So, how did your 18.3 go? If you’re like many people that took on that high-speed-high-skill workout, at some point you ran into a wall — a wall made solidly of a movement that you couldn’t perform. Maybe it was right away in the Double-unders, or you could have cruised through those and had your poor Overhead Squat technique highlighted for several long minutes. Even more likely, you were hoping for that first Pull-up or Muscle-up to come your way, to no avail.
What do you do when you experience failure? How do you stay motivated to keep working when you run up against that realization that there are some things in the gym that you still can’t do?
The first thing to do is to be very proud of the fact that you tried. You took the plunge and entered into the CrossFit Open, knowing full well there might be situations like this. The challenge presented itself, and you leapt with both feet into that chasm, trying with 100% tenacity to make that barrier disappear for the first time. You tried and you failed. But you did try.
The second thing to do is to reframe the failure into a positive motivator — a goal.
One tremendously powerful exercise that I don’t do as often as I should is to sit down at the end of the day and take a quick recap. What went well, and why? Celebrate those successes and reinforce that behavior. What did not go very well, and why? Be honest with yourself here, and internalize the lessons that are presented to you. Reframe the negative parts of your day into a positive outlook of how it could go next time.
Back to our CrossFit example, reframing a failed workout means being honest about what you need to improve on, and then creating a plan of action to achieve it. Remember, what we are after here is fitness for a lifetime, not the CrossFit Games. That means we all have plenty of time to improve. Don’t rush into an unrealistic timeframe for your goal, but instead back into it with a plan of how you’re going to get there, and then in reviewing that plan decide how long it will take, with consistent effort, to achieve the goal.
If you know what your goal is, but don’t have a solid plan to achieve it, come talk to a coach at CFKI! We would love to help you craft that plan, and can also be an “accountability buddy” to make sure that you are sticking with it!
Once you have your goal in place and your plan written down, stay motivated by reviewing your plan on a daily basis — I review mine during my morning routine before I head to the gym — and visualize yourself working through the plan and actually making improvements. If you can get it in your head that you will succeed at your goal, to the point where you can actually see it happening in your mind’s eye, then it will happen! If it’s a physical skill that you’re after, it might help to watch videos of other people doing it well. The CrossFit.com website has tons of instructional videos for each movement, as does YouTube, I’m sure. You can then incorporate yourself into that image in your mind, as if you are watching yourself do it. Practicing these perfect repetitions in your head will go a long way toward being able to accomplish the skill in “real life”.
Finally, with the planning complete and your mental game strong, you must commit! Focus your time in the gym toward accomplishing your goal, doing extra work at Open Gym or before or after class. A good plan won’t require too much more time in the gym, but it does require consistent effort — if you plan to do 3 sets of strict pull-ups before you leave the gym that day, don’t leave until you do it!
In closing, here’s to 18.3 — the workout that showed us all what we really can do, and in the process doled out a healthy dose of humility and realism toward all of our current CrossFit capabilities. From here, we can all individually choose to accept our fate as someone that “can’t do that”, or instead find some motivation from the failure and drive forward to stronger movement and better fitness!
Train hard,
Ryan
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