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It's like high school was for me. Spend most of the year joking around, flirting with girls and putting off homework and then wait until the last week of school to cram everything in. That's probably how you feel at this moment. Asking yourself, "how can I get double unders" or saying "I don't even know if I can get 55 pounds over my head!" To worry is normal but you've already done all the hard stuff to this point. You won't turn into a double under pro in 24 hours and you won't magically develop the strength and capacity to cycle 55 pounds consecutively overnight. No amount of cramming will make it happen. All you can do now is put your weeks, months and years of training to good use when it comes down to game time tomorrow. Some of you will struggle. Some of you might fail but the thing to remember is your cumulative efforts help your team no matter what. Taking part in a competition is months of training that lead up to an event that will inevitably seem like it was over before it started. All you can do now is prepare and execute. How does that occur? I'm tried to consolidate my knowledge on the subject keeping in mind that you only have 24 hours to go. Again, from a physical stand point: you won't get stronger and you won't acquire new skills while you sleep but, if you make mistakes, you'll be weaker and skills might disappear overnight. Follow these steps to victory. 1. Nutrition: If it ain't broke don't fix it. Now is not the time to try some crazy carb load that you've never done before. Nor is it the time to try a new pre workout supplement guaranteed to get you pumped. Stick to basics. Eat a hearty meal before bed with some carbs, protein and fat. On the morning of, drink lots of water, minimal coffee and eat a balanced breakfast with a good balance of all three macronutrients. Drink water throughout the competition and maybe bring a banana or some other fruit to eat quickly between events that will digest well. Keep in mind, it's only an hour, it will probably few just like going through a normal class but a little on the harder end. (Think: a normal Wednesday) 2. Sleep: This is probably the easiest thing to screw up and it would possible have the biggest impact on performance. Get your ass in bed. Please. Less than 6 hours of optimal sleep has been proven to degrade performance by a significant amount. Sleep in a dark room with the AirCon on and distraction turned off. 3. Equipment: luckily tomorrow isn't too intensive as far as gear is concerned. You might need some tape for the hands, your lifters, a belt and some amino acids or something. Whatever you plan on taking into the gym, pack it tonight! Don't spend the morning thinking about what you might have forgotten.  4. Headspace: I hate negativity. "I can't" is a phrase that stings a little every time I hear it. Spend the evening before a competition in some quiet place in your home. Think about the positives. Visualize a successful performance. Put those positive thoughts out there. Tell yourself that you're an asset to your team. You can do anything you set your mind to. Make it happen and leave the doubt at the doorstep. 5. Plan-Take the final workout for example. 40-30-20-10. Cals on assault bike, cals on rower, burpees. With a 15 minute cap, that's 900 seconds of work. Divide that by 300 (the total number of reps in the workout) you get 3. That's 3 seconds per rep. If you know it takes you 5 seconds per burpee but you can row 30 cals in a minute, maybe on the rower is where you belong. Break each workout down in your head and communicate your thoughts with your team members to see if it jives with what they had in mind.  Most importantly and above all, have fun. We put these in house competitions on in order to accomplish a few things. We want you all to experience the thrill and excitement of competing that you might not have experienced in decades. We want you do push yourself more than you thought possible. We want to do these things in a safe, fun and supportive environment. So don't be surprised if you start taking it too seriously, a coach comes over and tells you to "chill, just have fun!"
Good luck to all competitors tomorrow!
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 I was recently asked by one of my clients to write about CrossFit and describe what it is that we actually do at CrossFit Cavaliers to a couple of Hong Kong University professors who haven't got a single clue of what CrossFit is. As I pondered and did a little research by asking around, I noticed that non-CrossFitters often correlate CrossFit to what is known as High Intensity Interval Training (HiiT). Well then, here's some insight to all Non-CrossFitters and CrossFit beginners, to better understand what CrossFit is all about. Titled: Is CrossFit just kind of like HiiT? To really understand the differences between CrossFit and HiiT, let's first look at the latter. What exactly is HiiT? HiiT is a highly customisable training strategy/ program that includes high intensity anaerobic training blocks followed by less intense rest periods. By drifting your body from an anaerobic (high) zone of workload to an aerobic (low) zone of workload, HiiT is effective when it comes to improving glucose metabolism and building athletic efficacy within a short period of time. #In short, these regimes have been hugely popular because of the fat burning and athletic performance improvements it provides.# Some of the more notable HiiT programs in recent years include Tabata, Insanity and P90X. All of which follow the frame work as presented above with different variables such as movements, work time and rest time. Now how is CrossFit different from HiiT? Let's start with the obvious argument: Olympic Lifts & Strength training For those of you who haven't done CrossFit before or very little, Olympic lifts and other strength training movements are big segments in CrossFit. Movements such as the clean & jerk and snatch are seldom seen in HiiT programs. More importantly, the obvious focus of strength training is to get stronger by lifting heavier weights, which has a completely different focus compared to HiiT programming. Now what about MetCons? For those of you who don't know what MetCon is: MetCon stands for Metabolic Conditioning. According to Greg Glassman, founder of CrossFit, ultimately the CrossFit position on metabolic conditioning, or “cardio”, is summed up in two points. First, anaerobic training can match endurance training for aerobic benefit. Additionally, metabolic training with varying and mixed exercise modalities avoids specificity of adaptation, allowing for additional first wave - cardiovascular/respiratory adaptations, and increased functional strength. Too Many words? Heres the short version: 1) High intensity training also works for endurance capabilities. 2) In CrossFit, we do different movements in order to keep our bodies from adapting to certain movements for better results. CrossFit MetCons are usually the reason why CrossFit is commonly viewed as similar to HiiT and I will tell you why they are very different: Take what we did at CrossFit Cavaliers last Wednesday for example: KAREN For time: 150 WallBalls To strategise for Karen, Coach Cam wrote down tips for us to complete these Wallballs as fast as possible according to each individual's capacity. Here's one of them: Complete 25 per minute and try to rest 15s within that minute x repeat 6 times This particular strategy is actually a good example of HiiT - high intensity working blocks and rest in between. However, since the goal of this workout is for time (as fast as possible), everyone can divide the workload in anyway they want. For elite CrossFit athletes, they can even do these without stopping - all 150 of them! The argument here is that at a higher level of CrossFit, this workout is no longer consistent with the framework of HiiT since there's no mandatory scheduled rest time, only strategic ones. Furthermore, CrossFit Metcon's variability and its broad modal & time domains make it very different from HiiT programming. Conclusion If you look up the official definition of CrossFit you will find the following statement: "Constantly varied functional movements executed at high intensity across broad time and modal domains" HiiT programming is simply far too narrow to fit all that is CrossFit into its definition. In other words, HiiT can be a part of what we do in CrossFit but CrossFit is definitely not just another form of HiiT. CrossFitters strive for building athletic efficacy through all physical domains. In CrossFit we dip our toes in a vast amount of fitness categories such as gymnastics, metabolic conditioning, Olympic lifting and strength training. Being constantly varied in programming, CrossFit is ever changing. Universal scalability means CrossFit is always evolving to each individual's training age. CrossFit is a holistic prescription for health and fitness, and it would be unfair to consider it "just like HiiT." It doesn’t mean we avoid it and it doesn’t mean that it’s not beneficial. CrossFit is simply much more profound than just high-intensity intervals.  |
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