1. Be Aware of Your Resources. You’re already doing one thing right if you’re reading this! Learn, read articles, pay attention to our social media posts, read our email newsletters, follow other athletes and CrossFit companies on Instagram. Absorb it all. Surround yourself with knowledge, there is so much of it right at your fingertips! Take it one step further, if you see a piece of information that seems interesting or helpful to you, research it even more by googling it or asking a coach to verify it.
2. Be Coachable.....by Coaches. So this kind of piggy backs off of that first point. Always get a second opinion, especially if the first opinion came from someone who does not have their L-1 Certification. To be coachable means to understand that we’re all in this together, we’re all continuing to grow and learn every day and you are no better than the athlete next to you. Athletes at the highest level of success are still learning and remaining open minded to new techniques or tweaks to better themselves, that’s how they’ve become the best.
3. Don’t Sandbag. You might not even know you’re doing this. Think for a second. When you see the Rx prescribed weight or movement for the workout, do you automatically take off 10 or 20 pounds or instantly say to yourself “well I know I can’t do that.” You might be sandbagging! Is it an AMRAP? Is the workout designed to be challenging in a specific way? Have you been using the same modification weight for more than a year? Let’s break through these barriers to progress! Let's get uncomfortable. Certain days are designed for athletes to try new things. Shorter AMRAPs, or days where you’re already modifying one movement allow you to challenge yourself in other ways. Open your mind and think about the reason you’re so quick to modify. There is no failure in fitness, you can only make yourself better. Let's get away from our comfortable modifications and little by little start to challenge ourselves in new ways, so we can GROW in new ways.
4. Be Patient. When you look around and see people excelling at a skill that you’re still working on, remind yourself that you don’t know how long or hard they had to work to get there. A hard lesson some athletes need to learn is that the world, and this sport of CrossFit, doesn’t owe you anything. You have to work for things that don’t come easy to you. Don’t be discouraged! Be ok with looking stupid in the corner of the room after class as you work on your dubs, handstands, butterfly kip, etc. No one just woke up one day and had down their skills. Be patient, be persistent, be positive, and you WILL make progress.
5. Listen Respectfully. Sometimes people are really surprised by the vital information they miss by half-listening to the coach at the beginning of class or before a certain segment that you think you might already know how to do. In our experience, the best & most respectful listeners are the higher level athletes who actually do already know how to do what the coach is explaining, but they are wise enough to realize that staying respectful during that time is for the athletes around them to make sure they can hear and for the coach to feel respected. Imagine if Rich Froning came in for a drop in, do you really think he’d be talking while our coach explained how we were going to do our set of squats for the day? I very much doubt it. Do you think that means that Rich Froning doesn’t know how to squat? Of course he knows. Respect the gym experience of the athletes around you, and stop talking during instruction.
6. Don’t Treat CrossFit like a Buffet. Lastly, this ain’t Hometown Buffet! Don’t pick and choose which days you will come because you read Wodify the night before. Don’t switch out half of the programmed day with half of something else just because you feel like it. (There are exceptions with injuries or competition training of course). Again, in our experience the best and most talented athletes are not the ones doing whatever they want, they are the disciplined ones who know how to follow and trust a program. They do what they don't want to do, they do the workouts that scare them.
We love our athletes and we hope you all never stop learning and never ever hesitate to ask a Kindle coach for help.
