So sadly life and the Open have been getting in the way of training. Wait! What? Did I just say the Open is getting in the way of my CrossFit training? How is that possible? It is though. I'm doing the Open not to make it to regionals, but for a couple of reasons - 1) to participate in this community-wide event that's bigger than any one person's training, one box's comraderie, one week's success; 2) as a coach to inspire and encourage my athletes to take part of the CrossFit community outside of CFMC's walls, and 3) ummm...because it's fun!
But all this doesn't necessarily jive with my training program. Dickey Blaze has us on a competition prep that he has carefully thought out. It's programmed - all of it - to lead up to the end of summer Garage Games events. Every week is building upon another. We spent January and February getting STRONG! Heavy lifting and heavy weight WODs. Plus throwing in the skills that we needed to develop to have a bigger base to work from (who didn't love spending 2 months with hands constantly sore from grip work on the monkey bars?). March and April are very much about speed and power. We're focusing on the Oly Lifts and our WODs often have components of high cadence work with short rest periods - over and over and over again (my forearms are cramping remembering the 6 rounds of 2 min max power cleans). Who knows what the next 2 months are!?
The Open however is unknowable. Which while that is a huge part of the fun, it leaves me - miss retarded shoulders - doing a very high volume push press WOD, a heavy push press lift, and serious snatch work the same week as 12.3. So it should have been no surprise to me when lo and behold, my left rotator cuff is jacked again after 12.3. Ughhhhh!!!! Seriously? I feel like it was just yesterday that I was coming back from months of PT! And here I am again, having to rest my shoulder, ice every day, and popping the antiinflammatories like they're jelly beans.
While I love the Open and what it does for CrossFit and how people have life-changing experiences, I've got to focus on the bigger picture. Do I want to compete in the summer RX at Garage Games events in top condition? Or do I want to shoot for the top 300 in my region now to be useless in another 2 weeks? That's a no brainer for me. Which means listening to my body and my coach - as annoying as that is.
Because this program was never meant to be pick and choose what you want to do. That's not how we get better. Very few things irk me more than when a person comes into the gym, looks at the board, and THEN decides maybe he'll do that WOD or something else. Look at the board. If there's something you can't do because of injury or a legitimate reason, your coach will modify or scale accordingly. Me seeing ring dips is not a reason to say - No thanks coach, I'm going to do X instead. How would I ever get better at ring dips? I know I've done this in the past, and it wasn't until I finally got so frustrated with myself about not getting better at certain things that I realized my cherry-picking ways were to blame. It took even longer for me to realize that listening to your coaches spans beyond doing the WOD assigned - it includes nutrition and *gasp* rest. (Never thought you'd hear me say that Twinkie, did you?). How long did I fight Drew on my eating? Where would I be if I had listened instead of uselessly trying to outrain my diet? And even still I fight Twinkie and Dickey Blaze on the rest at times. Better now that I have some of my own clients who itch to push every single day - but I know I still struggle with it.
I just hope it doesn't require those I train to find me as annoying as all the coaches I've had that were right before things click. Seriously - it can't be that they're all as stubborn as me...or maybe....? :P
Good luck to everyone else doing the Open - particularly my favorite Spider Monkey who's giving it more than I thought someone could.
