I recently completed my second CrossFit Open, which consisted of 3 workouts that benchmark your fitness. This year, I did each of the 3 workouts twice.
The Open workouts are released each week on Thursday afternoon and athletes have until Monday evening to submit their score.
Each week, I did the workout for the first time on Friday and repeated the workout on Monday morning.
For each workout, I improved my score significantly on the second time.
Conventional wisdom holds that the keys to improvement are repetition, practice, and time.
Repetition is the mother of skill.
Practice leads to progress.
Third time’s the charm.
Given conventional wisdom, you might think that I spent each weekend before redoing the Open workout cramming in as much practice time as I could in order to hone my skills and guarantee myself a better score.
I did not.
Instead I relied on a unconventional trilogy of factors that was far more effective.
These three elements will lead you to triumph in any endeavor.
The 3 Keys to Improvement
(1) Rest
In general, I tend to workout hard during the week and take it lighter on weekends.
During each weekend of the Open, I followed my typical weekend routine of keeping my workouts light. My weekend workouts typically consist of trampoline, flying trapeze, yoga, some light cardio, and a lot of rest.
Making real improvements in techniques or strength takes repetition, feedback, and practice over a long span of time. I knew it was unrealistic to expect myself to make massive gains in just two days, and that my time could be better spent elsewhere.
Over the course of each weekend, I spent less than 30 minutes on practicing specific movements related to that week’s Open workout. I mostly tested a new technique or practiced a movement pattern just a few times — enough to reinforce my good habits without overly taxing my nervous system.
I consciously avoided pushing myself too hard in the gym or in my flying trapeze and trampoline practice sessions.
Instead, I focused on making sure to get quality rest and nourishment so I could recover and be well-rested for Monday morning.
(2) Review
Repetition and practice, without more, don’t lead to improvement. If you want to improve you must step back from the hustle to review what you did.
I typically video my weightlifting and other significant movements. For the Open, I recorded myself doing the full workout from start to finish.
Over the weekend leading into each retest, I reviewed my video from the workout.
I didn’t just watch it passively. As I reviewed the video, I time-stamped the video, writing down the time for the start and end of each movement. Then I calculated the total time of each section of the workout and the transition times between sections.
This review was a crucial piece of my success: it gave me a clear picture of my pacing, it showed me where I fell off pace, and it helped me see the obvious places where I could cut time by moving faster or transitioning more effectively.
This review informed my strategy for my repeat workout. I even printed it out to help my judge pace me appropriately in the retest.
(3) Reflect
The time stamps showed obvious places where I could cut time, but they didn’t tell the whole story.
As I reviewed the videos I also watched my energy. I looked at my body language to see where I lost energy and time because of confusion or frustration.
I reflected on the energy with which I had entered the workout, what I had believed about myself and my abilities, and what fears or expectations I had going into the workout.
I journaled about how I felt before, during, and after the workout, and reflected on what I learned from it — both about the workout and about myself.
Then I thought about how I wanted to show up for the retest.
I considered where I was likely to get stuck in the retest, and what support I needed to help me show up at my best and get me through. Knowing in advance where I might get stuck, I considered what I would want someone to tell me in those moments to help me power through.
Putting It Together: The Unconventional Trilogy
This combination of rest, review, and reflection is a trilogy that I’ve relied on to improve in many areas of my life, and it was crucial to improving my performance in the CrossFit Open workouts.
To improve in anything, we need to step out of the water to gain a fresh perspective.
We need to be able to look back at what we did and see how we performed and what we can learn from that to help us do it better next time.
We need moments of being to inform our doing.
Without rest and reflection, you’re just on a treadmill: taking steps, but not getting anywhere.
Whether it’s a workout, or simply how you go through your week, taking time to step back for rest, review, and reflection is crucial if you want to improve your performance.
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