Training Season – by Jessica Sieff
By: Brandon Wilton
[vc_row][vc_column width="1/1"][text_output]Training Season – Jess S.
Every year in March, around the time the CrossFit Open has ended, CrossFit athletes who aren’t going to regionals or to the Games hear the same declaration in gyms all around the world:
The Open is over. Training season has begun.
Those four little words, “training season has begun,” sends a shrill down the steely spines of athletes young and old, small and tall – the flexible and the otherwise awkwardly immobile…
Training season has begun.
We walk around super excited like kids comparing our wish lists for Christmas or Hanukkah (that’s right … represent).
“What program are you doing this year?”
“Are you getting ripped?”
“Are you getting jacked?”
“Are you gonna get shredded?”
“Are you going to fold yourself into a pretzel and then do a muscle up – with one hand?”
“Totally. Me too.”
Hell yeah. Training season has begun.
This morning I set myself up for a set of 10×3 backs squats at 70-75%. I warmed up. I felt good. Full disclosure my coach does NOT know I’m writing this right now. So I have no idea what she’s going to think when I say that as I got up to 70% something just started wavering a little in my brain. Maybe it’s that I’m coming back from having some hip issues and I haven’t squatted in a while but in all honesty, 70% is not that heavy for me yet I was instinctively afraid of it.
“I’m not sure about this,” I thought to myself. “Hrm. Well. That’s heavy. I’ll try it. No, wait, I’m going to edge off the weight just a little bit. Okay. Set two.”
I started taking more time between sets. It was taking me at least three minutes to build up the courage to do THREE squats. I knocked the weight down a little more. My monkey brain came alive.
“Why is this freaking me out so much? It’s not heavy. Is it heavy? What did I eat last night? Is that it? Is it because I had dessert? No. I’ve had dessert before. Did I not sleep enough? I don’t get it. Let me just – no, still freaked out. Is someone going to get mad at me? Coach will totally be mad at me. There are only three other people in this gym right now. Are they all mad at me? This is ridiculous. Just squat it. There. Shit, I don’t know if I can do this for five more sets. Sure I can. It’s light. It doesn’t feel light. I’ll walk over here and then walk back and it will all be fine. Nope. Still not so sure about it …”
And then I remembered something I’d read recently in a book, completely unrelated to CrossFit. In the book, the author mentioned this theory about seasons. He said we all experience seasons – seasons when we might be laser focused on certain objectives, or battling a particularly busy time in our studies or our work. Maybe you’re raising a tiny human and balancing that with managing those other little things, you know, like paying bills and keeping your house from falling down. Maybe you are chest deep in writing your dissertation or you’re defending it or something. I don’t really know what it means to defend something like that but if that’s you – I hope you have a sword because it seems to me that a sword would come in handy in the case of defending something like that. Plus it’s just really cool to have a sword.[/text_output][container][vc_row_inner padding_top="150px" padding_bottom="150px" border="none" bg_image="12417" parallax="true"][vc_column_inner width="1/1"][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/container][text_output]Maybe you’re about to move your entire family into a new house. You’re starting a new job. You have new responsibilities at your current job. Any of those things qualify as a season. You have shit to deal with – and that might mean this is not training season for you.
I’m a writer. You might not know that because I don’t write a lot for public consumption right now. I write talking points. And memos. And recommendations. And sometimes, sadly, I have to write people’s emails. Email is hard, guys. The struggle (for some) is real.
This morning, while I was spending SO MUCH time considering a single set of squats I realized something. I’m not in training season. I’m in, ‘just trying to do the best I can at the workout’ season. I’m already dealing with new responsibilities at my job, I’ve made a commitment to study and write more every night so I don’t lose my passion for doing so. Between all of that – the writing, the work, the commute, getting groceries, paying bills and making sure my family still recognizes my face – I’m about as tapped out as I can possibly be.
So what does that mean for my training season?
That doesn’t mean I don’t try. That doesn’t mean I don’t push. It means I had to listen to my body today. And I’ve gotten better at that over time. Sometimes, I do have to knock down the weight. Some days, mentally, I just can’t handle mustering up what it takes to hit the numbers that I want to hit. And that’s okay. It doesn’t mean I won’t hit them. When I listened to myself this morning, I still felt challenged by the rest of the sets and I still felt worn out by the end of my workout. When you work to your capacity – that’s when you feel the challenge and the triumph. But you have to know that capacity is fluid because it’s not all centered on your strength. It’s also reliant on your emotional and mental wellbeing.
We CrossFitters are bonded by more than just the surface goals of losing weight or getting healthy or building muscle or bending ourselves into a pretzel.
We’re bonded by our hunger for reaching goals and setting new ones. We’re bonded by wanting more. That can make us feel, at times, that we have to run ourselves into the ground to hit the highest number on the whiteboard. We don’t. We’ll do better in the long run if we don’t. You’ve seen the memes that say, “What are you training for?” “Life, Mother F$%#er.” It’s true. That’s what we’re training for. That takes a lot.
If you’re beating yourself up over your performance in the gym … if you’re hesitating at every work out and doing an incredibly good job of talking yourself out of even just coming in... Maybe you just need to recognize your season. Take some of that pressure off of yourself. Come in and just move for an hour. I guarantee your body will respond. It’ll guide you to how far you can go. And you’ll get stronger with every step.[/text_output][/vc_column][/vc_row]
