Trusting Your Body

Coach Plentus had a great post on his blog about the 7 biggest things he has learned during his 7 years doing Crossfit.  For those of you who don't know Coach Plentus, he coached at KOP for a while and now coaches at Crossfit Thermal.  He was the first one to really help me with my front squat, emphasizing how important it was to bring intensity to the lift as soon as I put my hands on the bar.  In fact, every time I front squat, I envision him standing on the other side of the bar yelling at me to get intense.  It really does help.

Anyway, if you haven't clicked on the link to his blog on the KOP webpage, you should do so.  First of all, you'll get to see what a real blog looks like.  As you're reading it, you won't think to yourself "this reads like the ramblings of a crazy person."  And because Plentus is a great photographer, you'll tend to see awesome photos, as opposed to my page where you will see something that I took with my iPhone with shaky arms after doing a WOD.

While there are some very good points made in the blog, I wanted to add one more (and naturally this point is applicable to me today).  If I could give one piece of advice to new or potential Crossfitters, it would be to learn to trust your body.  What does that mean?  Well, it means a couple different things.  The first is trusting your body when choosing a weight for the workout.  Unless the WOD is designed to be a sprint, I generally choose the most weight I think I can handle without causing an injury.  I'm not concerned about my time as much as I am concerned about progressing to the point where I can RX the workout.  This likely explains why I finish last a lot.

Finding the right balance between a weight that will kick your butt and one that will cause you to be in a cast takes some time, but I honestly believe your body will tell you.  When I first started, I was clueless.  Add in the fact that I'm overly competitive and it is a minor miracle that I didn't get injured early on in my Crossfit career.  There is a natural urge to look at someone else in the gym, say "hey, he's about my size, if he can lift that weight, so can I!"  As I've gotten to know my strengths and weaknesses, I've been able to resist this urge.  If I have doubts about my ability to complete a workout at a certain weight, I'll load the bar so I can strip it mid-workout if necessary.

The flip side is that your body also tells you if you went too light.  On the rare occasion that I've ripped through a workout while other people are still going, I find that my excitement turns to disappointment very quickly.  I'll end up feeling like it was a missed opportunity to get better.

The other aspect of trusting your body takes place before you even get to the gym.  Because I'm psychotic, I almost always read the WOD at 10pm the night before and go "ooooh, I want to do that!"  Unfortunately, that means not enough rest, which could also lead to injury.  That was my dilemma this morning.  I definitely need practice with my handstand push-ups, and rowing and push jerks for 10 minutes sounded like a nice little workout.  But when I woke up this morning, my right knee was killing me from the pistol madness I took part in the night before.  I started telling myself that I would wait and see how it felt later in the afternoon and maybe it would be better then.  My body, though, was being pretty clear about letting me know I needed a recovery day.  And I hate recovery days.  Still, I would hate it a lot more if I couldn't go to the gym for an extended period of time because I'm a stubborn ass.

So trust your body.  It will let you know when to push, when to throttle back, and when to rest.