CrossFit South Bend

Hey everyone,

Scrolling through my Facebook feed this morning, I notice a lot of anger directed toward 15.4 / CrossFit / Dave Castro (as if he is the one programming them) / or anyone else who caused handstand push ups to be one of the first movements. As if someone had a special team of people spying on you individually saying “That person isn’t good at Handstand Push Ups, lets put them first.”

Lets create some discussion.

The CrossFit Open is…what? A qualifier to Regionals. Regionals is what? A qualifier to the CrossFit Games. What is the purpose of the CrossFit Games? Per their definition of fitness, to find the fittest in the world.

What do they define the CrossFit Open as? Google it. When you click on the CrossFit Open, in the first paragraph.

The CrossFit Games stand alone as the ultimate test of fitness. No test, regardless of its lofty claims, can grant legitimate title to the best without first providing access to all.

When it first began. It was meant to answer the questions “who is the fittest? how do you know?”

Who is the fittest? How do you know? Since 2007, the CrossFit Games have evolved to answer these questions. Each year the Games are a more comprehensive test of fitness, and the athletes raise the level of competition to unprecedented heights. The average regional athlete in 2015 will be dramatically more capable than the world’s best in 2007.

The Open means something different to everyone, whether its competing against your friends, competing against your enemies, measuring yourself against the fittest, or measuring yourself against last year. There are now an incredible amount of athletes competing in the open, the range of difficulty of the workouts has and will increase each year.

I’ve competed in the open every year since the beginning, and I’ve heard it all, and I’ve been in that situation. I’ve been the one when they put up 11.1: 30 double unders and snatches I was the one that sucked at doubles and tripped excessively.

I’ve seen people in 11.3 with 5 minutes of 165lb squat clean and jerks try like hell to get at least ONE Squat clean and jerk for 5 minutes.

Or hear people with no work capacity bitch about 7 minutes of burpees in 2012, or mad that the Snatch ladder in 12.2 didn’t move up based off of THEIR max.

What about in 2013? I can specifically remember getting someone their first muscle up…then them not having the capacity to work past the 150 wall balls and 90 doubles to get to them.

Or in 2014, hearing people complain about 14.2…”well I guess I’ll only spend 3 minutes trying to get a chest to bar pull up”

What does the open tell you. What you are bad at. If you had a hopper with an infinite amount of workouts in it and had to pick 5, you know what workouts are coming out of that? 5 workouts that you suck at. Prepare yourself for the Unknown and Unknowable.

Now more than ever they have more people competing with the scaled division, but this is a vast improvement over the prior years. Did you prefer to do 3 minutes of attempts at chest to bars? or trying for 14 minutes to get toes to bar in 14.4?

They are trying to separate the people they want as the fittest, and in the past those people have bled through the open and into the  games no matter the situation as the top competitors, but also, the sorting process was a bit off. When you look at regionals competitors and games competitors, there were people at regionals or even the games (Froning when he lost to Holmberg) that couldn’t climb ropes, lift heavy, or do muscle ups…because they were the best at chipping through the work capacity at the beginning.They want the people that can do the regionals and games work up front.

It says, if you want to be here, this is what you need to do.

I agree that they could program a few of these workouts a bit better. Imagine the logistics of keeping the standards of 200,000 people through 5 workouts.

Your results reflect what you’ve been working on for the last year. Everyone comes to us at a different training age, and a different training level, and adapts at different rates, with different lifestyles and genetics to take into account.

Look at your last year of training and tell me what you did

You did CrossFit Football and you are stronger, but that doesn’t mean you are strong enough…yet. You  did competitive CrossFit programming, that doesn’t mean you have the work capacity…yet Did you watch your diet? for the whole year? did you purposely gain weight to get stronger or lose weight to get better at gymnastics movements? Did you work on your weaknesses? through the whole year? until you got them? Did you ask to work on your weaknesses? and did you listen?

Don’t make it personal.  Separate what you make feel like was a failure from your identity. Just because you haven’t found a successful way of doing a muscle up, or handstand push up (yet) doesn’t mean you are a failure.  These are completely separate thoughts, yet many of us blur the lines between them.  Personalizing the workout can wreak havoc on our self-esteem confidence, and progress over the next training year.

We fail at the margins of our experience

-Greg Glassman

These things take time. Usually, more time than someone is willing to spend on them.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Its almost insulting to the people who have worked so hard to get those movements to not put them first occasionally, instead of hiding them behind some work capacity.

So what is the Open and what does it tell you?

The Open is a competition to find the fittest. But it is still a fun competition for all of us at the gym. It tells you where you are, what you worked on, how much you worked on it, and what you need to work on for  the coming year if you want to get better.

The Iron never lies to you. You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of talk, get told that you’re a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.

-Henry Rollins

What movements will be in the open and why do I want you to do it?

Rx’d movements are something to work hard for, to plan your training and fall short, and then do it again, and again, and again until you get to where you need to be. the same movements that are in the open…EVERY….YEAR. With the exception of a few. I still want you to do it, because it pushes people. It makes people emotional charged in the spirit of competition.

Take stock, learn and adapt. Look at the workouts analytically and curiously, suspending feelings of anger, frustration, blame or regret. Did you not get the score you were hoping for? What might have produced a better outcome? Was the failure to achieve what you wanted completely beyond your control? After gathering the facts, step back and ask yourself, what did I learn from this?  Think about how you will apply this newfound insight going forward into your next year here.

Stop dwelling on it. Obsessing over past “failures” will not change the outcome of what you got in the prior workouts. In fact, it will only intensify the outcome, trapping you in an emotional doom-loop that disables you from moving on. You cannot change the past, but you can shape your future. The faster you take a positive step forward, the quicker you can leave these debilitating, monopolizing thoughts behind.

Release the need for approval of others. Often our fear of failure is rooted in our fear of being judged and losing others’ respect and esteem. We easily get influenced by what people say about us. Remember, this is your life, not theirs.  What one person considers to be true about you is not necessarily the truth about you, and if you give too much power to others’ opinions, it could douse your passion and confidence to training, undermining your ability to ultimately succeed. Look inwardly more often.

Try a new point of view.  Our upbringing – as people and professionals – has given us an unhealthy attitude toward failure. One of the best things you can do is to shift your perspective and belief system away from the negative (“If I fail to get what I want in this workout, I’m weak, incapable, and am destined to fall short”) and embrace more positive associations (“If I fail, I am one step closer to succeeding; I am smarter and more savvy because the knowledge I’ve gained through this experience”).

You can hardly find an historic or current-day success story that isn’t also a story of great failure.  And if you ask those who have distinguished themselves through their achievements, they will tell you that failure was a critical enabler of their success.  It was their motivator.  Their teacher.  A stepping stone along their path to greatness.  The difference between them and the average person is that they didn’t give up.

Hopefully you’ll use this workout and say, you know what, next year I’ll have those movements. Use the feedback you are getting from your results from this year and instead of saying “Fuck CrossFit because they put something in I can’t do.” Say, next year I’ll be able to all of this, so fuck everyone else who didn’t train as hard as I did.

“I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

-Michael Jordan

-B

Post thoughts to comments.