical thought. 

Let’s apply this same “tool, not a crutch” concept to some of the most commonly utilized pieces of workout gear in the gym: gymnastics grips, lifting belts, wrist wraps, and knee sleeves. Each one of these items has a specific intended purpose and benefits when used correctly. However, when used incorrectly or too frequently, an undesirable dependency can arise which can mask our weaknesses or limitations and also hold back long term progress.  

Gymnastics Grips: These are great for both practicing higher volumes of hanging gymnastics movements or in “grippy” WODs that feature lots of reps of pull ups, toes to bar, etc. Gymnastics grips create a buffer between the bar and your hand, which can help minimize or prevent callus tears. Many grips also provide a stickier gripping surface, improving your connection with the pull up bar. The problems arise when athletes start using grips any time their hands come into contact with the pull up bar, regardless of the workout or rep scheme. In order to have a truly strong and resilient grip, we need to condition our hands gradually over time. This is done by spending lots of time on the pull up bar sans grips doing hanging work, pull up variations, gymnastics swings, hanging ab-work, etc. Use the minimum amount of chalk to get the job done, and no more. Recognize when you simply need to take a little longer rest versus reaching for more chalk. Lastly, lets distinguish between using grips because our hands are beat up or the workout has high volume and when we are compensating for a weak grip that needs developing. Takeaway: you don’t need grips to touch a pull up bar; wear them occasionally, but develop comfort and capacity without them as well.

Weightlifting Belts: The primary purpose of a weightlifting belt is to help stabilize our spines during lifting by helping us create higher amounts of intra-abdominal pressure. Essentially we inflate our diaphragm like a balloon, which presses outwards in all directions against our belt. This facilitates tension and bracing in your core, which supports more powerful squatting, deadlifting, and more. The belt is useful when appropriately tightened (not too tight!), and the athlete understands how to breathe and brace to maximum effect. My general advice is to avoid using a belt unless we are lifting heavy (>80% of 1RM) or performing rep max tests (3RM, 5RM, etc.). Even still, it is helpful to understand and use the breathing techniques performed using a belt without a belt on. Wearing a belt too frequently and at inappropriate weights can mask a weak core or poor bracing strategies. Takeaway: breathe deep and brace hard on your warm up sets, and use the belt for that extra boost on your heaviest lifts. 

Wrist wraps & knee sleeves: These items have similar uses and functions – knee sleeves provide mild compression, aid in stability, as well as warmth for the joint; wrist wraps primarily provide compression, which stabilizes the joint and limits unwanted end range extension. Similar to a weightlifting belt, you should consider using either of these tools only on specific movements (heavy or high rep overhead lifts & squats, handstands, return from injury, etc.). We recommend wearing compression tights or sweatpants to keep your knees warm (especially in the cold weather months), as warm joints are happy joints. Save the knee sleeves for your heavy squats, deadlifts, and lunges. With that in mind, don’t wear knee sleeves to mask or mitigate knee pain. If you can’t squat without them, you probably shouldn’t be squatting at all, or at least until you can do it pain free. 

The same goes for the wrist wraps – make sure you are spending time performing regular wrist mobility (circles & rocking/stretching on the floor) before lifting while also keeping them off during your warm up sets to strengthen the muscles and connective tissue. Takeaway: don’t use a sleeve or wrap to mask a mobility / warm-up / warmth deficiency; take the time to loosen up, and keep your problem joints warm for better function. 

Remember: the durable, resilient athlete is always ready to perform and unlikely to miss time in the game or the gym. Why? Because they work on their weak points, listen to their bodies, and know how to use a tool for a task without letting it become a crutch or necessity. Challenge yourself as an athlete, even if it means taking a few steps back in the short term, to cultivate broader and more robust capability in the future. 

By: Marcos Hernandez

A new trend among athletes here has been an obsession with getting better at kipping pull ups and toes to bar. Extra bodyweight work is always a good thing but in order to get better there needs to be some thought behind the practice.

Recently, an athlete I was working with got frustrated because they couldn’t complete as many toes to bar in a row as they believed they should be able to do. When I asked them what cue they were focusing on in order to get to their goal number, they couldn’t tell me.

Notice: this person was trying to do more reps without trying anything different! They believed their existing mindset and cueing when it comes to toes to bar would work as long as they simply “showed up.”

So, with some guidance, the athlete took a cue (it was keeping their eyes on the wall ahead of them), and was able to get more consecutive toes to bar. SUCCESS!

But can you guess what happened next? This cue still didn’t work well enough to get them as many reps as they felt they should have (their goal number was higher than before), and they got frustrated when the number of toes to bar didn’t increase past a certain point.

The problem? They were stuck in the same thinking as before: hoping that doing the same thing, over and over, will produce different results. Anyone know the definition of insanity?

This fault in logic shows up everywhere in the gym: in bodyweight moves, where the rep count is king, and in lifting, where the weight on the bar reigns supreme. 

What I want everyone reading this to realize is that there has to be a constant revisiting of the basics, a never ending search for inefficiencies, and a relentless focus on trying small adjustments to find the thing that gets you more reps or weight. Simply put, the strategies you use to get your 1stpull up most certainly will not be the same ones used to get you 10 in a row.

There’s never a time in the gym when reps should be completed without an awareness of a specific cue or focus. This is what I mean by “repeatable reps.” Can you reproduce the same technique on two consecutive reps, or five, or 25? If so, coaches can take a look at what you're doing and find another aspect of the movement for you to focus on and refine. Over time, the mastery of different cues will produce a more quality movement pattern, and therefore more reps/weight/efficiency in training.

For those paying attention, the second cue that helped the athletes get past their barrier was squeezing the glutes while arching on the forward swing. But eventually this cue won’t work, and so it’s on to the next one… then on to the next. 

Now expand this concept of deliberate focus and specific intention to every movement and every lift. Attention to detail and improvement are never ending pursuits, and that’s the point.  

By: Marcos Hernandez

For the second time in 2019, it’s time for the CrossFit Open! Once a week, for the next five weeks, we will be hosting the workout on Saturday mornings.

Some of you have done the Open before and for some of you this is your first time. The points made on this post, even if you've heard them before, are things you should keep in mind with the addition of a potentially longer/harder/more complex workout once a week.

The first thing to keep in mind is the adjustment to your training schedule. If you plan on being here on Saturday mornings, take off Friday. This isn’t a suggestion or something to consider, rather a direct request that is in your best interest as an athlete. This means a full rest day, excluding soft tissue work and stretching. That way you can come in here and give the workout your best shot Saturday morning. This advice applies if you’re planning on doing the Open WOD on another day besides Saturday as well - take the day before as a rest.

Another benefit of the rest, in addition to making sure you are fresh for game day, is it gives any nagging issues a chance to heal. There are a lot of people who come in multiple times per week with dings and dents they are dealing with and we are happy to make modifications. But, with the Open, a rest day the day before the workout will keep you from re-aggravating an issue/injury or making it worse. If the announced workout might turn your minor issue into a large one then talk to a coach and we can help you decide the best course of action for that particular week. 

With regards to planning your normal week of workouts, little if any modification should be required outside of the Friday rest day. If you normally train 4+ days per week, hit 3-4 workouts between Monday – Thursday, take Friday off, then hit it hard on Saturday. Sunday can be a rest or active recovery day (hike / bike / jog / swim / yoga, etc.), ideally at a lower intensity and longer duration to help get you ready for the following week. Ultimately the Open should be treated essentially like just another workout, and you should still plan on hitting it hard during the week. Think of the weekly Open WODs as a quick test & snapshot of your current abilities and capacity at this time. Let’s use these workouts as a diagnostic tool, but not let their results massive influence our efforts and focus. 

On game day, there’s a good chance a movement will come up that you don’t have/didn’t practice. CrossFit Headquarters creates these workouts, we have no say in what shows up. What that means for you, when a move comes up you haven’t done before, is to take a take a look at the scaled workout and plan to give that your best effort. In the rare chance the movement is something you can learn quickly, then by all means try it out! But if not just remember, the scaled workouts exist for a reason. Don’t opt for a few reps of the Rx workout just to play the leaderboard. We are in here to get a good workout, not to cheat the system and shoot for a higher ranking.

Some other quick basics which are often overlooked but will make a definite impact: 

1. Get a good night’s rest the night before. In bed at a decent hour, shooting for 7-9 hours of sleep

2. Clean breakfast. The Saturday workout is at 9am, earlier than most people regularly train. Eat something that will be light and easy to digest, preferably earlier 1-2 hours before 

3. Drink plenty of water the day before, and get some electrolytes the morning of (Nuun tablets are a great option) 

4. If you need awhile to get loose, plan on arriving early so you can perform whatever additional soft tissue work & stretching you may need prior to the start of class  

Regardless of whether this is your 1st Open or 5th, these are all things you need to consider if you plan on coming in for the workouts. With these strategies at your fingertips, get ready to crush it come game time!

By: Josh Dempsey

One of most important attributes a coach should possess is the desire to continually learn and expand their base of knowledge and understanding. Secondarily, the coach must also be willing to seek out information and viewpoints that may challenge their current beliefs and biases. Simply seeking to reinforce one’s pre-existing training dogmas helps neither the coach nor the athletes they serve.
 
As a coach, I’ve been exposed to many ideas and people who have fundamentally altered my views on training, nutrition, corrective exercise, etc., and helped me to see the nuance required to effectively work with various populations of athletes. As such, our programs have continually evolved and improved over the years while still sticking to our core principles of crating well rounded, resilient individuals in a safe, sustainable environment.
 
This concept of open-mindedness and truth seeking also applies to you as an athlete. Are you willing to accept that what you believe or have done in the past may be in fact incorrect or ineffective for you at this stage of your life? The training, diet, and lifestyle strategies you employed at age 20 may not work so well at age 40. Additionally, just because you’ve always done X (insert behavior here), doesn’t mean it’s healthy, beneficial, or optimal. An easy example is diet- just because you drank milk when you were 10 years old doesn’t mean it still agrees with your current gut microbiome and digestive system. Similarly, if you’ve been unable to lose body-fat on your own, are you willing to try a potentially radical departure from your current way of eating a la Whole30 for a month? The only way to know if a particular dietary intervention is effective for you is actually trying it!
 
The mark of an intelligent person is their ability to form new opinions and beliefs when presented with new information, no matter how damaging to the ego it may be. Do not be the ideologue that blindly follows and doesn’t cast a critical eye at their behaviors and underlying beliefs. Have strong opinions, but also be willing to cast them away when necessary in order to grow as an individual.

Originally Posted 12 April 2017

By: Marcos Hernandez

The concept of training versus exercising is an important one to grasp, and you’ve been exposed to it in one form or another if you’ve come to CFSS for any length of time.

There’s an important distinction between 1) going for the leaderboard, technique be damned, and 2) winning the workout because that’s just how fast you are.

Take rowing for example. On any given day, it’s possible to crank the flywheel up to a high number, row with terrible, inefficient technique, and get ten calories. Does this strategy get you sweaty and tired? Yes. And you might be able to repeat the effort, provided it’s short enough.

But, if you focus on your technique and movement quality, and are able to generate the power that results in you going fast, well… that’s a whole different story. If we increase the distance/time/calories rowed, you’ll be able to handle it. Getting back onto the rower already tired? Not a problem. Going from the rower to another task, guess what? Still good too. Why? Because you focused first on how you move and allowed the speed to come secondary.

Another example that comes to mind is the Dumbbell Snatch. Sure, a lot of you could muscle snatch it during a WOD…. but are you getting better? Will your technique allow you to get more weight overhead in the future, or translate well when you’re in a more fatigued state? 

(This doesn’t have to be a rhetorical question, go ahead and say “no” to your screen.)

In order to do CrossFit for a long time, and keep getting better, you might have to ignore the leaderboard for a bit. Take the time to focus on being smooth, efficient, and let the speed come. Sure, there are times to double down on your effort and just get the work done. However, one thing we know for certain is this: making the tough grind the bulk of your training is a surefire way to spin your wheels and get nowhere in terms of achieving your goals. Don’t confuse tired and sweaty with fitter and stronger, or short term intensity with long term improvement!  

by: Marcos Hernandez

Newsflash: pain is a normal phenomenon and sometimes injuries happen. As an active human you might think you experience these sensations more than most, but just talk to any sedentary person and they’ll tell you they have their fair share of aches and pains too. 

The reality is that most of the small tweaks our clients deal with happen outside the gym. People feel great, are full of energy, and want to be active when they aren’t working out. So they play recreational sports, hike, bike, or spend the weekend doing yard work. In short, their “rest” days aren’t exactly restful. 

Then they wind up with some tweak or injury and stop coming to CrossFit.

Let me tell you now: Pain or Injury doesn’t have to mean you miss training.

In fact, it can be a chance to focus on a weakness. Often times it comes down to focusing on what you CAN do, not what you can’t do, an important mindset shift that will help you stay fit and active over the long term.

If you are injured don’t assume you have to stay out of the gym. Remember, the program we have written on the board is simply a template that can be modified as needed. As coaches we have the freedom and responsibility to keep you showing up, moving, and getting better. We pride ourselves on being able to come up with responsible training programs, which take injury considerations into account. 

However, we can’t do this if you stop attending! Chances are, you’re not spending your time away from the gym doing hours of PT & corrective exercises, or training your weaknesses. 

If your knee/foot is messed up, we’re hitting upper body.

If your shoulder is on the mend, guess who’s doing all the squats?

Plus, continuing to show up, exercising, and seeing your friends in class is good for your mental health. It won’t be so hard to get back to the gym post-injury if you’ve been here the whole time.

With literally countless movement & equipment options, there is always something we can do to help you get better. Even if it’s just focusing on mobility/body mechanics or a simple circuit of biking and rehab exercises, the skills you learn while injured will have a slingshot effect on your training progress. Say goodbye to plateaus and hello to PRs!

By: Josh Dempsey

“Last time I checked no one cares if the workout isn’t in your wheelhouse. Get to work.” – Chris Spealler 

There’s two schools of thought when it comes to checking the blog prior to coming to the gym to workout. Some people avoid looking at the upcoming workout entirely as it may give them anxiety knowing what they’ve got coming, or they may use it as an excuse to skip the gym that day because a workout looks too hard / too easy / isn’t something they enjoy or are good at. On the other hand are people that have to check the blog because knowing the workout and having time to process that information is way less stressful than being unprepared. 

Neither of these approaches are right or wrong as we all have our preferences. However, the issue that arises is when advanced knowledge of a workout affects our behavior and decision whether or not to come to class. The primary deterrent to your attendance on any given day should be external schedule conflicts and things generally out of your control, not your feelings towards a particular WOD. 

If our goal is to truly get fitter and more well rounded as athletes, we can’t simply show up on heavy, barbell strength oriented days and be conspicuously absent on interval rowing or longer, bodyweight and running intensive days. You’re doing yourself a disservice both mentally and physically by avoiding putting ourselves in situations where we are going to struggle and be challenged. To think of it another way – how can you possibly hope to improve at a particular movement or type of workout if you never allow yourself the time to practice at it? It’s okay to have things you enjoy and things you don’t, but having preferences is very different than having limitations and gaps in your abilities. 

Lastly, I’ll remind you that some of the best, most strenuous workouts are deceptively “simple” on paper. It’s easy to misjudge or dismiss a workout before you do it when it might be exactly what you needed that day. Be sure to also avoid the trap of “I could do that at home, so I’ll skip today” in reference to an interval running or bodyweight intensive workout, for example. From my experience, I’ll almost guarantee you won’t workout at home, and if you do, it certainly won’t be to the same standard or intensity level you can achieve here at the gym. If you want to adopt a growth mindset, tell yourself the following and stick with it: I’ll do whatever is thrown my way to the best of my ability, no complaints, because that’s what it takes to continue to improve over the long haul.  

“You don’t need harder workouts. You need to go harder in your workouts.” – Tom Hackenbruck

 As coaches, a common refrain we hear from clients goes something like this, “I feel like I’m not getting pushed enough in class / I’m not improving as fast as I’d like to / I feel like I need a harder workout.” These are of course valid concerns, as seeing progress is one of the most appealing aspects of doing CrossFit. With so many different movements and workout types, it’s not to continually see improvement by simple virtue of showing up. However, there inevitably comes a time when all those newbie gains grind to a halt, and PR’s are harder to come by. When this happens, how do we continue to improve?
 
All things being equal, intensity is the independent variable that determines your rate of progress in the gym. With that in mind, in order to continue to progress towards your fitness goals, you should aim to gradually ratchet up how hard you are pushing yourself in a given workout or workouts in general. Another, seemingly contradictory, fitness truism is the concept that long-term consistency will always trump short intensity. While this is accurate, it’s worth noting that this concept only works when applied to appropriate training methods done with quality technique and effort. If you are consistently doing pointless exercises with mediocre effort, your results will reflect that. Ultimately, we are looking for a combination of these two principles to see long-term improvement. Yes, you need to regularly push yourself hard, especially on days you are feeling good. You also need to take a wider view and recognize that minimum exercise volumes and loads must be met in order to maintain and build your fitness.
 
Broadly speaking, folks fall short in one of the following two areas: either they aren’t training hard enough when they come to the gym, or they aren’t training frequently enough to take their fitness up a notch. With that in mind, your lack of intensity has nothing to do with whether or not you are doing the L1 or L2 workout that day. In general, L1 features less technical movements than L2, and is geared more towards challenging your work capacity than your ability to execute higher order movements when fatigued. An L1 “AMRAP”, for example, places no upper limits on your ability to get out of your comfort zone and exhaust yourself. The movements may be “simple”, but the workout certainly isn’t “easy”. In fact, it’s extremely common to see people who have marginal ability on an L2 movement, say pull-ups, perform the L2 workout and perform poorly as a result. They wanted to do the “harder” workout, despite the fact that L1 would have been a much more appropriate and challenging workout given their abilities. The distinction between L1 & L2 becomes much easier to comprehend if you view them on a continuum from less to more technical instead of easier and harder. Instead of attempting to simply survive the L2 workout, strive to dominate the L1 on a consistent basis. Remember, the difficultly of a workout is almost entirely a factor of the effort you put into it.
 
How do we consistently push ourselves harder? First, keep a training log. If we deadlift every week, and you don’t know what you did last time we deadlifted, how can we possibly improve upon our past performances? Top performers know their numbers and keep training logs. Strive to increase the weights you are lifting in WODs, reduce the amount of rest you allow yourself between movements in a circuit, and raise your level of expectations regarding your performance of a particular workout. If you think a workout is too easy, the more likely culprit is your weight selection, pacing, and effort. Before you come complaining to us coaches, make sure you’ve taken care of those variables first.
 

CrossFit, like all worthwhile pursuits, takes time and sustained effort to improve at. The athletic pedigree, injury history, genetics, and training background you bring to the table will certainly play a large role in the trajectory of your learning curve as well. No matter where you fall on the continuum of these parameters, the master key to long-term success is “coachability”. Why is coachability so important? Because of the impact it has on so many other attributes impacting your athletic development.
 
Coachability is the willingness to listen, be corrected, learn, and to act on that correction. The 2 variables that most determine your coachability as an athlete are effort and attitude. In any situation, you are always in control of these two things, and should strive to optimize them. Effort isn’t about the leaderboard or your score; it’s about working hard, embracing discomfort, and genuinely giving your best effort. Coaches notice and will always reward hard work and sweat equity in the weight room. Attitude is about staying positive, being open-minded when it comes to feedback, and willing to adjust your technique and approach in the pursuit of improved execution and performance. Being a coachable athlete ultimately is a choice you make that is determined by your mindset. In order to make the most of your time in the gym, you need to trust in the advice and judgment of your coaches, stay present and engaged, and work hard.
 
Inherent in the coach-athlete relationship is a division of labor: the coaches job is to coach, the athletes job is be an athlete and train. As coaches, we are concerned with the long-term development of the individual, from novice to seasoned CrossFit athlete. Getting good at CrossFit and all the various disciplines involved takes months and years, not days and weeks. There are no shortcuts to learning the nuances of kettlebell exercises, basic gymnastics, barbell lifts, etc., only countless repetitions. It is easy to fall prey to the idea that we are unique and able to skip the fundamentals, jump from the boring “basics” to the more novel complex lifts that they see more experienced athletes perform. The flaw in logic here is that they didn’t see the countless number of workouts the advanced athlete performed in order to earn the privilege to tackle the more advanced movements.
 
With all this in mind, it is essential that you play an active role in your pursuit of improved fitness, health, and development. As the Danish proverb goes, “he who is afraid to ask is ashamed of learning.” Ask questions, be inquisitive, experiment, and rely on the advice and guidance of individuals that are more experienced and accomplished than yourself in the areas you seek to improve upon. If you do that, and are willing to put in the work, success will take care of itself!

By: Josh Dempsey

The whiteboard tells an incomplete story when it comes to workout performance. Think of the whiteboard simply as a scoreboard:
• What level did you do?
• What was your time / score?
• How many rounds did you miss?
• How much weight did you lift?
 
While these are useful bits of information, they are purely objective, quantitative measures of performance and output. What they fail to capture are all the subtle, subjective, and qualitative aspects of a training session that can’t be conveyed by a score. How you deadlift is more important than how much you deadlift. This can easily get overlooked when chasing a particular score on the leaderboard. Constantly pursuing higher intensity levels as movement efficiency and quality erode is foolish at best, and injurious at worst. Luckily, there are other ways we can measure workout quality and improvement that are both safe in the short term, and sustainable in the long.
 
Shift your focus to moving with intent each time you set foot in the gym. Moving with intent means moving deliberately, purposefully, and with appropriate aggression or control, depending on what is required at that time. Intent means conscious thought as to how you approached the barbell and set yourself into position to perform a heavy (or light) deadlift. Where do you place your feet? Your hands? What is your breathing / tensioning strategy? What is your desired bar path / body proximity once you start pulling? How mentally aroused and aggressive do you need to be at this particular weight? These are just but a few thoughts that may run through your head when you shift your focus to moving with intent. Don’t simply go through the motions as you perform your warm-up and working sets; be present and concentrate on your execution in all phases of the lift so that you can steadily improve your technique, rep by rep.
 
Generally speaking, everyone that lifts wants to lift heavier weights over time. However, not everyone understands the intertwined nature of precise, flawless technique and lifting progressively heavier weights. One cannot exist without the other. This same concept applies to conditioning workouts as well – your ability to maintain a high output during a WOD is largely going to be determined by your efficiency in each individual movement component of said workout. Additionally, you cannot hope to achieve the full benefits of any exercise (the real benefit of training), if you don’t perform the exercise with the right intent. A couple examples: picking up a slam ball slowly, then passively dropping it to the ground using all arms on a ball slam vs. ripping the ball overhead fluidly, then slamming it into the ground like you are trying to crack a hard coconut on the ground. Burpees performed by collapsing on the floor, then sprawling back to your feet haphazardly vs. a controlled descent to the floor, hopping back to ones feet where they started, all the while occupying no more space than one would use to perform a push up. A kettlebell swing with excessive layback and soft knees vs. a swing that finishes with powerful hip extension, knees locked, torso vertical, arms long and kettlebell projected to chest height. While both examples may constitute a rep, they are not created equal.
 
The leaderboard is a great motivator and useful tool for gauging performance. However, a “fast” score that subjectively looked like a slow moving car crash from start to finish is not enviable, desirable, nor more impressive than a slower score performed within the margins of quality technique, executed with a sense of purposefulness. Always strive to move through full ranges of motion, rest when you cannot, and don’t forget that more isn’t always better, only better is better. Raise your personal standards for movement quality and always remember, the standard doesn’t get tired even if you are.