Need some help jumpstarting your training in preparation for the next CrossFit competitive season? Our very own Mike Lee will provide some answers and tips for athletes and competitors.

Post CrossFit Open: Things Athletes Need to Do

Perhaps the most important thing an athlete should do after the CrossFit Open? Take a break! Recovery plays a massive role in your ability to bounce back and be consistent with a new phase of training. Break the CrossFit grind mentality and start taking more time off.

Video Transcript

So a couple things that the athlete needs to do post the open.

The biggest thing that we see in the CrossFit world is that people want to go right back into training. They’re motivated, they’re ready to go. But the downfall of that is they just went through five weeks of very intense competition, and they don’t have enough time to really recharge the batteries.

So rest and reflection are definitely two of the major pieces and it’s not done enough. Too many people are afraid to take rest, because they think this mantra that people just train the entire year, but oddly enough, CrossFit is the only sport that has that mentality. All others are taking major breaks. We see that even more with higher-level athletes. We see them competing maybe once a year, and the rest of the time, there are planned breaks. There are scheduled areas of their training where they’re not doing anything.

So I think that’s an important recommendation for athletes, cause it’s not prevalent currently in the CrossFit world.

Don’t Let Post-Open Celebration Destroy Training

Thinking of eating some sugary treats after the CrossFit Open? Think again. As enjoyable as this food may be to your taste-buds, it actually stresses your body out. The CrossFit Open is a very stressful experience, don’t compound to it by eating junk food. Set your next training cycle up the right way by continuing to moderate your eating habits.

Video Transcript

So an individual coming off the open, it’s great for the to feel great and reflect back on the open scenario and say, “Okay, I did a lot of things really well. I’m going to reward myself,” and that reward should not be something that causes additional stress and inflammation. If we’re doing that, all we’re going to do is prolong the amount of time that it takes for them to actually recover and get back into the training cycle.

So, you do five days of shitty food with ice cream and fried foods, all of a sudden, now we’re compounding the last five weeks of a lot of stress, now in addition to another week of shittiness. That just extends out that process for you to get back to where you want to go and restart the next year. What people need to recognize in their stand is that if they want to really get motivated to get back into the next year, they should avoid all of that and find some opportunities to self-reward that are positive things for both the mind and the body.

CrossFit Open Training vs Regionals training

Training for the CrossFit Open and training for the CrossFit Regionals are two very different beasts. The major differences? The time domain of the competition and the movements in it.

Video Transcript

So, Regionals training and the Open training differs in a couple of different ways. The first being that it’s five weeks of competition versus three days of competition. There’s obviously a glaring differences between the timeframes that each competition elicits. The second is the movement selection. In the Open, there are certain characteristics that are included because it’s for a broad base of people. For Regionals, it’s a very small group of individuals. You can see the major glaring differences. The Open probably looking at more capacity based efforts to where Regionals is more battery or extended duration muscle endurance activity. If someone does really well at the Open, but now the competition has changed, they go to the Regional and they can’t do three days worth of work. So, a good Open athlete may get out for one workout a week and do it really well, but they can’t put together six, seven, eight workouts in a weekend three days in a row. So those glaring differences really, really differentiate the two between someone that’s going to be good as an Open athlete versus someone that’s going to be good as a Regionals athlete.

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