Considering redoing 17.1? Read this first!
We’ve had a lot of people asking or mentioning redoing 17.1, so we thought a group post might be good! There will be one opportunity Monday (more on that at the end).
We are super proud of everyone’s performance on Open 17.1. For so many of you this is your first experience with the CrossFit open and we want give you a huge shout out and round of applause because that’s a huge deal!! Being in that competition environment is a totally different animal than a normal class workout and we hope you had fun challenging yourself!
But, we understand that some of you (especially after watching others) had ideas of how you could have done things differently to get a better score or time. Or after seeing how close you were to finishing, wished you could have pushed harder and made it to the end. We LOVE that you guys are so excited about the Open and want to test your fitness! We LOVE that you believe in yourselves and want to see if you can do a little bit better.
BUT, we also want to caution you about getting into an “I’ll-redo-it-to-get-a-better-score” mindset.
In fact, we’d encourage you to consider a “once-and-done” mindset for Open workouts.
Here’s a few reasons for it: (paraphrased from the below linked articles, which we’d recommend reading in full.)
- Doing a workout once is good practice! In any competition, you only get one chance at each workout, so it is good to practice to do the same with the open workouts.
- Keep it fun! How bored would you be if you had to do the same workout every day of the week when you came into CFA? My guess – pretty dang bored. There is no reason to over think or stress about the Open, it is just another workout, you have done plenty of others just like it before. Consider using the day you want to redo the workout to do a different workout – improve your fitness through varied programming and prepare for whatever comes this week!
- Stay injury free! Open workouts are tough, especially when you push your limits. Repeating the same volume of the same movements in such as small space of time will increase your chance of injury. Isn’t your lower back smoked as is? You know what is worse than doing 150 dumbbell snatches and 75 burpees in 20 minutes? Doing ANOTHER 150 snatches and 75 burpees ~48 hours later. Don’t be surprised when you can’t stand up straight after doing 300 dumbbell snatches in such a short time.
- The winning mentality! This is the big one. What happens to your mindset when you tell yourself that you will only do each workout once? What happens when you get 5 minutes in to a 7 minute AMRAP of burpees? If you might redo the wod, you start to want to slow down. BUT if you know you are only doing that workout once, you are more likely to give everything you have in that workout. Don’t give yourself the excuse in the back of your mind “It’s ok, I’ll just do it again” .. because you will likely slow down, get a bad score and then have to put yourself through that same pain again.
- So is there ever a time that you should consider redoing an open workout? Yes. When you’re on the cusp of making it to regionals or the next stage of the competition and you have the opportunity to make that cut if you can get a slightly better score. If we honestly check in with ourselves, most of us aren’t at that level at the moment (as cool as that would be). It doesn’t mean you will never have a shot at regionals, but if that is a goal, you have to train hard to get there. Did you know you have to be top 20 in your region to advance? (Our region has over 7400 women and 8300 men registered – not including teen and masters divisions!). Just a shout out… Coach Trevor is attempting to get to regionals this year. He’s been training 3 hrs a day for over a year and we are stoked to see how he does!
Okay, so what about those who still want to redo 17.1? Can you?
Yes. You can come in at 1pm tomorrow (Monday 2/27). Whatever your reasons for wanting to redo it, this is your opportunity. Please let us know ahead of time if you will be coming so we can plan for you.
Congrats again on completing 17.1 and we can’t wait to see what 17.2 will hold!!!
Further reading on one and done mentality:
http://www.innerfight.com/oneanddoneinthisyearsopen/
http://www.tabatatimes.com/one-done-practical-guide-crossfit-games-open/