Coach’s Blog

“Opportunity does not waste time with those who are unprepared.”
― Idowu Koyenikan
The first CrossFit Open workout is now just a couple days away.  Now is not the time to try to “ramp up” our strength or endurance in order to do well in a competitive environment — all the work that you have been doing in the past few months has gotten you to the level you are at, and now the test is here.  What we can do now though is make sure that our bodies and minds are well-primed and focused.  What I am talking about here is Pre-event Recovery.
In order to feel ready for whatever workout might come our way, the first thing to think about is minimizing any aches and pains you might be experiencing.  Over the next few days, do your mobility work in the gym and at home, redoubling your focus on any trouble areas that you have.
Nagging knee pain can be addressed with staying away from high range-of-motion and impact activities (running, jumping, squatting) leading up to the event, as well as using ice (for joint swelling or stiffness), heat (for muscle strains or tightness), and smashing/stretching around that area.  Do not smash with a roller or lacrosse ball directly on any strained muscles, but work on surrounding muscle groups that may be tight and pulling on your pain points.
If you’re feeling good right now, that’s great!  Stay that way by minimizing intensity in your workouts when you come to class.  “Going through the motions” is a good way to stay loose, which might include scaling back loads in weightlifting movements, jogging instead of sprinting, and generally keeping your heart rate at a manageable level.
Right now is also a great time to refocus on hydration and sleep habits.  Start drinking a couple more glasses of water with each meal, and stay away from alcohol and excess caffeine which will dehydrate you.  Waiting until gameday to focus on hydration may be a bit too late, and your performance will suffer.
Get to bed a little bit earlier, and think about solid bedtime habits that will allow you to fall asleep more quickly and enjoy a good night’s rest.  Turn off your screens an hour before bedtime — maybe read a book rather than watching a TV show — that always puts me out quickly!
To foster a positive mental attitude leading up to the workout, practice positivity and visualization when you wake up in the morning and before you go to bed at night.
In the morning, think about one thing that you are grateful for, and one thing you are excited about doing today.  Then spend 5 minutes breathing deeply (5 count in, 5 count out), and visualizing yourself learning what the workout is, creating a solid plan of attack, and then crushing it!  Think about the good feeling of finishing the workout having given it your all.
At night, recap your day in terms of all the good things that happened, and if anything didn’t go your way, pull the lesson out of it and think about how you could respond better next time.  That will frame the experience in a positive way, and you’ll go to sleep without negativity looming in your mind.
Treat yourself like an athlete readying for competition, because that’s what you are!  Eat and drink like an athlete, stay loose and limber like an athlete, and stay positive like an athlete, and you will be ready when it all goes down.
Athletes, ready!  3-2-1… GO!!
Ryan

Check out a truly inspiring post by Coach Jason.  Thanks, Jason, for sharing this with us.
 “We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.”
  – Confucius
Today marks the 10 year anniversary of my brother, Brian, dying in a car accident.  Brian always dreamed of having kids and the type of father he would become, but he was never able meet his daughter, Addy, who was born seven months after his death.  I have had the honor of watching my niece, and goddaughter, become a gymnasty, spunky 9 year old.  Having known him, I always want to make sure she knows how much her father looked forward to being her dad.
Brian had this conception of himself before kids and after kids, like suddenly everything just changes.  For those of us who have kids, we can attest life is certainly different once you’re responsible for another being in this world.  How you never knew you could love someone so much or try to make someone else truly enjoy life?  The capacity you have really comes out, but did you really change?
We all can fall into this idea that once this happens, then I will…  This might be some lavish idea of a trip to a country you’ve always wanted to visit or it might be as simple as getting your first strict pull-up.  Or, it could be saying you’re not going to drink and drive anymore after you have kids.  We start to see our lives as events that will allow us to change.  For instance, I’m sure many of us have dreams of what we’re going to do once we retire, when the kids move away to college or even the vacation we might take when we no longer pay for daycare.
The issue with waiting for this or that is we can’t predict what else will happen over time and time is the one thing we can’t get back.
We all have visions of who we are going to be and what we are going to do in the future, but what are you doing to get there, today?  Our lives are one continuous existence with daily opportunities to be better and yes, get stronger.  Yet, we all want the bliss of transformation without the inconvenience of working to get there.  Instead of looking forward to that second life we envision, we need to make daily deposits into the one life we actually have today.  If you want to learn about something, take a half hour every day and read about it.  Dreaming of a trip?  Move $20 a week into a savings account until you have enough to just go.  Want a strict muscle up?  Build to where you can do 5 strict pull-ups and 5 strict dips and come talk to a CFKI coach.
Over the last couple of years, I’ve allowed work at my main job to make me more and more stressed but assumed that once I got to the next level of my career, things would get easier.   Recently I was promoted, and my stress level only increased.  I had crossed that milestone and I was surprised by how quickly I began to look for the next step, as if that would ease my stress level.   I started to think about how things would be better with my next raise or even about retirement!  Then, I realized I was just waiting for an event to change me, rather than do something about it now, so I downloaded the Calm app and started meditating.  Meditation is my daily deposit to myself and to my family.  It’s slowly helping me keep focus, be okay with leaving things for tomorrow and hopefully become the father that I know my brother wished he could be.

Think back to when you first signed up for CrossFit.  It was exhilarating because it was something new, something a little bit scary, and you were doing it!  You finally got up the guts to step up to the challenge, even when some people probably told you it was crazy — even dangerous.  “What do they know?” you asked.  It looks fun!
When you were younger, I bet the same pattern applied to you as it did to me.  We used to reach out for things that were scary or at least outside of our current “world.”  Go pick up that snake in the yard.  Try out for a sports team you have no business making.  Rappel off your friend’s roof.  Well maybe that one was just me… in a Ninja Turtles costume no less!
All of these things could have negative consequences, and we understood that going in but we went ahead anyway because we were confident that the positive consequences would be greater — namely that our experience level would be expanded.  “Now I know I can do that!”  And it would be fun!
Just about three years ago, I signed up for SEALFIT Kokoro, a 3-day version of Navy SEAL training “Hell Week” that is arguably the toughest endurance event in the world, and the same pattern held true.  I knew that there could be negative consequences.  Had I known that two classes after me someone would die, would that have changed my mind?  I don’t think so, because I was that fired up about the positive consequences that would come about — the experience of succeeding where others had failed, and the resulting springboard of confidence that would allow me to succeed in any other challenge that came my way.
Fast forward to last winter, when a friend asked me if I wanted to take on a mountain trail race called “The Frozen Snot.”  The name itself seemed like a challenge — things will be cold and uncomfortable.  I’m in!  My carried-over confidence from Kokoro turned into cockiness, though, and I didn’t train for the event.  I didn’t bother to research the event to understand how to supplement my CrossFit training.  It was a 13-mile trail run — I’ve run that far before, I’ve run trails before, I’ve been cold before, I’ve got this!  After a half mile of flat running, we went straight up a mountain, and an up/down pattern of mountain climbing continued for the duration.  I did not complete the 13 miles, but stopped at a very convenient 7 mile point that was close to the beginning.  I spent the rest of the afternoon rethinking my non-existent training plan, and came away from the event with a more practical add-on lesson to my waning confidence:  you can do anything, but only if you are physically ready.
I find myself now on the precipice of another challenge — I want to tackle the Bay Bridge Swim.  And that statement creates another more pressing challenge — I am not ready!  Not even close.  I am confident that I can do it, but the reality is that I’ve gotten soft.  I’ve let my eating, drinking, sleeping habits get away from me on a regular basis for way too long, because that seems like the comfortable thing to do.  As a result, I’ve gotten into a rut of being physically and mentally tired.  I feel, for the first time, like I’m getting OLDER.  And I’m not ready.  Anyone with me?
I got out of bed this morning with all this rattling around in my head, and my first training exercise of the day was to get it down on paper (still seems more fluid than a computer for me), and reflect on where I am and where I want to be.  In short, I miss the feeling of being physically and mentally ready for anything, and I’m going to get back there.  For me, that will start with getting out of bed every morning at 5am ready to go, ready to fight.  I need to stop choosing to be comfortable, and spend as much time as possible each day in a “training” mindset.  That doesn’t mean spending hours in the gym, but it does mean spending that quiet time each morning at 5am getting squared away mentally with my goals for the day.  It does mean making decisions more consistently that bring me toward my goal rather than further away from it.
It means choosing discipline over comfort.
Thanks for allowing me to use my blogging soapbox as a personal therapy session this week.  I hope some of this resonates with you too, especially if you are struggling with choosing the worthwhile over the comfortable.  Let me know if you ever need to talk through anything, you know where to find me!
Ryan

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
As the weather starts changing in September, and our schedules and kids’ schedules start changing toward fall activities, many of us also have a looming personal deadline:  our habits need to change.  We’ve spent the last part of summertime lamenting it coming to an end, but also looking forward to not as many trips and long weekends — distractions that take us away from our healthier behavior at home.  Some of these unhealthy habits — going out to eat, drinking too much, not getting enough quality sleep — maybe even have crept more into our daily summer lives, and we’ve made a future commitment to getting back on track.  “When summer is over, I’ll be better.”  But guess what?  Summer is over, and fall activities have begun, and we haven’t yet realized that commitment.
NOW is the time for a reset!  Don’t keep on putting off for one more day what you can start now.  And that’s the key — it’s just about STARTING.  Get the ball rolling today, wake up tomorrow feeling more refreshed, and recommit again for that day.  Make this recommitment part of your morning practice — as you review your plan of the day before you dive into work, include as one of your daily tasks, “Stay strong with ________” — whatever it is.  My personal daily affirmation that I get strength from throughout the day when I look at it is, “Stay on the Path.”  To me, that means staying focused on my purpose and goals, part of which is to live a healthy lifestyle so that I can continue fulfilling my purpose!
Every successful day rebuilding that healthy habit gets easier, because every day you will feel more energized and stronger, and that affirming phrase becomes more powerful to you, and more difficult to ignore.  Unfortunately, the opposite is true too – each day that we put off turning the corner toward a better habit, the harder it is to change.  We all get engrained in an unhealthy lifestyle — we get comfortable — and it gets harder and harder to turn away from that comfort.
So please join me in using this change of season from sweltering summer to beautiful fall to recommit yourself to a healthier lifestyle, to getting back on your Path.  Of course you’ll have slip-ups along the way, days that you can confidently say, “I was on some different path there!”  And that’s fine, if you have a morning practice that allows you to recommit yourself to your goals and the life you want to lead each new day.
Here’s to your health!
Ryan

This week we are thrilled to share Jill Fisher’s post-event review of the Savage Blitz race that she completed on Sunday.  As you can see, she had a great time with Alicia as her coach running with her and reminding her of good strategies to complete the obstacles they came across.  Jill, Alicia and I would all like to encourage you guys to get out of your comfort zone and try out one of these obstacle course races, aka “mud runs”.  They are a blast!
Now here’s Jill:
Hi everyone!
This past weekend, I participated in the 3.4 mile Savage Blitz obstacle course race (OCR), which was held about 40 minutes away in Kennedyville, Maryland. Alicia asked if I would share my thoughts on the race, since it was my first time participating in an OCR and, actually, in any type of race at all (except for the CFKI Turkey Trot!).
I’ve been training for the OCR for a while on Saturday mornings, but it turned out to be very different than I expected. I thought that it would be a lot of running and I was mainly worried that I would fail every obstacle (I like to consider the worst case scenario!). The reality was that the Maryland Blitz has very little running and the Blitz obstacles are totally doable by anyone at CFKI.
Obstacles – I had seen the list of Savage obstacles ahead of time and I was a little concerned about some of them, but they didn’t include that many “scary” obstacles on the shorter course. I think that they are trying not to discourage beginners. Most of the obstacles consisted of structures (approximately 8 feet high) that you would climb up and over using a rope or hand holds. There were also a number of rigs, some walls, and a giant slide. There were really only a few obstacles where I wasn’t able to make any progress (I mean, who can swing from a tassel?), so I felt pretty good about my performance at the event. The primary obstacle that wasn’t featured on the website was the mud. There was a lot of mud and it’s not easy to climb a muddy hill. But it was great exercise and it made the event more challenging.
Challenges for Me – It was a fairly long race and it was hot, so it was tiring. I felt fine during the race, but once I got home I had to drink a lot of electrolytes and then I felt better. The other challenge was that I’m kind of afraid of heights and there were some pretty high obstacles, but I was able to complete them and I think that they should be a little more manageable now.
One final note, I was very surprised to see the other participants at the starting gate. It seems like most of the competitors hadn’t trained and just decided to come out and try the race. I’m not sure what happened to these individuals and whether they finished or not, but anyone from CFKI would blow these people away.
Overall, I thought that the event was a great experience. I feel good about what I accomplished and I’m looking forward to training for the next event in the Spring and making progress on the obstacles and my race time.
TLDR: Not much running. Obstacles doable. Anyone at CFKI can easily complete the Blitz!
Please join us in the Spring!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog about the CrossFit Open starting soon (October 10th!), and I’ve gotten some questions about whether or not someone is “ready to compete”, and when you should tackle your first CrossFit Open.  We’ve also recently shared an upcoming fitness event called Reps for Recovery which includes a competitive heat for those looking to win some cash money, and of course we all were glued to the computer screen watching the CrossFit Games in July.  So competition is all over the place with CrossFit, and I thought in answering the question “Am I ready for the Open?” I would also unpack how CrossFit became so competitive and where each of us should fit into this culture in a healthy way.
First of all, many CrossFit workouts are set up as a challenge against the clock.  Do as much work as you can in a finite amount of time, or complete this defined amount of work as quickly as possible.  For me, this is where the healthy competition that creates results for CrossFitters starts.  If you do the same workout a few months later, with the same movements and same amount of weight on the barbell, now it becomes a test against yourself.  Will you pass?  Have you gotten more fit — at least in the context of this specific test?  Being challenged to beat a previous version of yourself is a huge motivator, and this can really drive you to eat well, work hard in the gym, sleep more, and generally treat yourself more and more like an athlete each day so that when the test comes, you are confident you have made improvements and it’s just about finding out how much.
The CrossFit Games was born out of this inherent “race the clock” mentality that CrossFitters started to develop.  In 2007, Greg Glassman threw out a challenge to the entire CrossFit community, which was pretty easy to do at the time because the community was relatively small, and everyone got together every day on the CrossFit.com WOD Comments board.  Most workout descriptions on .com end with “Post your time to comments”, and people did by the hundreds on a daily basis, now probably thousands.  Most of these guys and girls were doing CrossFit on their own in their garages or a YMCA or military base, and so the Comments board was a way to see if their times were competitive with others that were also doing it.  It was a gut check on how hard you worked.  And because of that, Greg Glassman knew who he had to invite to the first CrossFit Games – the people with the best Fran times and Grace times and 5K Run times.  Those people were musts, and they wanted to get together and throw down with each other, but Glassman also extended the invite to anyone that thought they could compete with the “Fittest in the World.”  That’s a pretty cocky slogan, but he was daring anyone that didn’t do CrossFit to show up and prove him wrong!
CrossFit in itself was competitive because you could do a workout and check the “leaderboard” of people that posted comments, and that led to the CrossFit Games.  It also led to the huge growth of CrossFit affiliate gyms like ours around the world.  More and more people heard that CrossFit was the way to get seriously fit, and it was also a blast!  People that had been doing CrossFit for a while and saw Glassman’s vision started their own gyms, new people started joining, the average CrossFitter ditched his garage gym setup to join a bigger gym (that still looked like a garage) in order to workout with his friends.  Life was good!
Unfortunately, competitive people working out together on a daily basis can have some negative effects.
If you ask a serious CrossFit competitor — or a professional football player for that matter — when they compete, they will identify a defined season.  This is when they lay it all on the line and do whatever it takes to win.  This could include knowingly using bad form in order to push their limits, trash talking or otherwise trying to get in their competitors’ heads, even bending the rules if they think they can get away with it.
Ask that same question — when do you compete? — to an average everyday CrossFitter, and they might happily but aggressively reply, “EVERY DAY!!”  Ouch.  If you just think about the toll on your body and your mind from going 110% during every session in the gym because you’ve entered into an imaginary competition with someone else, you might see that would lead to extreme burnout pretty quickly.  Keep working out at that pace without allowing downtime for recovery will lead to injuries.  Add on to that the “do anything to win” tactics like using poor form, using the online leaderboard to explain why someone else beat them, or not meeting movement standards in order to gain an advantage, and now the unhealthy competition has really reared its ugly head.
So if you ask me again if you should compete in the CrossFit Open, no matter your experience level, I will say “Yes!”  The Open is something that we can prepare for throughout the year in our regular training, and our opportunity as CrossFitters to compete in a healthy way — against ourselves!  The Open will provide you with chances to repeat some workouts from previous years so you can find that direct comparison, but it’s also a very good overall test of your fitness over 5 weeks.  I like to compare my overall Open rankings year over year as an annual benchmark of my fitness.  I also like to enter into local competitions when I’m feeling up to it, in order to fulfill my desire to compete directly against other athletes.  In that way, I find that I am able to use each training day as just that — an opportunity to train my body and mind in whatever element of fitness might be on the docket for today.  If it’s supposed to be a lightning fast workout, you better believe I’m going fast.  If it’s supposed to be a heavy day, I’m going heavy.  But all within the confines of what I know I can do, and not in comparison to anyone else.
I encourage you all to compete, but in a healthy way that won’t cause you to burn out or resent others in the gym.  Compete when it counts, in the CrossFit Open.  Compete with yourself on benchmark workouts where You can test your fitness against last year’s You.  Leave the fiery competitive spirit for those few opportunities, so that you can tap into it when you need it.  And every other day?  Get in the gym, work hard, have fun with your friends, go home sweaty and happy.  That’s really what it’s all about!
Ryan

Today we have another great article from the desk of Laura Tricarico — CrossFitter, mom of two, and certified nutritional therapist.  Please read her take on embracing non-scale victories, and not living and dying by the numbers you see when you step on that cold-hearted machine!
You have embraced a healthier lifestyle and diet after listening to your CFKI coaches and paying attention to your fellow members, good for you! Your jeans have started to fit better, your lifts in the gym are getting stronger, and you are feeling great in your own skin… until you step on the scale to see you haven’t lost a pound. All your newly found confidence has just been replaced with disappointment. The lifestyle you were beginning to trust is now in complete question. Sound familiar?
Unfortunately, we have somehow created a culture where weight defines self-worth. When asked about health goals, most people will respond with a weight driven goal. If not you, you can probably list a handful of people you know who are trying to lose weight. Scale and weight obsession create a destructive pattern of yo-yo dieting, leading to poor habitual behaviors that decrease health in the long run. When the number on the scale is your focus and quite possibly determines your mood for the day, you have missed the point of health.
By switching the focus from weight to true measures of health such as: healthy digestion, clear skin, better sleep, and stable energy, we can begin to have a healthier relationship with food and with self. Creating awareness around non-scale victories will allow you to focus on the health of your body rather than its weight. Shifting your focus to the health of your body will enable you to view food for nourishment rather than the good/bad or indulge/guilt cycles you may be caught in now. Your behavior around food and how you view your relationship is the ultimate factor in long term health and weight management. If you are spending your energy counting macros or timing your meals around your workouts, but you continue to binge and restrict food based on what the scale says, your relationship with food will never improve. 
This month I challenge you to hide the scale for thirty days (or… gasp, throw it away). Spend the month paying attention to how you feel. Do you notice clearer skin? Do you have more energy to play with your kids? Have your migraines decreased? Are you able to do a pull-up now? All the beautiful benefits of feeding yourself well are completely overshadowed by the scale. Ditch it for now and start a list of those non-scale victories. Celebrate each one as a step towards a healthy body image and better health.
Yours In Health,
Laura 

“My attitude is that if you push me towards something that you think is a weakness, then I will turn that perceived weakness into a strength.”
 — Michael Jordan
Beginning on Thursday, October 10th (just 7 short weeks away), the 2020 CrossFit Open is going down!  If this will be your first Open, let’s first lay down the groundwork:  The CrossFit Open is an online CrossFit competition that is open to anyone and everyone!  It consists of five workouts, released once per week on Thursday and to be completed by the following Monday.  Each workout will test your fitness in different ways, and in the end you will have a comprehensive snapshot of your current fitness level, and how you stack up against others in your age group, your ability level (Rx or Scaled), and everyone in the world!  There are hundreds of thousands of athletes that enter the Open.  Up until this past spring, the Open took place in March each year.  This next one is being labeled the “2020 Open” because it will kick off the next season of CrossFit competition, which culminates in The CrossFit Games in July 2020.
I encourage everyone to compete in the Open – it’s fun to do with your friends in the gym (especially on Friday night where it turns into a bit of a party), and it’s an awesome way to check in on an annual basis on your current fitness level.  If this is your first time, this will be your baseline.  If you did it last spring or in previous years, are you more fit now?
I also want to give you plenty of “heads up” that the Open is coming, because there is work to do if we know we’re going to be tested.  Do you remember what didn’t go so well for you in the last Open?  Or again if this is your first whack at it, can you think of one movement that you hope will not be in the Open, because it represents a hole in your game?  Guess what… it will be.  But you still have time now to work on it!  Make a 7-week plan now to carve out 15 minutes in the gym, twice per week before or after workouts or at Open Gym, to have dedicated practice time on that skill.  If you can’t come up with a plan that you like, ask a coach!  This is what we love to do as coaches — help you individually to achieve your goals.  That’s the reason we get so amped up when someone gets their first pull-up or PR’s their Filthy Fifty time because they got a lot more efficient at double-unders!
Let’s make the rest of this summer our focused prep time for the upcoming CrossFit Open.  We want to know that when the test comes, we’ve done everything we can to prepare.
See you in the gym!
Ryan

One of my personal training clients recently celebrated her 62nd birthday, and the workout that I wrote on the board for her that day was one that caused a few people to nervously say, “that’s not what WE’RE doing today is it?”  It was a doozy, consisting of a 1957m bike, 62 burpees, followed by a 2019m row.  And she stepped up and crushed it.  It was impressive to watch!  Now this workout, modified slightly by adding one meter rowing and one burpee, can be something that she does every year to try to beat her previous time!  And if she does that, she’ll know that she has become more fit in that year’s time.
We talk a lot about not competing with each other in the gym, as comparing yourself to someone else can get frustrating and produce a lot of negative energy — generally we compare ourselves with someone that has a very good chance of beating us in whatever event is up.  But I think competing with yourself is an awesome motivator, and is why we regularly repeat benchmark workouts.  Repeating “Fran” every few months is a great view into how well adapted you have become for fast, powerful work in a short time domain.  Repeating “The Filthy Fifty” (anyone?) will showcase our ability to maintain a slower but consistent power output for a longer time.
My challenge for you is to identify one workout that you want to always repeat on your birthday.  Make it an “anniversary of fitness”, a time for you to see how far you’ve come this year.  Choose a workout that includes some of your strengths, so you will look forward to it, but it also should be a relatively well-rounded workout.  Repeating a 1RM Back Squat each year will tell you if you’re getting stronger, which is great, but strength is just one facet of your total fitness.  Maybe instead you can repeat “Manion,” which is 7 rounds of 29 Back Squats (135/95 lbs) and a 400m run, for time.  Now we have a workout that still requires strength, and getting stronger over a year will produce a better result here for sure.  But we’ve also introduced a high degree of stamina and endurance.  Bingo!
So when your birthday comes up next, definitely come on into class and help dish out some birthday burpees.  But also schedule some time to get into Open Gym and knock out that special workout.  Then next year, come back with all that extra fitness you’ve been building up, and smash your previous time!

I really don’t like to talk about myself or the things that I’ve done, both because I’d much rather talk about all of your awesome accomplishments in and out of the gym, and because for every positive deed I’ve done I’m sure there’s another that balances it out the other way.  But I want you guys all to know that I have recently been deemed a “Level 3” Certified CrossFit Trainer, by passing an exam that covers a lot of information and skills that experienced CrossFit trainers should be expected to know and use.  The reason I think it’s important that you know that is that I want you to know that I am constantly striving to become a better trainer and gym owner, so that you can continue to have the best fitness experience possible.
The process of studying for and then taking the test was a good learning experience for me, and CrossFit provided all of the study material I would need, by listing out CrossFit Journal articles that were most applicable, as well as links to some outside resources.  One thing I joked about in the gym leading up to the test was that there were certain topics that I hoped would not be included in the test, or at least prominently.  Guess what – THEY WERE!  My marching orders, thinking about what I most stressed about during the test, are to include those topics heavily in my continuing education.  I won’t mention what the topics were because I signed an NDA and thus cannot discuss what was actually on the test, but I have a really good sense of where to focus my time now.  There is an interesting parallel to training CrossFit in the gym here:  we all have movements that we’re not good at that we hope will not “show up on the test”.  Well guess what – THEY WILL!  And we all have to strive to correct our deficiencies before they get tested and we learn the hard way.
Another great thing that happens every time I get involved again in a CrossFit training course or test is that I get super fired up again about the CrossFit methodology — specifically how simple yet effective it is.  There are many, including myself at times, that try to complicate it by overthinking workout programming, adding in more volume instead of spending time working on the basics, and maybe even devaluing nutrition as the real base of the fitness pyramid and focusing too much on physical training.  Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to keep it simple, but it works, and that’s what I’m going to refocus my own training and coaching energy on.
Thank you all for the motivation to keep honing my craft!  I do what I do because I love the feeling of helping people to achieve their goals, especially the crazy ones that seem so far off.  And then you guys show up every day and smash those goals to bits, and I get to be a small part of it.
Here’s to our fitness and health, and our lofty collective goal to keep improving!
Ryan