Coach’s Blog

Just like the first few years themselves, I feel like these last two weeks of reminiscing about the old days have come and gone, and here we are already at Year Three.
First of all, our third year marked our second location, as we quickly grew out of our 500-sqft space and graduated to a big-boy space near Matapeake Beach.  Those that have seen both locations know that of course we have a lot more “room for activities” at our new spot, but the cozy feel of the old gym is missed sometimes.  We’ve also had a terrible time with water leaking in the front of the gym when it rains (pretty sure buildings are supposed to be waterproof) and we’ve been visited by more wildlife in this more rural location (plenty of birds, prehistoric dragonflies, a squirrel, and even a couple snakes have entered the gym without a membership!)
Here is a picture of Everett getting the new location ready.  This may look like unfair child labor laws since it’s so dark, but we didn’t have any lights yet and this was actually at noon!
 
As we built the space out, we also felt the need to cover the huge bare walls.  Josh, a former Navy linguist and current environmental scientist, has at least one more hidden talent – he is a brilliant artist!  Josh can take a rough idea and very quickly turn it into a creative image.  Over beers one night we came up with the plan, “our gym slogan is ‘Get Awesome’, and my last name is Wolf.”  Within a couple days, Josh had several versions sketched out on his computer of what would be our first mural.  Those of you that have seen it in color on the wall and on our t-shirts can appreciate the simple but elegant and energetic design, and I thought it might be fun to look back on where it all started.  Josh also created, drew and painted on the wall the CFKI trident that towers above the squat racks, as well as several shirt designs.  Thanks Josh!
 
 
Not long after opening up our new location, we learned that one of our members, Brian, was very sick.  His two sons had been working out with us for a while to get ready for their lacrosse seasons, and he had recently also begun to get into CrossFit himself.  He hadn’t been to the gym in a while so I called him to follow up.  We didn’t know at the time exactly what was up, but he knew he was too weak to workout.  Brian was diagnosed with polyarteritis nodosa (PAN), a super-rare disease that attacks multiple organs and the immune system.  It is so rare that although the most effective treatment option is chemotherapy, which Brian started immediately after his diagnosis, his insurance company refused to pay his hospital bills because he was getting chemotherapy when it was “not medically necessary”.  Having a background in health insurance (and fighting health insurance companies on behalf of hospitals), I got to work on his medical claims.  We also decided that we needed to do something to help Brian and his family out with their financial situation in the meantime.  In November of 2014 we hosted an open competition named “Fight For Brian” that featured three workouts and a great lunch and get-together afterward.  We were able to provide Brian and his family with over $9,500 in donations from our members and his friends and family.  As I write this, I am still stunned by that figure – that our small community could generate such a big financial response to a crisis.  But as you will see in future posts, at CrossFit Kent Island we consistently rise to the occasion when one of our community, our family, is in need.  We discovered in November 2014 that one of our core competencies, and indeed one of our values, is Service.
In Year Three we also added a new coach, who had been WOD’ing with us for about a year.  Dana was an immediate lock as a CrossFit coach because of her great weightlifting and gymnastics technique, and her experience as a middle-school teacher.  If you wonder why a middle-school teacher specifically would be a good CrossFit coach, just look and listen around the gym at the maturity level of our athletes as they’re warming up…
Dana, her husband Jimmy, and their son Ashton were a huge part of our CrossFit Kent Island community in the first three years and into the fourth, when unfortunately for us they moved to South Carolina so Jimmy could pursue his dream of managing a big-time race track.  We love that they are doing so well in Darlington, SC, but we sure do miss them!
 
 
 
As we continued to grow our membership in the new gym location right next to Matapeake Beach, getting outside for a WOD was a must, either right behind the gym in our new huge parking lot (you can see here that it was not fully done yet), or at the beach itself.  We are truly blessed to have so many outdoor areas to express our fitness on Kent Island!

Last week we reviewed our first year in existence – Year One!  What an exciting, new time it was, and lots of new members to experiment on!  In this post we examine Year Two – a year full of more hard work, growth, many more “firsts”, and a year where we started to grow into our CrossFit Kent Island culture as we know it now.  Enjoy.
Year Two
The year starts with an homage to the little dude that really made this gym happen.  This is Oliver, and we started this whole thing because I said to Denee, “I don’t know if I want to keep traveling every week, what if we start a CrossFit gym?”  Instead of shooting it down, she asked me for a business plan, which of course I already had (maybe…) and when it looked semi-promising, we decided to make it happen.  Oliver was less than 1 years old here, and most of you probably know him now as a fixture in the gym.  In the beginning, he was usually sitting in a car seat in the back of the gym, but here we let him get in on some deadlifts for the first time.
 
 
 
In 2013 we also started to follow the CrossFit Games, and two CFKI athletes began to differentiate themselves as competitors.  Most notably, Ryan Matis and Ryan Grantham decided to test themselves at a CF Games workout that most would not attempt – a half-marathon row.  We put the Concept2 rowers outside the gym on a misty evening, and the Ryan’s raced each other for 1.5+ hours.  No one else would attempt this feat, and the pair would cement themselves as the most determined and consistent CrossFit competitors on Kent Island in 2013 and for many more years to come.  Their futures would align later as successful CrossFit coaches in Baltimore and Kansas, and they remain connected to CFKI to this day.
Around the 2013 summer we also began a CFKI tradition of posting our Hero workouts to the wall of the gym.  A Hero workout is one that is created to memorialize a fallen soldier, sailor, marine, airmen, or law enforcement officer that gave their life in the line of duty.  As they sacrificed their life, so do we sacrifice ourselves in their honor in the form of a grueling workout.  It is usually longer, heavier, and more mentally strenuous than other CrossFit workouts, to remind us that in the military and law enforcement communities, “all give some, and some gave all.”  When you spill your heart out in these workouts such as Tumilson here, you will never forget the sacrifice that they made.
Writing these workouts on the wall of the gym is still a tradition we continue at CFKI, and if your name appears here you know you have become a permanent part of our special community.
 
Not so coincidentally, it was also about that time that we began a long-standing tradition of making Friday night a party night!  Our weekday schedule included 5:30pm and 6:30pm classes each day, but 6:30pm was not very well attended, for obvious reasons – everyone wants to hang out with their family and friends on a Friday night.  So one Friday evening, our 5:30pm class finished with a bunch of heavy tire flips, and before the last rep I stashed a case of beer inside the heaviest tire.  When it was found, the 5:30 class cracked a beer to toast to their great week of workouts and general domination, and when the 6:30 class showed up, they went ahead and grabbed a beer too.  And that was the end of our Friday 6:30pm class, and the beginning of something that makes CFKI great – our focus on community and fun!
Later on in the fall, we got involved in the Eastern Shore Affiliate Challenge (ESAC)!  This was the second time we were included, but this time we had a significant portion of our gym competing and it was a blast and a half.  There were lots of fun challenges, from scaling a wall to 1-rep-max snatches to a team swimming event.  A complete test of fitness!  Everyone had a great time, and we got packed up to go.  The results were being announced, but having felt accomplished with our feats and being ready to go, we headed for the cars.  When the Scaled winners were trumpeted over the loudspeaker though, we had to call Lori and Claire back – they had won First and Second place!
This was to be the beginning of a streak of CFKI podium winners in the ESAC, and more importantly the establishment of CrossFit competitions as a great test of our individual fitness and teamwork.  Plus, they are just a really good time!  We have since hosted two ESAC competitions and look forward to more on Kent Island!
In 2013, we also were a part of an inaugural event that continued the momentum we had built with GORUCK and further cemented their ideals of service, personal challenge, and teamwork into our collective mindset.  The GORUCK Nasty was an obstacle course race based on the “Nasty Nick” O-Course (US Army Special Forces) and the BUD/S O-Course (US Navy SEALs).  The special operations cadre of GORUCK designed this course to be the ultimate civilian test of stamina and endurance, and it proved to be just that to our members and all competitors.  Pictured here is Coach Ryan adding his flag to the wall after enduring a long, vertical climb halfway through the course.  Ryan’s brother Barrett is also pictured in the right background, showing the muddy results of an arduous course that wound up and down a sloppy summer ski resort.  The race was hard and resulted in our collective mental toughness for similar events to come, but it also was a great time that resulted in the continued bonding of our members, and the meeting point for Ryan Matis and Grace Kunkel, mow happily married!

Toward the end of the second year, we convened at the Cambridge Beer Festival, which ended up being rained out!
Making the best of it, we had an amazing time, and a joke in a local bar (pictured here) became a motto that has since become a tagline for us going forward:  “GET AWESOME!”
To us, GET AWESOME means to become as healthy, kind, resilient, and confident a person possible.  We aim to GET AWESOME every day in the gym and in our personal and professional lives!
Our second year expanded upon the lessons and successes of the first, and we continued to thrive.  We are looking forward to GETTING AWESOME in years to come!!

We didn’t really make a big deal of it, but our 5-year anniversary as CrossFit Kent Island happened this summer, right about Memorial Day actually.  So, maybe we did celebrate – Murph style!!
I want you all to know that I have enjoyed every single day of our 5+ years now in existence, and there are so many special people and moments in time that are forever etched in my memory, and on my computer’s hard drive as pictures.  So what I’d like to do is to begin to share some of those memories, one year at a time.
First there were blogs, and then video blogs or “vlogs”.  Let the record show that I am now inventing the picture blog, or “plog”.  Maybe someone’s done it before but I doubt they called it a plog.  And if they did and they come after me and I’m ruined financially, at least we got a solid 5 years in.
Year One
It’s funny to look back at some of these pictures from 2012 because of how different CrossFit Kent Island looked back then.  The “old gym” as it’s now mostly affectionately known, was a 500-square foot box of aged concrete blocks nestled between other small businesses behind Food Lion.  Here’s a picture of half of the gym (yep, that’s right) set up with equipment for the first time.  I was so proud, and so scared, but we knew that if we didn’t hit 25 members within the first year, we would close it up and that would be that.  Luckily, you guys showed up!

As we opened the garage doors for the first time, four dudes, one of whom was already shirtless having researched proper CrossFit protocol, were standing outside the gym.  “Is this gonna be a CrossFit gym?” said Andy Booze, “We were just about to join CrossFit Annapolis but now we don’t have to go over the bridge!”
And that’s exactly why I opened the gym in the first place – I knew there would be interest because CrossFit was starting to pick up steam in the fitness world, and the closest gym was over that monster of a Bridge.  Alex, Andy, Chris and Kenny became 4 of our first members before we even had our equipment unpacked, and we had a lot of fun coming up with workouts that were all a little bit harder than the previous one.
…which leads to my next picture of our first equipment replacement!  Lesson learned:  plyo boxes are not to be used to crash heavy barbells onto like jerk blocks.  Andy, a carpenter by trade (always good to have in a gym as we would learn), pulled up some online directions to create a plyo box in the exact dimensions of our others, but for good measure painted a CFKI trident right on the handle.  We still have this box, and I try to use it every time I do box jumps.  Andy also built ACTUAL jerk blocks for us to use, just in case we decided we hadn’t fully learned that lesson yet.
 
Around the late summer timeframe, Chris recruited someone that he met at Hemingway’s where he was a server.  Her name was Alyssa, and she and her twin sister came in to check us out.  As luck would have it we were learning handstands that day, and having learned of her gymnastics background I leaned on her to help out with some instruction.  I don’t know how many times I asked Alyssa over 4 years if she would ever want to coach with us, half joking at first because of her busy work schedule, but eventually she relented and has been such a great asset and role model to all of our athletes!  This picture is from the first time she, Jay, Andrea and Kyle did “Fran”.
 
Two more of our first members were Craig and Heather, along with their kids Byron and Athena.  All are good athletes, and firey competitors when the clock starts.  We added more classes, and I feel like at least one of them was in every class.  We started discussing taking rest days, and Craig would have none of it!  Byron was the inspiration behind our rule of “If you have a near-death experience in the gym, you owe 5 burpees,” due to his significant lack of the self-preservation instinct when at the top of a 15-ft rope or getting out of a GHD.
 
In November of 2012, I got a call from a dude named Lou at GORUCK, a gear company that made high-end rucks and were starting to run overnight rucking challenges in major cities.  There was one coming up in Baltimore, and he wanted to know if anyone from our CrossFit gym would be interested.  We were, and Craig, Byron and I pretty much dominated GORUCK Class 320, which started with a quick dunk in the Inner Harbor and only got more nasty from there.  I felt like I had really earned that patch and cold Budweiser on Sunday morning, and was glad I did it but never again!  A couple weeks later I was back on the phone with Lou, who happened to be the Lead Cadre of all their Special Forces instructors, talking about pulling together a custom event on Kent Island.  There’s something about suffering together as a group that not only binds people together, but also insulates you from future hardships.  “If I did that, then I can do anything” sort of a deal.  GORUCK Challenges have become an annual or even more frequent personal crucible for me, and I always encourage more people to participate because of the enormous personal growth that follows.
Overall, Year One was one of learning, one of meeting people that have since shaped my business and my life, and was a huge springboard into Year Two and beyond.  More to come soon!
Ryan
 

We’d like to start sharing some of the Nutrition Newsletter topics that Laura Tricarico wrote in 2015 and 2016 to help us all understand how to live more healthfully, and how to eat for CrossFit performance.  Please enjoy topic #1!
Break Up With Sugar
It is time.  You have been in an abusive relationship for far too long.  You could say, “It’s not you, it’s me,” or “I need to work on myself.”  Whatever cliche breakup line does the trick, it is time to kick sugar to the curb and for good reason.  Sugar is the leading dietary cause of inflammation which is linked to most chronic diseases.  Never before in the history of mankind have we had an emergency need to lower bloodsugar.  Never.
According to the USDA statistics, the average American consumed 196 POUNDS of sugar in 2010.  In order to accomplish this, one would need to ingest eight ounces of sugar a day or 227 grams.  It’s actually not that difficult to do, considering sugar is found in almost any processed food under a multitude of different names.
Let’s take a look at why sugar consumption is such a big deal.  In one word: diabetes.  One in three children born in 2000 will become diabetic and 90%of diabetes is associated with a high carbohydrate consumption. When ingesting high levels of refined carbohydrates the pancreas, adrenal glands, and liver are greatly impacted.  Under such duress, the pancreas will eventually stop making enough insulin to combat the amount of sugar in the bloodstream, the adrenals become exhausted affecting hormone production, and the liver begins to have difficulty managing the glucose in the bloodstream.  Unfortunately, the damage does not stop there.  Immune function decreases, cells lose their ability to react to insulin and eyes, feet, kidneys, and the brain suffer from narrowed microvasculature.  The progression to diabetes is not as far off as you might think because it begins slowly with hypoglycemia, progressing to insulin resistance and ends with Type II diabetes. Without knowing it, many (dare I say most) people following a standard American diet (SAD) suffer from low bloodsugar or hypoglycemia.  Hypoglycemia can be characterized as needing to eat every few hours, dizziness upon standing, shaking of extremities, mood changes when hungry (aka hangry), low energy, and frequent urination.  It may be also affecting your children.  Does your child have focus issues, tantrums, low energy then overactive?  If this sounds like you or your child, it is time to break up with sugar -for good.
“I have tried it all.  It takes all my willpower and after a few days, I cave to that one latte or cookie and I am
back at square one.”  Sound familiar?  This is not your fault.  Manufacturers spend a lot of time and money creating (yes, in al ab) foods that become addicting to the brain.  Trying to eat ‘only a little’ will eventually snow ball into ‘all the time’ because sugar affects the pleasure centers in the brain, making us continually chase the sugar high and happiness that quickly follows.  So ditch the guilt and mindgames and kick the habit for good.  The only method I have seen successful at helping individuals eliminate cravings and correct blood sugar imbalances is a sugar control diet or an elimination diet. A popular diet today calls it Whole30 or 21 Day Sugar Detox, but essentially any diet that removes sugar and processed foods is a sugar control diet.   When following a sugar control diet, the body’s sugar control mechanism re-calibrates, increasing energy and eliminating cravings in 2-3 weeks. A side benefit is it can also help individuals with weight loss or gain issues, giving your body a rest and reboot.

“Fall down seven times, get up eight.”
– Tadashi Nakamura
In the course of life, we’re all going to fall down.  You might find yourself wavering off of your workout or nutrition plan more than you planned, or you might get fired from a job.  You might have one of those days at the gym where you’re constantly missing easy lifts.  It could even be a physical fall, where all of a sudden you find yourself flat on your back, wondering what happened!  In all of these situations, there are a couple universal truths. First, as the beginning sentence already laid out, it’s going to happen to everyone — sooner or later, we all fail at something.  Secondly, it’s how you respond to it that counts.
Falls, or failures, whether self-imposed or brought on by things out of our control, can at times be devastating.  But it is important to remember that sooner or later everyone is going to have to face some sort of failure.  We all face them every day to one degree or another, and we usually show resilience by standing back up and pushing through again for success.  When a significant failure occurs, it’s important to not just try to push it aside and move past it, as if somehow it didn’t happen.  Use the failure and the following downtime to find the ingrained lesson.  What can you learn from this and take on board so that it doesn’t happen again?  Maybe you have learned about yourself – a new physical or mental “limit” that you can now use as a goal to push past!
Mark Divine is the founder of both SEALFIT and Unbeatable Mind, two organizations that I very much subscribe to (even when my own often spectacular failures might not show it!)  His karate sensei was Tadashi Nakamura, the man quoted in the beginning of the article with that great quote on resilience.  He has another quote that I stumbled across again recently, which boils down to “One Day, One Lifetime.”  It was the subject of a speech that he gave to his students about simply living each day as if it was your entire life, not taking anything for granted, not wasting any precious energy on being negative, and certainly not dwelling on the past.  That was very eye-opening when I first read it, and I am glad I came across it again.
I’ve started incorporating these two quotes into my daily routine, and I encourage you to do the same.
Each evening, I recount my day in my head and start thinking about the positive things that happened.  Then I think about my failures, even those that were only apparent to myself, and think “Fall down seven times, get up eight.”  I make sure that I “get up” again in my mind, taking the lesson from the failure and moving on positively.
Each morning, as part of my daily planning, I think “One Day, One Lifetime” as a way to remember to make this day count, be positive and stay in the present.  And then I go get it!
Take some time to reflect on a recent failure of your own.  How did you respond?  Hopefully keeping these quotes or a similar mantra that has meaning to you will help you move forward positively!
Ryan

“Discipline equals Freedom”
 – Jocko Willink
Summer is just about in full swing, and that season brings with it a new set of challenges when it comes to fitness.  For those of us that are parents, the kids are out of school and now have camps, swimming lessons, and play dates that must be attended to.  For those of us in school, summertime might mean a part-time job or maybe even the start of a new career.  All of these things are pulling from our limited resource of time in new ways, which can be frustrating!
Don’t let these summer plans derail your fitness goals.  Use the value of Discipline that you have begun to forge in the gym to recommit to your top priority – your physical and mental health – even if that means that your workout schedule has to change a bit.  Your usual 4:30pm class is right when you need to pick up the kids from camp everyday, and after that is dinner and family time.  That sounds great — you are now a 6am workout fiend!  The sun comes up well before 6:00 this time of year, so it’s not like you’re slogging to the gym in the pitch-black December darkness.  We all know there will be days this summer where despite your best efforts, you can’t get to the gym for a CrossFit WOD.  Find a way to make fitness happen!  See if you can scale today’s CFKI WOD with equipment you have around you – which might be nothing!  Go for a bike ride or a run, knock out Tabata Burpees for 4 minutes, do 15 minutes of yoga before bedtime.  It’s all good stuff!
Find the Discipline to make it happen every day, and you will receive (at least) two benefits.  First off, the personal satisfaction from continuing to meet your physical fitness goals.  Secondly, the daily practice of Discipline towards a worthy goal (your health) will continue to build your mental toughness and decision-making skills.  Every day that you choose to go to the gym at 6am rather than sleeping in reaffirms your commitment, strengthening it for the next morning, or the next challenge in your life where you need to make a decision to go the hard but positive route, rather than taking it easy.
What Jocko Willink’s quote “Discipline equals Freedom” means to me is that if you choose to value Discipline, making the right choice in a daily crossroads like going to the gym or not becomes easier and easier each time you do it.  When it’s no longer something you have to think about each day, then you are Free to spend that precious mental energy on other more awesome things!
 

“What it comes down to is that success demands singleness of purpose. Some call it mental toughness; I think it is singleness of purpose and, once you have agreed upon the price that you and your family must pay for success, it enables you to forget that price. It enables you to ignore the minor hurts, the opponent’s pressure and the temporary failures.”
– Vince Lombardi

50-40-30-20-10 reps of Wallballs and Box Jumps, for time.

 I was looking through quotes I’ve used before for our “Awesome Words” section in the daily WOD post, and this one stuck out to me because I think it’s so relevant to today’s leg-and-lung blaster.  

Singleness of purpose.  When Coach Lombardi equated that with mental toughness, a more widely-used term, I thought of the other way that I’ve heard this put before — Tunnel Vision.  Having Tunnel Vision in some situations might be seen as a bad thing — in a team meeting or conversation with several people, for example.  But in the face of an old-fashioned Stamina workout, where you know it’s going to hurt and you have to get through a tremendous amount of work to make the pain stop, I can’t think of a better mindset.

Let’s also add Goal-setting to the mix, and call the best mindset for a long grinder “Goal-Oriented Tunnel Vision”.  You know the task at hand — your amazing CFKI coach has briefed the workout and you’ve computed the total reps (150 of each).  Rather than taking a trip to Negative Town like Sally Sobstory who is literally spewing negative emotions out of her mouth, you use Goal-Oriented Tunnel Vision to chop-up the first set of 50 Wallballs into 5 sets of 10.  At “3-2-1-GO!”, focused on your first micro-goal of 10 Wallballs, you get to work.  Easy day!  But when the negative thoughts of “I’m so tired”, “There’s no way I’m getting through this”,  “Look at David, he’s crushing me!” inevitably pop into your head, you acknowledge that these are unhelpful, negative thoughts, and instead snap your focus back with “I got this!” “Only 10 reps, I can do it!”  

You mark your progress with chalk on the floor, stand back up, and continue setting and meeting your goals until your trip through the Tunnel is over, and you emerge stronger, both physically and mentally, having practiced positivity and Goal-Oriented Tunnel Vision, and achieved success, cementing the process in your mind for next time!

It’s important to note that this mindset is not just applicable to long workouts, but can be relevant to anything in life that seems insurmountable — a huge work project, or even a massive pile of dishes in the sink.  Set your goal at one dish, and get going!

So, the 2017 CrossFit Open is over, and the excitement of throwing down against the world has passed, until next year.  I am so proud of everyone that competed in the Open, especially all of you that jumped in for the first time!  

I hope you all had fun and learned about yourselves a bit.  Which workouts did you perform best at?  Look into the key movements or format of those WODs and find your strengths.  

Which did you struggle with more than your peers?  You probably already know these movements or the weights involved are a weakness of yours.  Create a new goal to improve, and attack that weakness without mercy!

Although it can be a bit of a time-suck when you should be being productive (my weakness!), the CrossFit Games Leaderboard (https://games.crossfit.com/leaderboard) is of course the place to find out where you and your friends rank among the world, in the region (ours is the Mid Atlantic), or in your state.  In reviewing where everyone landed from CFKI, our coaches and I made some awesome discoveries that I just had to share:

 – Drew Little placed 6th in Maryland for the Teenage Boys 16-17 division!!

 – Madison Little placed 4th in the state of Maryland in the Teenage Girls 14-15 division!!

 – Andrew Little placed 94th in Maryland in the 40-44 division, with a bum leg that kept him from completing much of the first 3 workouts!

 – Tristan Tricarico placed 9th among all firefighters in Maryland!

 – Lori McClelland placed 16th in Maryland in the 35-39 age group!

 – Denee Wolf placed 6th in Maryland in the 35-39 age group!

 – David Oliva placed 4th in Maryland and 267th in the WORLD in the 60+ age group, which is in the top 13%!!

 – Alyssa Stookey placed 3rd in Maryland in the 35-39 age group, 22nd in the region, and 229th in the WORLD!!  That’s out of 26,957 competitors, which is better than top 1% in the world.  Incredible!

Once again we have proven that we are among the best when it comes to community, fundraising, and straight up CrossFit!!  Great work, everyone!!

CrossFit (6am, 10am, 5:30pm)
Work Capacity: “CrossFit Open WOD 17.5”
10 rounds for time:
– 9 Thrusters, 95/65 lbs
– 35 Double-unders
Strength WOD (4:30pm)
Strength:  Squat Snatch 10-5-3-3-3-3-3
Work Capacity: “CrossFit Open WOD 17.5”

Hi guys – Coach Ryan here with a bit of a brain dump after completing Open WOD 17.1… for the second time.
I don’t advocate for many people to re-do a CrossFit Open workout because of the increased intensity of the workouts (it means a little bit more), and also because of the quick recovery time required to complete that intense workout AGAIN, and FASTER.
I’d like to explain why I re-did the workout, and put it in terms so you can understand when it might be a good idea for you to do the same.  There are three reasons I can think of to re-do an Open WOD:
1.  Something went terribly wrong during the workout and affected your performance.  Your jump rope broke during Double-unders (it happened to me a few years ago), or you had to make an unexpected bathroom break.  You missed a bunch of light Squat Snatches that you usually can hit, or got “no-repped” multiple times because of a technical error.  Easy call, do the workout again and make sure that stuff doesn’t happen this time!
2.  You had a BAD PLAN going in, or NO PLAN at all.  If the workout is Fran, your plan might be to do the whole workout unbroken.  But if your all-time max set of Pull-ups is 21, and you try to do 21 straight during a workout, you might have a problem in a minute next time you get back on the bar.  Then you watch someone else execute a much better plan, and decide “Easy call, do the workout again with a better plan, and stick to it!”
3.  Your performance in the workout was not at all up to your expectations.  This was my reason this week, with a little bit of reason #2 mixed in there too.  This reason is apparent by that extra sting in your psyche after the pain of the workout has subsided, which is your true self saying to you, “You gave up”, or “What happened to the plan?”  In summary, you could have done a lot better, and you know it.  Easy call, do the workout again, but here is where it’s not so easy – actually doing better next time.
You probably know what you need to do better, but maybe not how.  In short, this week for me came down to listening.  If you’re doing a CrossFit Open workout, you hopefully have a coach that is judging and counting your reps, and maybe even other people watching and cheering for you.  Guess what they are doing when they are cheering you on and encouraging you?  They are saying positive things!  Rather than just hearing them as background noise, LISTEN TO THEM and use that positive energy for your workout.
I also decided this time, using Coach Jason’s example when I judged him on Friday morning at 5am, to use a positive mantra.  I asked Denee who was judging me to count my reps out loud so I didn’t have to worry about it and with every 5 dumbbell snatches I said quietly to myself “tough”, “focused”, “resilient”, “discipline”, “no regret”.  You could use any mantra that means something to you, these are words that I carried away from my SEALFIT experience.  Jason’s version during his burpees, another personal favorite, was “not dead”, “can’t quit”.  Whatever it is, say it during the toughest part of your workout, mean it, and listen to it.  It will keep your head up and keep you moving when that previous version of your workout got weak.
I hope everyone recovers well from 17.1, take care of yourself, and let’s hit this week hard and get ready for 17.2!