1/20 Myth Busting Monday

We inchworm our way to progress. ​

Myth: Progress is a linear progression,
or
​you "should" always lift more, go faster, be "better" than yesterday. 

It's a common myth amongst new CrossFit and power athletes that we should be better, faster, and stronger than yesterday, or last week, or last month. 
In the CrossFit Level 1 training seminar, aspiring coaches are taught that an athlete's performance will vary based on 

• The force and time of the workout of the day
  
• The nutrition of the athlete.
  
• The amount of recovery between workouts.
  
• The physical and psychological tolerances of the individual.
  

In other words, how you perform the workout of the day today may not be the same as how you performed it yesterday or could perform it tomorrow. Your progression is not linear because there are things that affect your performance, like your nutrition, your recovery, and your mindset. 
Athletic development, what we do in CrossFit, rarely follows a linear path because, well, shit happens. We have a bad day, we don't sleep well, we eat too much of one thing and not enough of another, or we have an unrealistic expectation of what we "should" be able to do. Your TSCF Coaches call this "shoulding on yourself."
Don't should on yourself, please, it's a mess to clean up. 
You may "want" to have a straight path to amazingness, but the reality of our path to becoming a badass is filled with bad days, potholes, deep dark holes of scariness, pizza and beer, not enough sleep, fights with our family, disagreements with our gym buddies, cold mornings, not enough sun, the wrong kind of coffee, zippers that won't zip, and the list goes on and on. 
In fact, it looks a lot like this:

I argue that what we learn about ourself when we overcome these challenges is much more important that the satisfaction of being "better." The resiliency and mental toughness we gain learning how to fight our way out of the pit of despair, or making our next meal on target, or getting enough sleep, and learning how to take a rest day, will have far more benefit than a 1 second PR. As will learning how to not jump into the pit of despair when you don't get a 1 second, or 1 rep, or 1 round, or 1 pound PR. 
In fact, as a Coach and Programmer for the gym, I can tell you that I expect all of us to follow the principle of progression. That means I intentionally program light days, long days and "easy days," because I need you to have some recovery before we build again. One of our biggest building blocks is coming up, it's Femme Fatale Week. I want you to be fresh and ready to tackle all 5 or 6 Femmes that week. Therefore your performance over the next month might very well look like this:

My own CrossFit and Olympic Weightlifting experience has followed this path. I enjoyed meteoric novice improvement my first 2 years then I leveled out and oscillated. Now that I have a coach, she programs specific training cycles where I don't get heavy. I'm in one right now and it was a big test of my mental toughness and ego to compete on Saturday and SPECIFICALLY NOT go for PR matches. I was only to lift up to 80% of my 1 RM, and I followed this plan because I know in April when I compete in the National Championships I will go for new PRs. Now is the time for training and practice, not competition. That's the subject for another blog post. 
For now, know that I program for the gym knowing that progression is not liner and that we need to alter volume, load and intensity to allow for adaptation and progress. 

Tell me in the comments what you have learned about your performance. What factors affect it this most? How have you incorporated this knowledge into your recovery practices? 

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