Increase Intensity in your CrossFit Workout

Increase Intensity in your CrossFit Workout

Do you attack every workout or are you just trying to survive?

You  arrive at CrossFit class and see a workout with your 3 favourite movements in it - you instantly know in your head that you’re going to kill it. You’ve planned your workout strategy, then 3-2-1 the buzzer goes. You come out fast and hold on. You know you're going to push the limit, and when it gets hard? You’ll persevere, you’ll stay positive and it’ll pay off. As predicted - you kill the workout.

The flip side. You see a workout with movements that you're not a big fan of. You still strategise, but you're far more conservative. You start the workout and it gets tough. Negative thoughts start flooding in and you slow down the pace, thinking to yourself, “it's ok, just get the work done”. You start watching the clock more and more. You finish. It's over, you're still tired but can't help but think you were a bit “soft”.

During my return to fitness I've become more aware of these two different CrossFit mindsets. We always work hard, but are we in the right frame of mind? Are we attacking the workout, or are we surviving the workout?

Everybody is doing the work; but if you want to progress past your competitors, or even just get the most out of you daily CrossFit class, you should be attacking conditioning with purpose. So how does one develop this mindset?

This is the ability to keep pushing when the going gets tough or what people often refer to as “mental toughness”.

Try implementing the following ideas in order to improve your mindset and in turn increase the intensity of your CrossFit sessions.

Scale your workout for intensity

Mindset: Train with intensity

First and foremost, are you completing the workout at the appropriate level? Sometimes we need to check our ego and consider reducing the weight or scaling the movement back in order to achieve the desired adaptation. It is important to challenge your threshold, but if you can’t physically do the workout, you'll be spending the whole session looking at the bar - which won’t get you any fitter. This will also play a massive part in the way you look at the workout. If you’re worried about the weight or amount of gymnastics, your conditioning workout is not the time to practice them. Conditioning is for intensity purposes only.

What is your why?

Mindset: Don't let down the squad

Sometimes we question why we have chosen to use CrossFit as a fitness regime or sport. Why do you punish yourself day in and day out? What is your why? What keeps you going when the workout gets hard? Sometimes doing something solely for yourself, or becoming “the best you”, isn’t motivation enough. Personally, I found I became the most mentally tough when I was part of a team when training for the CrossFit Games. When you have a team or an individual relying on you to get the job done, you don't want to be the weak link. It’s human nature. This is what gave me the extra drive to hit the workouts with purpose and address my weaknesses - instead of just doing the work and trying to survive.

So sign yourself up for a team or partner comp. Firstly, having something that’ll test you will keep you honest with your training; and secondly, having someone you’re accountable to will help you take your training up a notch. I recommend this not only to competitors, but also your everyday CrossFitter who is just training for GPP (General Physical Preparedness). You will learn a lot about yourself competing. There are lots of fun, smaller comps that are held at local boxes which enable you to get a taste of the competition, but in a more relaxed environment (shameless plug: check out the ‘NZ Fitness League’ if you haven't already).   

Get around people

Mindset: Challenge each other

For those of you that don't do classes, whatever “comp” programme you're following will only take you so far. You will often hear the buzz word “community” associated with Crossfit and there’s good reason for it. Community is why CrossFit is so successful. Having people push you and to hurt with on a daily basis will help you to increase intensity.

In a perfect world you would train with people who challenge you - physically and mentally. For you’re largely a product of your environment. Also, training by yourself is boring; so rope someone into doing that workout with you or find a training group, have some banter and challenge each other. I recommend that if you train alone regularly do a CrossFit class to compliment your comp programme.   

Now, I'm not recommending that you treat every workout like a competition - but having people to hurt with goes a long way.   

Set macro goals for each workout

Mindset: Set challenging but achievable goals

Today we had the following workout...

4 rounds, starting every 5 mins:

• 500m Row
• 20 T2B
• 30 Wall-balls

I set myself a few goals...

1) Keep every 500m row under 1:45
2) Have wall balls in sets no smaller than 10 reps
3) No resting for longer than 5 exhales between sets

By the time the 3rd round arrived it was bloody hard to maintain the sub 1:45 rows and I wanted to extend my rest to 10 breaths. But, I had told my training group what my goals were, and even though there wasn't someone watching my every move, I felt I was accountable to them and stuck it out. This is the mindset that helps me the most.

Enjoy the good days and push through the bad

There will be some days better than others; days where you don’t even have to think about pushing the limit, it just happens. But at the same time, there will be days where it’s tough. Remaining in a positive mindset will determine what you achieve in CrossFit, and how fast you progress.

Some of us are happy to hit the gym and just move, get sweaty and have a few laughs. That's great, but if you want to take your training to the next level, you'll want to ensure that you're in the right mindset for what you're trying to achieve with CrossFit - where you attack workouts with purpose, not just survive.

You will notice a trend with what I’ve laid out as the bulk of it relates to people and being accountable to them. That wasn't my intention when first writing this; but upon reflection I realised that’s what I love most about CrossFit - sharing the hurt, the banter and the PRs.