Technique vs. Intensity - Keeping Your Training In Perspective (Part III)

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1ST, 2011

7:00pm

NOTE: There will be no class this Thursday or Friday as I will be travelling to San Jose to compete in the Reebok/CrossFit 2011 Regionals as a member of the CrossFit Redding team. It appears that there will be a recap or video update of each of the day's events, which will be held Friday, Saturday and Sunday. You can view these updates at http://games.crossfit.com/regions/northern-california

Technique vs. Intensity - Keeping Your Training In Perspective (Part III)

By Coach Justin

Continued from the Previous Day...

To pick up where we left off previously…the goal of training is to reach the next level of intensity (whatever the type of intensity it is that you are training) proficiently/competently without a breakdown in form previously recognized (in other words without failure). AND TO DO IT SAFELY! Remember this, “failure in a controlled environment facilitates success; failure in an uncontrollable environment generally facilitates, well…anti-success.” And it is this “failure in a controlled environment” that is the model for making super-humans.

Obviously training becomes counterproductive when you get injured doing it and cannot then perform what it was you started training for. Duh!

You laugh, but you’d be amazed at how many people overtrain or, more appropriately for this article, push past the point of “technique failure” and continue to deadlift/clean in the “flexed dog poo position” for example, just because they are strong enough to still lift the weight, though it’s gonna cost them in injury. Or because they are too prideful to admit that, even though they might have been able to begin the workout safely at a given weight, it just became too heavy and they need to decrease the weight because it is forcing them into a sub-optimal position.

Oftentimes, people believe they are mentally tough enough to push through ANYTHING! Don’t get me wrong, the mind is inconceivably powerful, but at some point those people break! It’s when you combine that mental toughness with the wherewithal to harness it toward a positive progression, not a dangerous one, that you begin to see the true fruits of your labor.

The moral of the story is this…Train HARD! Break mental and physical barriers. Sweat, bleed, cry, fail. Set goals and don’t give up until you achieve them. But do it SMART! You don’t have to achieve your goals the same week that you set them and you don’t have to achieve them all at once. Training is a process! And that need be understood.

This is not to say that if we’re all hiking in the woods and a tree falls on poor ol’ Coach Justin that you can’t round out your back lifting that sucker off of him. God knows that he’d do it for you. But at that point this it is not training, it is survival and this is what the training is carried out to facilitate. For many of you training facilitates your athletic endeavors. That’s great. I would rather see you get injured going all out on the field/court/track/water/etc. than do it in your training and not even get to slip your uniform on for gameday.

For some of us, our athletic careers are behind us and we are CrossFitting for life or to be better at our jobs. That’s great. Injure yourself at your job or doing an extreme sport that you’ve always wanted to do. You get the idea.

I’d prefer we never get injured, and that is also what the training facilitates – injury prevention – but if you do, make it worth while.

Yes, injuries in the gym will still happen…but don’t make them stupid ones!

Always remember "You Can't Push The River".

Coach Justin
PerformanceQuestFitness@gmail.com