TUESDAY, AUGUST 16TH, 2011
Open Class 4:30pm
Open Class 4:30pm
This post seems fitting given the CrossFit Games were held over the weekend in Carson, CA.
This past Saturday I competed in my first Olympic Weightlifting Competition, held at York Barbell in York, PA. After 6 months of procrastination and excuses, I decided it was time to step up and put my training to the test.
Many athletes, lifters, and coaches say that it doesn’t matter what you accomplish in the confines of your gym, rather it only matters what you do on the field, court, platform, etc. on game day. Having tried my hand competing in several different sports, including CrossFit, I’ve got to agree with these sentiments. Training is great, but at some point you need a way to see how you fare against others athletes, the clock, or another metric of performance. Enter, competition.
Competition provides you with several advantages that training simply cannot:
1) Validation: for your training methods, nutrition, recovery strategies, and dedication to these methods
2) Pressure: We all have great, average, and poor performances in the gym or at practice. Does pressure steel your resolve, or make you crumble? In other words, are you MJ at the buzzer in the finals, or are you Rory McIlroy on Sunday at the Masters?
3) Accountability: Chances are you’re not a professional athlete. Life “happens”, and can make following a regular training schedule difficult, to say the least. Training for “life” or with the goal of getting “fitter” is vague, open ended, and hard to quantify. Signing up for your first triathlon, CrossFit competition, or Weightlifting meet, and setting a goal, are none of these things.
In retrospect, the perfect time to register for your first (insert sport here) competition is TODAY. No matter how you perform at that first contest, it’s guaranteed to be a competition personal record. So, the question is: What are you waiting for?
Coach Justin
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