Train like an athlete

I've written posts before about the difference between training and working out. Everyone knows that I believe in training not just working out. But how should we train? Crossfit is "constantly varied functional movements performed at high intensity". That will get you a long ways when you are first starting out. If you come straight off the couch and begin crossfit you will without a doubt become more fit. Your strength will go up, capacity will increase, and body fat will decrease. At some point though you will stop seeing results, the earth shattering gains you make in the beginning will come to a screeching halt.Believe me I've been there. One of two things happens at this point. Either you give up and think this is the best you will ever be and allow yourself to be a mediocre excuse for a human. Or you get pissed off and decide that you're going to find a way to blast through that plateau. So how do we do that Chappy?

You begin to train like an athlete. Athletes do not go into the gym without a plan. The don't make up a bunch of crap on the spot and begin their workout. They don't do workouts because "They're fun!!" They also don't do workouts so that they can tell their co-workers about the workout and watch the reaction from them. They workout to get better at their chosen sport. That means doing shit they don't want to do. If you have a terrible squat, guess what? You need to squat. I hate long drawn out workouts but I do them every week because I need to in order to get better at my chosen sport. The sport of LIFE!

"But Chappy, Crossfit is my sport." OK fine but after a certain point (usually around a year of consistent training) Crossfit won't make you a better Crossfitter anymore. You need a more specific plan. Now I know some of you die hard Crossfitters are thinking that this means you won't be doing Crossfit. My rebuttal to that is that constantly varied can still be goal specific. You won't do the same workouts all the time but all the workouts will have the same goal. See where I'm going with this? If you want to get better you have to have goals. Goals are the reason for doing something. (If you need more input on goals read "On to the next one" from 6/13/12)

So when you begin to stall out in your training and things become difficult. If you're the person that wants to be satisfied with what you have and are content to be mediocre go ahead and stop reading right now! Your kind is not welcome here. Here we are never content to run with the herd. Average is not good enough. We will do what is necessary to reach the next level. And once we have accomplished that goal we will set our sights higher and work to reach the next level. We are the ones that are never satisfied.