What CrossFit’s “DT” Workout Taught Me About Resilience

Welcome to another CrossFit case study.

CrossFit “DT” Workout

The first time I did the CrossFit “DT” workout, I was convinced that “DT” must stand for “Died Trying.”

The workout is 5 rounds for time of:

• 12 deadlifts
• 9 hang power cleans
• 6 push jerks

It may be only three movements, but they are all technically complex. The cognitive load is high.

All three movements must be done with the same barbell, which means you’re limited in weight to what you can push overhead. This results in the cognitive distortion of the deadlifts being much easier relative to the other movements. At least for me.

Barbell lifts as “cardio” is the biggest thing I dislike about CrossFit, and that’s this entire workout.

My First DT Score

The first time I did this, back in September, I had to drop the bar several times during the workout. Each time I dropped the bar I had to clear an increasingly high emotional and mental hurdle to restart.

It was only thanks to support from my peers cheering me on, that I made it through the end.

My time: 15:25 — by far the slowest time of the day. As reference, the next slowest time was 11:13. Most people do this in under 10 minutes, with higher level athletes averaging around 5 minutes.

After I dropped the bar for the last time, I collapsed on the floor.

It took several hours for my nervous system to recover.

Revisiting DT

Based on this experience, you might imagine that I was not excited to see it on the workout schedule again for this week, only six weeks after we had just done it.

It looked like a good day to skip CrossFit and do something else.

Many of my peers apparently felt the same way, because I was one of the few who showed up at 5:30 am. Even the classes later in the morning were light on attendance.

It seems I’m not the only one who felt like DT might be a bit much, especially at the end of a heavy week of testing.

I attempted this DT workout at the same weight as last time, with a goal of trying to improve on my previous time.

Thanks to some top-notch coaching, this time I completed the workout in 9:39 — almost 6 minutes faster than the last time.

It was a huge win.

The Most Impactful Improvement

This time, I was able to complete the reps of each movement in each round without dropping the bar, which meant fewer transitions.

I had a better strategy for the transitions between movements, which cut out the inadvertent extra reps I had done the previous time.

Never underestimate the power of good coaching and a solid strategy.

But what is more relevant, for me, is what happened after — or, more accurately, didn’t happen:

I didn’t collapse on the floor in a catatonic state.

My nervous system didn’t go into a complete shut down.

I didn’t need a lot of time to recover and come back to baseline after I finished.

This is the definition of resilience.

What Is Resilience?

There are many reasons to train in weightlifting: physical strength, bone density, the dopamine hit from a good workout that plugs in my brain.

One of the most important is to build resilience.

Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.

Resilience is a skill that is needed in abundance, especially during challenging times.

How to Build Resilience

The only way to build resilience is through exposure to what is difficult and challenging.

The heavy lifts — both physical and psychological — help us build strength that accumulate over time.

By going into what’s uncomfortable — whether it’s a heavy physical workout, a challenging emotion, or a heavy cognitive load — and working through it, we build our capacity for the next time.

Each time we come back to the challenge, we are better equipped to deal with it. And the resilience gives us confidence to face even bigger challenges because we know we will have the strength and the recovery ability to survive it.