I'll say again, a blog only has value if the writer is open and honest. That's my job. Your job is to read it or not read it; both are fully okay.
CrossFit competition, in my opinion, is fun, exciting, motivating, and completely idiotic. CrossFit is an excellent way to enhance general physical preparedness, GPP, and that's probably why CF HQ advocates learning and practicing new sports - so that the GPP's efficacy can be tested on a meaningful field. CrossFit competition is a test of GPP. To me that's funny. When you get on the erg in January, the task is to row your fastest 2,000 meters. Nobody cares how many pull-ups, sumo dead lift high pulls, and kettlebell swings you've done, nor how fast you did them. Likewise in power lifting, the outcome is based on the total of your best squat, bench, and dead lift. Nobody cares what your training volume or intensity was for the preceding six months. A crossFit competition is analogous to competing on how hard and long one studies for a test rather than competing on the test outcome.
But whatever. A skinny-fat guy who probably can't do three pull-ups and who definitely can't do a handstand push-up tacitly challenged me, and so it's on. I'll enjoy the fun, excitement, and motivation, while determining my sporting performance at power lifting meets in November and possibly December, and the Mile High Sprints in January.
All this aside, it wouldn't make sense to me not to do my best at the Open, so I'm taking my preparation seriously, which is the motivational aspect of competition I mentioned.
My weakness, of course, is my overall conditioning and in particular my substandard performance with body weight movements.
Based on my past experience and the perception that nothing serious is currently wrong with me, I've bumped my training up to four times a week. I'm doing CrossFit WODS Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, the so-called "college schedule" of two on, one off, two on, two off. (I dimly remember college students have things to do on the weekend, and even twenty-year olds can't productively do five days in a row.) I've found that the college schedule doubles nicely as the old fuck's schedule as the two days off are quite welcome and mostly adequate to recover.
I'm going to publicly admit now that I screw with the programming. To ensure constantly varied modalities and time domains, we have always followed another affiliate to avoid any bias of the TFCF trainers creeping into the programming. However we operate seven days a week, and programming typically has a rest day every fourth and seventh day which we have to fill with another WOD. Additionally we sometimes have to pass up a WOD if we don't have the requisite equipment. The net effect is that I have two days a week I can program whatever I want.
Sunday has always been a day I programmed, but whereas I used to make it something that would be fun for me, I now make it something designed to make me quit CrossFit, e.g. a couplet or triplet composed of my" goats:" wall ball shots, burpees, box jumps, double-unders, and so on. I then move the target affiliate's rest day to Thursday and put in another soul-breaking WOD. Thus for instance this week's wall ball and burpee ladder. This ensure that I get two days of varied WODS, and two days of more specialized work.
Finally, double unders are a battle for me, so I simply make them part of every warm-up. It's slow, but I'm making progress.
All good for me, but what should someone who doesn't own an affiliate do? I'd recommend setting a realistic schedule and sticking to it while trusting the programming to provide adequately varied training stimuli. I'd further hammer the goats every warm-up just like I do now. Yes my cheating allows me to concentrate on one goat only as a warm-up, but two would be entirely doable. I'm absolutely certain nobody is going to give you grief for warming up with box jumps and wall balls. They might even think you're a badass and join you.
Coming up in part 2, high-performance nutrition for people who don't fuck around all day and whose secondary goal in the kitchen is to avoid setting off the fire alarm.
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