The Crossfit Open is upon us and people are getting nervous, excited, and scared. For those who don’t know what the Crossfit Open is, it’s a five week competition. Each week Crossfit headquarters posts a workout on Thursday. Once the workout is released you have four days to get your best score. Each week competitors try to get the best score they can, so they can make it to the Crossfit Regionals. The Crossfit Regionals is where they have their chance to make it to the Crossfit games. As I am writing this, we are in week two of the Open. The first workout was not the greatest showing of my fitness abilities, because I was too slow and feel I didn’t push myself enough. I know I was too slow because I was not tired at the end of the workout like I should’ve been. The following week, I did a lot better with the second workout. I pushed myself harder on the first part of the workout, but started to burn out towards the end, which gave me an okay time. During the second half of the workout I cleaned 287lbs, which almost tied my Personal Best of 290lbs.
I am writing this blog post in hopes that my personal experience might be helpful to others and might help give you an extra push, whether it’s in the Open, work or life in general. A week before the Open I was training a client of mine that does Ju-Jitsu competitions. His main goal while training was to gain strength and endurance so when his season starts to ramp up he will be able to handle his opponents. One day, we decided to do one of the Crossfit Open workouts called 17.1. The workout consists of dumbbell snatches and box facing burpees. The rep scheme is 10-20-30-40-50 of dumbbell snatches at 35 pounds and in-between each set you perform 16 box facing burpees (YUCK). Halfway into the workout, my client started to hit a wall. When he knew he hit the wall he started to say to himself, “one more rep, one more rep” every time he did a movement. After we finished, I asked him why he kept saying “one more rep, one more rep” during the workout. He told me that when he used to get tired at the end of his Ju-Jitsu workouts, his coach would say “just one more minute left!” And after that minute was up his coach would say it again, “one more minute, just one more minute left!” until the time was officially up for the session. His coach did this so he would keep on pushing, not look at the clock and maintain the pace he had started with.
I thought this would be a great way to help motivate myself during the Crossfit Open where the workouts are hard and often make me want to stop and quit. During my training sessions I started to implement the “one more rep” mentality and started making it a habit. Even though I had only a week to engrain this in my head before the Open started, I did notice a slight change when the workouts started to be challenging. I am a firm believer that it takes 21 days to create a habit. Just imagine if I or anybody started using this method months before the Open hit! Who knows, You could shorten your time finishing a workout, gotten a few more reps in before the time expired, or you could have gone an extra 100 meters on your run. The possibilities are endless! I will definitely be using it a lot more after the Open season is over.
During your next workout (or even in life) when you start to hit the wall or you think you can’t do anymore… just remember “One more rep, just one more rep!” and hopefully it will help push you past your limits and help you to achieve your goals.