Feb
13
By Coach Andrew
Competing is a great part of the CrossFit system. The experience of pushing yourself and testing yourself against other athletes, both in the Box and at Competitions, has huge rewards psychologically, emotionally and physically. You will probably push yourself even harder at a competition, and you will have to deal with the pressures of training against new people, in front of crowds, with hundreds or thousands screaming around you. Many find this experience one which gives them new motivation to improve further in their training, when they return to the box.
A word of warning though; CrossFit competitions can be dangerous if you’re not ready for them. There will usually be multiple workouts each day and many events are over a weekend, with 6-8 workouts in total. This is too great a volume of training for the unprepared. Also, there will be standards for ranges of motion, with judges demanding those standards. If you don’t have the mobility, but are forcing yourself to go through those ranges of motion, you will be sacrificing form and putting your body at risk. The pressure of screaming crowds might encourage you to not listen to your body and push through this and do some serious damage. Even competitions which are advertised as more inclusive ones will have movement standards and can be very gruelling.
CrossFit Avon pride ourselves on our movement standards at competition. We’ve often watched as other athletes Deadlift with horrifically rounded backs, or Squat with knees almost touching, whilst our athletes have been performing with awesome tekkers next to them.
Please don’t just go ahead and enter a competition without speaking to us about it first. Our job is to look after your long term health, we care about you and will encourage you to go to competition when the time is right.
Competitors Classes
At CrossFit Avon, we have specific classes which are for those who we feel are ready for competition and give them the opportunity to train alongside each other. In these classes, there will typically be less time for technique instruction, the programming might be different from the main WOD that day (sometimes harder?), and we will often talk more about tactics and other factors during competition.
We will invite you to join these classes when we think you’re ready, but if you feel you’re ready then let us know, and we can discuss. If we think you need to crack certain things first, then we’ll help you set goals and make a plan for getting there.
As a general rule, you would want to have achieved all of Level 2 on the Athletic Skill Levels sheet and be working towards the Level 3 scores. You will definitely need to be able to squat with good technique (knees out and good depth without sacrificing lumbar stability), be able to string together multiple pull ups, and be able to achieve a good Overhead Press position.
You don’t need to be doing every single WOD with Rx weights, but we would expect you to be doing the majority with that or close to.
Team Selection
When it comes to picking who will compete at a given event, we take into account a number of factors.
Firstly, we will look at level of competition and the team make up (how many guys and girls on each team) and decide how many athletes we feel are ready for that level of competition.
Different competitions will be at different levels of inclusivity and competitiveness. There will be some where we will want to send mixed ability teams (the more inclusive competitions), and others (the more competitive ones) where we will want to send our A, B (&C?) Team/s.
We may hold qualifiers for certain competitions, there may be requirements to have attended a certain number of Competitors classes, or we may just want to put different people forward who we feel it would benefit.
Trust us to make the decisions that are right for the competition, and remember it’s also good to be competing alongside different members of your CrossFit family from time to time.
If you’re not making it onto a team, but really want to compete, let us know. There will be other competitions with different levels of inclusivity and we can help you plan for being ready.
Some of you might be scared by the prospect of competition, or be worried that you’re not ready for it yet, when we ask you to compete. Again, trust in us. We wouldn’t put you forward, if we didn’t feel it was the right time for you. There might even be some competitions where those who haven’t made it to Competitors classes yet might be able to join in. Remember, courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s feeling the fear but doing it anyway. Give it a go……you might get hooked.