5 Workouts
Or so it might seem…
A hot topic that always seems to come up during the Open is, should you re-do the workouts?
There’s the “one and done” philosophy. At the higher levels of this competition (and other competitions), you only get one shot at the workout. With this style in mind, you’ve got to put everything you’ve got on the line the first time, because there are no second chances.
Or…
Do you think that practice makes perfect? Practice and re-do the workouts until you’ve figured out the proper strategy and come up with a satisfactory score? Hell, maybe you just barely missed a round by a rep that you know you can get. Is it worth it to you to go back and get that round in?
Personally, I was a “one and done” kind of person. I’ll watch videos of other people and try to come up with my own strategies, but I won’t actually take dry runs at the workout. This carries over to normal competition, I’ve never done a full competition WOD more than that one time. Granted, maybe this method is not the best strategy if you’re looking to win, but I would like to credit my wits and athletic ability if I were to win.
Notice, I said was. This year I broke my rule and re-did 14.2 due to an unsatisfactory score. When I originally did it, I had come one rep shy of going on to my round of 14’s after getting no-repped a few times in a row. Not clutch at all. I had a huge internal struggle on whether or not I should be doing the WOD over again, mainly because I didn’t want to put myself through that hell over again, but partly because of my “one and done” philosophy. The second time around, I finished half of the 14 round and was satisfied with my score; satisfied that I re-did the WOD and it ended up being worth it.
I re-did it because I wanted that rep…I had to prove my fitness to myself…and I knew that that last rep would land me thousands of spots from where my previous score would. Am I ashamed of myself because I broke one of my rules of Crossfit?
Hell no.
One of the facets of Crossfit is that it’s measurable, observable and repeatable!
Without that, Crossfit would be just another run of the mill fitness program. How else would we know whether or not we’re progressing in our fitness if we didn’t do our benchmarks multiple times? We improve ourselves by repetition, whether it be a skill, strength or WOD.
So…don’t be so quick to look down on those that repeat workouts, for whatever reason. They could be trying to make it to regionals and that one rep means climbing 100 spots on the leaderboard, or they might just need to do it to prove something to themselves, or maybe they’re just doing it for funsies. Isn’t that what we’re all doing this for anyways?
