No one actually wants to get fit. And no one simply wants to lose weight and tone up.

Why Do We Work Out?

Losing weight and toning up are means to an end, just like CrossFit is for you. Ultimately, we do all this stuff to feel better about ourselves. Losing weight and gaining muscle are just avenues for that.

The truly great discovery about CrossFit is when we realize we can feel better about ourselves based on what our bodies can do, rather than how they look (or more accurately, how we think we look in the mirror).

We may have initially joined a gym because we didn’t feel happy with how we looked or felt. Somewhere, there’s a feeling of inadequacy there. “If only I lost a few pounds, then I’d feel better.”

But how quickly that disappears once we find we’re in an environment that accepts us for who we are, while at the same time encouraging us to better ourselves. The people around us believe we’re capable of things we don’t see just yet, and this leads to victories we never thought possible.

The Power of a Strong Community

On our first day we came into the gym and saw superhuman beings lifting monstrous weights, and controlling their bodies like they existed in zero gravity. Now we’re part of that same club.

“Remembering why we started and looking back on just how far we’ve come takes a bit of effort, as we tend to see the challenges and our shortcomings.” 

Over time though, that feeling of doubt, or inadequacy, can come creeping back with our physical ability. We adapt, and we tend to forget that we once laughed when someone told us we could do a pull up. Now, we’re pissed we can’t get ten unbroken muscle ups. What’s that about?

How to Stay Positive About Your Progress

When you find yourself frustrated at your (alleged) lack of progress, here are five tips to help you enjoy the process and stay happy with what you’re doing:

#1: Remember – You’re With Friends

Remember, you’re among friends. Seriously, remember that. Name another environment where everyone around you only wants to see you succeed. Do they greet you with a big happy hello and fist bump in the office, or do they tell you about the latest fire that needs to be put out? Does your family look excited to see you, or do they tell you the washing machine is broken?

#2: Enjoy Having Time to Yourself

This is your headspace. For one to two hours every day nothing else matters. For those agonizing twenty minutes on that horrible burpee and rowing workout you’re not thinking of that guy who hasn’t texted you back. For those thirty seconds before a PB back squat you ain’t wondering how to tell your mother you won’t make dinner Sunday. Forget about everything. This. Is. Your. Space.

#3: Remember the Progress You’ve Already Made

There was a time when you dreamed of this. You never ever thought you’d be addicted to exercise. Gyms were for meatheads, and you were just an office worker. Now you’re a Certified Badass in Metcons, with brand new wrist wraps that are definitely going to help break that overhead squat barrier.

#4: Don’t Focus on Perfection

No one is perfect. You know this. That guy with a ripped six pack? He wishes he didn’t blow up on 400m runs. That super speedy guy? He wishes he didn’t have to foam roll so much because his calves hurt. That muscle up ninja? He really wants to get past his power clean PB. No one is perfect.

#5: Be Your Own Best Friend

If this was your best friend telling you this, what would you say to her? Yeah, yeah, I know it’s different for you because of this, because of that, and because of that other thing too. But really, what would you say to her? You’d tell her you’re proud of her, and she’s doing amazing, and she’s inspiring you? So take some of your own medicine and realize you’re doing great. And be happy about it, damn it! 

Reflecting on Your Progress and Challenges

Remembering why we started and looking back on just how far we’ve come takes a bit of effort, as we tend to see the challenges and our shortcomings. When we lose our chest-to-bar pull ups it’s so easy to get frustrated. We can keep beating our head against the wall and try to force it. But we’re far more productive and successful if we’re happy and in a good mood.

So breathe, and take stock in all the awesome things you’ve accomplished since you first walked in the door of your gym. Get off the happiness treadmill. It’s probably not a TrueForm anyway.

Check out these related articles:

• Walking: The Simple Path to Feeling Sexier and Living Longer
• How to Be a Thinking Athlete: A User’s Guide to the Brain
• The Real “Ideal” Body Type Is Up to You
• New On Breaking Muscle Today

Photos courtesy of RX’d Photography.

The post This Is Your Space: How to Bring Passion Back to Your Training appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Below, I list the ways to take a break, from worst to best, so you can endear yourself to the coach (and potentially avoid penalty burpees.)

“You’re not out of breath. You’re nowhere near redlining. You just don’t want to push hard today. The problem is everyone knows it.”

#1 – Sandbagging

You’re not out of breath. You’re nowhere near redlining. You just don’t want to push hard today. The problem is everyone knows it. Those dirty looks and glances you think you’re getting? Yeah, everyone knows you’re not pushing yourself today, and they feel like you cheated them. Oh, and wait, did you drop the weight down ten pounds, as well?! C’mon!

#2 – Checking the Whiteboard

You have the memory of a goldfish, or so you tell everyone as you apologetically run past five people to check the whiteboard. Along the way they’ve had to stop swinging their kettlebells to avoid hitting you in the head, and you accidentally kicked someone’s rope, as well. It’s round four of a five-round workout. You know box jumps are next. We all know you’re just stalling.

#3 – Clothing Maintenance

Everyone knows it’s not what you do, it’s how you look while doing it. And those pesky laces on your brand new inov8s (or ultra-discounted Nanos) just keep coming undone. You can’t metcon with your laces untied – that’d be dangerous. So, you pause to tie your laces, this time double knotting them. So what if your heart rate comes down. It’s safety first, right? It’s just weird that no one else has to fix their laces so much.

“There’s more chalk on your hands than in the bucket. So much so that you’ve wiped over half of it off on your clothing. Other members are just taking their chalk off the back of your shirt at this point.”

#4 – Chalking Up

Surely chalking up is legit, right? I mean, you’re chalking up so you can minimize your rest and get those darn toes-to-bar unbroken. Fewer sets, more work! But, this is the 27th time you’ve chalked up. There’s more chalk on your hands than in the bucket. So much so that you’ve wiped over half of it off on your clothing. Other members are just taking their chalk off the back of your shirt at this point.

#5 – Water

Now we’re getting to a legitimate reason to pause. You’ve got to stay hydrated. Everyone has a fundamental right to water. But, let’s make sure it’s not a three-minute sprint workout, where you could have survived without some water. Or, in a longer piece, that you spend more time drinking then clocking up rounds. And don’t even think about “forgetting” your water bottle on the other side of the gym, giving you an extra twenty seconds of rest while you walk across to get it.

#6 – Timing

“I’m working in sets of three, with strict fifteen seconds rest,” you boldly declare. No one can begrudge you now. You, my friend, are a strategic genius. “I’m not going to sprint and limp. No sir, there’ll be no blowing up for this competitive exerciser.” It’s hard to argue with you on this one, you’ve got a game plan.

Note of caution: It’s important to declare your strategy nice and early. You don’t want to be confused with number one – The Sandbagger.

“You, my friend, are a strategic genius. ‘I’m not going to sprint and limp. No sir, there’ll be no blowing up for this competitive exerciser.’ It’s hard to argue with you on this one, you’ve got a game plan.”

#7 – Fixing Equipment

Finally, we’ve hit on a strategy that no coach ever can chastise you for. Those lock-on collars are sliding up the sleeves of the gym’s new barbells. With them loose, the plates will bounce at an angle, shortening the lifespan of both the bar and plates.

A big deep breath and you pause mid-set to tighten those collars before getting (almost) straight back to it. For extra effect, I recommend a shake of the head to heighten the impression that you don’t want to stop, you have to stop, for the good of the gym.

Who could blame you for that? You were totally on course to smash the gym record and go to that dark place. But the gym is more important than one workout.

That Post-Workout Feeling

“Yeah, I could have shaved sixty seconds off except for the collars,” you recount as you swig your protein shake down in the post-workout window, hoping no one has noticed you haven’t gotten into the couch stretch yet.

Your trainer smiles at you and you glow, knowing you’re in the good books and have stolen a precious few seconds of rest that nobody can pin you down on.

How many of these types do you recognize at your gym? What other rest strategies have you seen sneakily deployed during a workout? Post your observations to comments.

Check out these related articles:

• So You Think You’re Badass? 12 Tell-Tale Signs

• Competitive Dishonesty in the CrossFit Open: Who Is at Fault?

• The Athlete’s Manifesto

• What’s New on Breaking Muscle UK Today

Photos courtesy of Jorge Huerta Photography.

The post The 7 Sneakiest Rest Strategies in CrossFit appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

For me it was “Cindy” in a hotel gym, and it kicked the living crap out of me. I’d never felt my muscles ache so much or my lungs burn so bad. I peeled myself off the floor after about ten minutes and said, “That was awesome!”

What I didn’t know was that training like that all the time is the worst thing you can do for your fitness.

Train Like Rich

How do we ensure we’re training properly? By coming up with a pacing strategy, just like Rich Froning. Froning never starts fast, never jumps out the gate, but keeps a steady pace throughout. We can’t replicate Froning’s genetics or his lifestyle, but we can definitely replicate his strategy.

Rich Froning looking determined and composed at the 2014 CrossFit Games

The following four pacing rules apply to metcons. They take a little time to engrain, but not as much time as you’d think. After a few weeks, you’ll naturally begin to figure out what speed you can hit a workout at to give you the best time of the day and the best training effect overall.

1. Panic Breathing Rule

The first and easiest rule is to avoid panic breathing, where you feel you have to breathe rather than feeling in control of your breath. Wall balls are a great example of a movement that induces this.

Listen to your body, and stop before you have to. Spend a couple of metcons noting when you get too out of breath, and then next time stop just short of that. Once you’ve stopped, compose yourself, then carry on.

“It’s not enough to just slow down a little bit, as you have to give your body time to catch up to the excess workload it’s just had to perform.”

2. Heart Rate Rule

We generally start blowing up when our heart rate exceeds 155bpm for experienced CrossFitters or about 140bpm if you’re new. At this point, we’re producing waste quicker than our bodies can flush it out.

The next time you’re performing a gassy metcon, take a moment to check whether your pacing is on point. Stop and take your pulse for 6 seconds every 2 minutes:

• If the count is 12 beats in those 6 seconds, it roughly correlates to 120bpm. You need to speed up a bit.
• 14-15 beats you’re bang on target
• More than 15 beats, you need to slow way down.

It’s not enough to just slow down a little bit, as you have to give your body time to catch up to the excess workload it’s just had to perform.

Through checking your heart rate during a WOD once in a while, you’ll get a good idea of what appropriate pacing feels like. Repeat this simple test any time you want to reassess your pacing strategy.

This rule works best for workouts where there’s little to no muscular fatigue or technique fall-off. In other words, where there’s not a lot else to stop you other than blowing up.

3. 40% Rule

For bodyweight work, never do more than forty percent of your maximum capacity in any one burst. Sometimes you may be working closer to twenty percent, particularly if it’s a high volume workout (think “The 100s” at Regionals). If you’ve 10 strict pull ups, never do more than 4 in one go. If you’ve 20 pull ups to do, you’re better off doing 5 sets of 4 with 20 seconds rest. Rest periods between 15-30 seconds work best for developing your gymnastic tolerance.

This only really works if you bother to time your rest. If you guess your rest, you’ll rest too short in the beginning and too long at the end. Use the clock.

4. Total Volume and the Last Round Rule

An easy error fall into is looking at just one round in isolation, and thinking “I could do it all unbroken.”

Remember, you’re not doing one round, you’re doing a bunch of rounds, so you’ve got to look at the complete picture. There’s no point starting fast and losing more time later on in the workout than you would have “lost” by taking suitable early rest periods.

“The average CrossFitter loses about 10-30 seconds per workout break, depending on the exercise and what you do.”

The biggest counterargument to this rule is, “Yeah, but I felt good at the start.” Let me tell you a story about Trevor. We were doing “Helen” (3 rounds of 400m run, 21 kettlebell swings, 12 pull ups). I’d spoken about total volume and the last round rule.

Trevor was a pretty experienced CrossFitter and had done Helen multiple times. We knew he was consistent on the runs and he could swing a kettlebell all day long. So we looked at the pull ups and decided that 6 and 6 was a consistent strategy.

Round one, he hit 12 unbroken pull ups. “Hmmm” I thought to myself, wondering where this would go. Round two, he hit 6, 3, 2, and 1. Round three, he hit 4, 3, 3, and 2 to finish.

The average CrossFitter loses about 10-30 seconds per workout break, depending on the exercise and what you do. Trevor took 15 seconds on average and took six total breaks, equaling 90 seconds. Had he gone with our initial strategy, he would have only taken three breaks. He would have taken 45 seconds off his “Helen time” – not by being any fitter, just by being smarter.

How Do You Know If You’ve Paced Right?

Take the example of a three-round workout:

• Round one should feel like you’re going way too slow and you have a strong urge to just fire on ahead.
• Round two should feel like you’re perfectly pacing.
• The final round should feel like you’re barely able to get the work in with the determined workload/rest interval

What Does It Mean If Your Strategy Fails?

• If you failed before the halfway point, you can safely say your strategy was too ambitious. Next time, start slower and/or with fewer reps. If you did three handstand push ups every 20 seconds, try three every 30 seconds, or two every 20 seconds.
• If your strategy fell apart towards the end, keep the same strategy next time with the aim of holding it for the entire workout.
• If your strategy worked perfectly, next time look to reduce rest, perform larger sets, or move a little more quickly without blowing up.

I often hear that thinking and training like this is not fun. Sometimes you want to just hit a workout and see what happens. I agree there’s a time for that, and you’ve got to enjoy your training.

But all I know is that it’s not fun failing to finish a workout. It’s not fun starting great and then being reduced to having to take a minute break just to attempt one more rep. And it’s certainly not fun when you look back after six weeks or six months and realise your times haven’t improved and your max reps haven’t gone up.

• If your strategy worked perfectly, next time look to reduce rest, perform larger sets, or move a little more quickly without blowing up.

• If your strategy worked perfectly, next time look to reduce rest, perform larger sets, or move a little more quickly without blowing up.

• If your strategy worked perfectly, next time look to reduce rest, perform larger sets, or move a little more quickly without blowing up.

There is a great sense of accomplishment in looking at a workout, figuring out a strategy, and executing it. Then knowing you’ve done your absolute best at it.

As a much smarter coach than me said, “Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.”

Enjoy this? Read these:

• Don’t Be One of These 7 Types of Sneaky CrossFitter
• PB Your Fran Time With These 8 Easy Fixes
• How to Build Your Athlete’s “Battery”
• What’s New on Breaking Muscle UK Today

Photo 1 ©2014 CrossFit, Inc. Used with permission from CrossFit, Inc.

Photo 2 courtesy of Shutterstock.

Photo 3 and 4 courtesy of CrossFit Empirical.

The post How to Strategize and Win a WOD Like Rich Froning appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

55lbs feels alright, as usual. Then 65lbs, then 75lbs, then 85lbs. Now it’s time to move to 5 pound jumps. But then it happens. It’s always, ALWAYS around 95-100lbs you start to miss. Why?

In the immortal words of Yogi Berra (though he was talking about baseball), this game is 90 percent mental and the other half is physical. Sure, there could be a technical aspect of your lift you need to address. But a lot of the time we’re physically able to shift metal. We fail because we psych ourselves out. Here are some strategies to overcome this.

Don’t think or analyze. Just go.

1. Take Odd Jumps

Instead of always following the same progression, for example:

75 – 80 – 95 – 100lbs

Try this:

65 – 75 – 80 – 88 – 94 – 101 – 108 – 115lbs

BOOM – sneaky PR!

How It Works:

The human brain is a funny thing. We can only wrap our head around simple concepts. If something is complex, we simplify it. So you “know” that 100lbs is heavy. But you have no frame of reference for 94lbs or 101lbs. We can take advantage of this tendency by taking odd jumps.

Another advantage of odd jumps is that your body adapts very quickly, so it knows what 85lbs feels like. By forcing it to be able to lift at weights a pound either side, you train the body to lift any weight. Some technical issues that were hidden at 85lbs may show themselves at 83lbs or 92lbs. These small weight adjustments make you more mindful of the technique of the lift, rather than allowing you to fall into the “Oh yeah I know what this feels like” autopilot mode.

For this to work, I suggest constantly changing up weight increments between jumps. You might go up by 5lbs some days, then change it to 3lb or 1lb jumps as you get on higher percentages. Some days, it will be beneficial to make large jumps (15-25lb) as well. Keep changing the pattern so your body gets used to lifting any weight, any jump.

Make small weight adjustments to train the body to lift any weight.

2. Lift Under Fatigue

After all, this is CrossFit, right? I’ll assume most of you reading aren’t just weightlifters, and may enter a few local throwdowns. Lifting under fatigue is another way to expose issues in your lifts and work on improving them. At my affiliate, we’ve found twelve-minute increments work best. Here are some examples:

In a 12-minute window:

• Run 800m
• Establish a 1RM snatch in the remaining time.

In a 12-minute window:

• 50 bar facing burpees
• Establish a 1RM clean and jerk in the remaining time.

In a 12-minute window:

• 75 wall balls
• Establish a 1RM power snatch in the remaining time.

In a 12-minute window:

• 50 calorie row
• Establish a 1RM power clean and push jerk in the remaining time.

How It Works:

We can often talk ourselves out of a lift. Sure, tradition tells us that we need two-plus minutes rest between max effort lifts, and the Olympic lifts aren’t to be done under high fatigue or rushed. But how many things has CrossFit turned on its head? By switching off our brains to what we feel we need, we can just go for the lifts. We’ve had quite a number of experienced CrossFitters and lifters hit PRs under these circumstances.

You will also be able to lift under a number of different conditions, because we never know when or how our 1RM lifts will be tested in CrossFit. Watch Oxana Slivenko (at 9 minutes 7 seconds) attempting a 210lb snatch at the 2015 Meridian Regional just moments after missing it. No time to think or analyze, just go.

3. Perform EMOM Work

Building volume at high percentages is crucial to making big lifts consistently. A protocol that has worked really well for us is EMOM (every minute on the minute) work. Start at 80-85 percent, and add just 2lbs each minute. If you miss 3 times, drop back 10lbs and start again.

How It Works:

Because you’ve only got a minute, and you need to change plates, you don’t have overly long to analyze your lifts. (See how I’m getting you out of your own way again?)

With the shorter time domain, you have to reduce to just one cue. “Right, Colm, pull back from the floor”, which ends up becoming the word “back.” I simply don’t have the time to say to myself, “Tight set up, drift forward, arch my back, drive the knees back, roll the weight to the heels, stay over the bar, hit the power position, accelerate vertically, elbows high, pull under, land flat footed, and push up into the bar.”

4. Hit Multiple Reps

Percentage work and max out sessions aren’t the only way to develop strength in the lifts. And particularly if you’re lifting for CrossFit, you need to be able to hit multiple reps, touch and go, at heavy weights.

How It Works:

I have poor set up in the snatch. I just don’t like being down there, so I tend to rush it. I have a weak upper back, too. By doing max effort touch-and-go lifts at 50, 60, 70, 80, and 90 percent, I’ve been able to develop my metcon capacity for barbell pieces at a range of weights. Consistency of set up and my pull have come on immensely, too.

At my affiliate, we’ve found this works best for power and hang lifts.

5. Lift With Flat Feet

It’s a simple one, but drop the lifting shoes every now and again.

How It Works:

We get awfully used to the feel of our lifting shoes, and can become over-reliant on them. Lifting in flat shoes rather than your lifting shoes can enable to develop extra sensitivity in your weight distribution and body awareness. It will also force you to develop greater flexibility. Nothing like a little brute force mobility.

Try each of these tips and let me know what works for you.

You’ll also enjoy:

• 7 Ways Stress Can Harm Weightlifting Technique
• Why It’s Not All About the Weight You Are Lifting
• 2 Effective Methods of Getting Your Lifts Off the Ground
• What’s New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photos courtesy of CrossFit Ireland.

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