The highlight of any good Coach, whether in sport, fitness, professional career or life, is the improvement and success of the ones they coach. No progress ever happens without some regress, and that’s where the real growth occurs. When everything is great and moving in a forward trajectory, we find ourselves missing the key to true progress, adversity.
In the world of CrossFit, adversity comes in all shapes and sizes, and in layers of variance. The most common adversity we see and discuss is injury. In the words of living legend, Brian Carroll, injury is a gift. Whether acute or nagging overuse soft tissue related, these injurious moments afford us a clear look into what’s missing in our training. Injuries highlight imbalances, compensation and sometimes even ignorance. In highlighting these faults, it affords us the opportunity to make critical course corrections that often lead to a far better version of ourselves.
While we all strive for that almighty “PR” in a lift or workout, what we often fail to see is the infinite little steps and progressions that truly lead us to those sought-after milestones. It’s rarely the weeks upon weeks of progressive overload that affords the PR. In fact, those weeks upon weeks of progressive overload more frequently highlight the faults and create some of the injuries mentioned above. Instead, it’s the little things… the small balanced strength work that supports the larger movement patterns. The otherwise perceived as uncool, unfun, and unsexy stuff to do.
At CrossFit 234, we program a lot of little supportive movements intended to enhance and support the larger ones with which we seek to achieve that “PR” status. Unfortunately, it’s these little accessory movements that we witness the least focused engagement from our athletes at times. It’s in these moments, the coach in us wants to grab you by the shoulders and shake you saying “But this is what’s going to make you better! And this is what’s going to keep you lifting safely into an old age!! If there’s one thing to give us your biggest focused effort on, it’s these little movements!!”. But alas, that would be assault and battery and highly shunned upon. So, we come to you with this CrossFit Coach’s Wish…. we wish for all of you to reengage your focus on the little things. The ones that look silly and easy, turn out to be extremely difficult and taxing, but ultimately keep you the safest and most likely to hit that fateful “PR”.
See you at the box!
-CF234 Coaching Team