Should I Participate in the CrossFit Open?
By: Dr. Adrian Granite
The CrossFit Open is upon us once again. Through the five weekly workouts presented during the Open, any number of movements could surface. Whether it is your first week or eighth year at your box, everyone performs the same workouts during the Open. And for 2015, a scaled division has also been added. This stage of the CrossFit Open is a great opportunity to challenge yourself physically and mentally as an athlete, as well as to keep up with how your friends are faring in other areas of the country and the world.
The CrossFit Open points out movements that we are proficient in and others that need improvement. Keeping this in mind, how can you prepare yourself for the Open, and also continue to progress in the future? During my chiropractic education I learned that to create achievable goals, they have to be SMART. This means that they need to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. Using the idea of the Open, and a weakness of double unders, let’s look into what this means.
Specific – A goal needs to be more detailed than “I want to improve in the Open”. There are many different movements performed. Pick one that is most important to you and start there. Performing double unders is not a skill that is learned overnight; it takes hard work and dedication. To make your goal specific, let’s change “improve in the Open” to “I want to learn dubs”.
Measurable – How do we know our goal is being met? This is simple with dubs. The rope passes underneath you twice with one jump. Let’s make that measurable by saying that you want to do 5 in a row.
Attainable – This means that you can achieve it. Goals are accomplished by staying focused and creating a plan to be successful. How, specifically, will you work to attain your goal? Will you watch double under videos? Will you work with your coaches? Will you practice on your own? An attainable goal would be to complete 5 consecutive double unders by attending Double Unders class and watching YouTube videos to improve my technique.
Realistic – Your goals need to be realistic to you. A goal to go from zero to 100 consecutive DUBS is not a realistic goal. Aiming high is great, but sometimes we need to have 6 month, 1 year, and 5 year plans. We don’t always need the “go big or go home” mentality. Sometimes by taking baby steps, success may be closer than it once seemed. A realistic goal with dubs would be to complete 5 in a row with consistent practice.
Timely – This is pretty straight forward. We need to figure out a time frame to achieve this goal. This puts everything together. At our office, we use short term and long term goals to prepare treatment plans for patients. What are the results going to be in 4 weeks and what are they going to be in 8 weeks? A timely goal would be to take Double Unders class once per week and watch videos 3 times per week to perform 5 DUBS in a row within one month.
This style of goal-setting can be applied outside of the gym as well. When your goals are SMART, success is practically guaranteed.
