Tempered Expectations for Better Consistency!

You pursued CrossFit training. You’re a member at Harvest CrossFit. That reveals a couple of things about you. You’re at least interested in exercise. Likely, you enjoy exercise and how it makes you feel. You’re interested in improving or maintaining your fitness, health, or overall well being. Those are obvious. These could also be said about you. You’re competitive, whether or not you admit it. You can feel left out if you don’t get the same stimulus as your peers. You think there is only one way to go about CrossFit in order to get the most bang for your buck and that is all out, balls to the wall, ride or die, smash bars and pr’s!

Plenty of you show up and it’s your priority. The question isn’t if you’re going to get in your workout, it’s when, and it doesn’t matter how you feel. About the same amount of you, whether or not you make it in isn’t subject to your schedule or un-scheduled life events, it’s subject to your mood, feeling, perception of well being etc. If you’re in this latter camp- “I’ll go work out if I’m feeling it,” its easy to take long hiatuses, fall out of routine, and get discouraged.

My suspicion is that part of this habit comes from the idea that there is only one way to attack the day in the gym. If your one and only idea of a gym session is, “If I didn’t die, it didn’t work,” well of course you won’t want to come in if conditions aren’t perfect. Rather than waiting until you’re good and ready to work out, we suggest you come to the gym and here you can adjust your expectations to fit your mood, feeling, or perceived well being.

It is very liberating to give yourself a pass to scale a WOD more than you normally would. Lower the weight and focus on your movement quality. Shoot for a reasonable score rather than a home run. Don’t even look at the score board. Don’t even count your rounds in an AMRAP or look at the clock when you’re done. Find a buddy and make the WOD a partner workout. These are all great strategies if you’re: Short on sleep, lowering carbs to lose weight, stressed at work, nursing an injury, sick, coming back from vacation, coming back from slacking.

If you skip a workout because of your mood, it’s an automatic fail. Your bad attitude got the best of you. Chances are, it wins in other areas of your life as well (whoa, that might’ve been a hard truth… YOU DON’T KNOW ME!!!)

But if you’re in a bad mood and come in despite it. Just temper your expectations, take it easy, you don’t have to go hard. It is always a win! You always feel better! Also, don’t be afraid to tell a coach, “hey, I’m runnin’ on fumes, gonna take it easy, those numbers might kill me today, any suggestions?” We’ll never be disappointed, and if we know, we won’t be in your grill as much.

“I’m not feelin’ it. I’m gonna stay home, and see how I feel tomorrow.” Fail

“I’m not feelin’ it. I’m gonna scale and take it easy” Win! Always!