Since August 2013, I haven’t missed a morning workout.
People often comment on my consistency, but that consistency alone didn’t produce results. For most of that time, I hardly increased my weights and didn’t see gains in strength.
Contrast that to the past year.
Just over a year ago I joined a CrossFit gym. At first I stuck to the “Burn” classes — a lighter version of CrossFit that’s more about metabolic conditioning.
Eventually I started going to CrossFit.
Since I first started dipping my toes into CrossFit in December, I’ve added 100 pounds to my barbell deadlift.
This week, we finished up a 6-week cycle. In Week 1, the first week of May, we tested our 1 rep max in 3 different lifts: back squats, push press, and deadlifts. After a 4 week Wendler cycle, this week we retested our 1 rep max.
I hit a new milestone in each lift. Not huge gains, but respectable for a month of work.
Success leaves clues, as Tony Robbins says.
All progress is supported by patterns that we can apply to other areas of life.
Looking back at the last month, I found a lot of clues.
Here are 7 things I did over the past month that helped me set myself up for success:
(1) Hire a Coach
For most of my life I’ve mostly worked out alone or took classes. Although I occasionally worked with trainers for brief periods, I never committed long enough for them to help me make meaningful progress.
I lacked a structure for when to implement increases, and I had little feedback on my form and technique. On my own, I didn’t feel safe enough to push to the point where I could make progress.
CrossFit offers a structure for progressing; the Wendler cycle we just completed is designed to help you make sustainable progress at a slow and steady pace. And the CrossFit coaches keep their eye on me and give me feedback on form.
As great as a class can be, it’s not a substitute for personal coaching. A personal coach doesn’t just give you accountability and focused attention, they also help with many of the other elements listed below.
(2) Find a Community
For over 20 years, I belonged to a regular commercial gym. I went in, did my workout, and left. I might have an occasional conversation, but mostly I was on my own.
Joining a CrossFit community has been a game-changer. Success truly takes a village — especially when you’re doing hard things.
Whether it’s a peer who helps me find the 1-pound plates that are hiding somewhere in the gym, or the chorus of people who stop their lifts to cheer me on, or the way everyone sticks around to cheer me on when I’m the last person finishing the daily WOD, I don’t just feel supported. I feel lifted up.
I feel like my workouts are not just for me; they’re my contribution to the collective.
(3) Have a Strategy
The strategy is the big picture of where I’m going and how to get there.
Weightlifting can be very technical. I’ve found that if I try to push my weights too much at once, the failure can get to my head. But if I increase in increments that are too small, I might not run out of time to make my heaviest lift.
In longer conditioning workouts that have a high volume of reps, if I come out too hot and try to tackle too much at once I will inevitably fail and struggle to finish.
Going in with a strategy helps me sustain my energy for the full workout.
(4) Create a Plan
In contrast to the big picture strategy, the plan is specific. In the Wendler cycle we just completed, each week’s loads are based on a percentage of 90-percent of our 1-rep-max lift.
Once I’ve done the math to calculate the total load, I have to also calculate how much goes on each side of the barbell, and the breakdown of the plates.
It may not sound like a big deal in theory, but it’s a lot of math and thinking for 5:30 am. Doing those calculations also eats up time and energy.
The nervous system only has so much bandwidth, and I need all available resources to focus my energy on the actual lift.
I started creating a specific plan for each lift day in the form of a chart, which included the number of reps, the load on the bar, and the breakdown of the specific plates to put on each side.
This may sound like overkill, but my plan provided structure and certainty that my nervous system needs to feel relaxed. This freed up my nervous system and my available energy so I could focus on my lifts.
It also gave me more time, because I wasn’t wasting time calculating numbers or running around grabbing extra plates for my barbell.
(5) Follow the Plan
Having a plan is one thing. Following it is another.
I crave structure but I also resist it. I’m not always the best at sticking to the plan, especially when I’m caught up in the swirl of the moment.
On the day we re-tested our push press, the CrossFit coach told me to increase my load by ten pounds. But I knew I was close to my max and that ten pounds might be too much.
By sticking to my plan, I was able to match and exceed my PR.
(6) Build in Flexibility
This is going to contradict what I just said: sometimes you need to modify the plan.
Bodies are not machines. You don’t always know how you’ll feel in the moment. Sometimes you can hit a number one day and not have the strength for it the following week. This is especially true for women, as our strength can vary with our cycles.
Being flexible and adaptable is crucial to success. It’s even better if you can build the flexibility into the plan.
Before deadlift day, my coach suggested a strategy that would have had me increase my PR by fifteen pounds. That felt like a lot given where my body was. For that day, I built the flexibility into my plan by laying out smaller incremental jumps as optional “between” sets.
Having the flexibility built-in to my plan — complete with the weight break down — helped me make a game-time decision without needing to stop and calculate weights.
Without that option built in, I may not have hit my new milestone.
(7) Plan For Failure
You’ve probably heard the trope, “if you fail to plan, plan to fail.”
CrossFit has taught me a new approach: build you failure into your plan.
For most of my life, failure was something that was frowned upon and not accepted. So I learned to play it safe, never pushing myself to failure.
On deadlift day, I knew that hitting 215 was likely a stretch. I felt confident I could deadlift 205 — and maybe 210. But I kept 215 in the plan. I got the 205, but failed to get 210 in three attempts. Yet I may be most proud of my attempts at 210. Because it was in my plan, I went for it.
Failing at 210 gave me the peace of mind to know that I truly maxed out, which was the goal of a 1-rep-max test. If I had only planned for 205, I might have wondered if I could get the 210.
Love it? Hate it? What do you think? Don't hold back...