Monday, March 14th 2016
AUF WIEDERSEHEN ANNA
This week’s open shone a light on something most CrossFitters experience at one point or another. That is, feeling like you will never “get there”. But we ask you to think back (days, weeks, months or a year) and think about how many times you’ve already said to yourself “I will never be able to do that”. And then you did. We’ve seen people Clean more than they ever imagined. Deadlifted. Snatched. Strung Doubles. Got upside down. Jumped on a box. The list is seemingly endless, yet we somehow push those victories aside and hone in on the few things we CAN’T do. Yet.
Most of our athletes have been CrossFitting for a year. OR LESS. We implore you to step back and see how far you’ve come in such a short time. Do you move better? Can you do things now you couldn’t do when you started? That’s progress! Stop trying to measure yourself against a specific skill or lift. Pull up an old WOD from when you started. Retest that. Look in Wodify at your Performance Card. You will see amazing things.
The Open is different than what we do everyday as the movements must be done as prescribed. Sure, there are scaled and RX versions, but there’s no variation or scales within each of those categories that “count” if you want to keep a true Open score. That is something NEW to most of us and it really pushes us outside our comfort zone. But it is SUPPOSED to!
You’ll need to remind yourself that the Open is not just a ‘global competition’, it is a measure of where you are at a moment in time. It is meant to show PROGRESS, not PERFECTION. Embrace the weakness and work on them! Finding new challenges should be exciting, not a frustration… and think about how sweet it will be when you accomplish this next goal (whatever that goal is).
Some movements are just REALLY challenging and take a LONG time to master. On a personal note, Brian and I have been CrossFitting for YEARS and only just got our first bar muscle up. We know it was exciting to see so many firsts on Friday, but we also saw a lot of frustration from those who didn’t get that chest to the bar or hit the bar muscle up. While we empathize, we want you to understand that it is NORMAL to take years to learn skills like that. Some of you just got your first pull ups (or dropped a band) or learned chest to bars in the last few weeks and put a lot of pressure on yourselves to hit the Open standards this week in BOTH scaled and RX. Revel in what you HAVE done… and remember back to when you thought even THAT wasn’t possible?!
So whatever your score is, be PROUD OF IT! We bet whatever you did (even if it was 10 reps of a snatch) was something you weren’t able to do when you walked through the door on your first day here.
One last reminder that scores need to be submitted by 8p Monday evening. To that end, you MUST go onto games.crossfit.com and login and submit your own score (and tiebreaker). You should have taken that bottom piece of the score card with your total reps and put that number in to officially submit your score (as well as if you did RX or scaled). You do NOT need to put Brian or Marina as judges (although you can). You can use your actual judge and we can validate it!
STRENGTH WOD
WOD
COACH’S TIP: Hold a solid pace on the rower today. Watch your average pace from round one and try to hold it.
Some of the Friday Night Lights Crew… even if you’re not doing the Open… COME!!!!
