As most of you will be well aware, we are right into the swing of building your conditioning for the upcoming CrossFit Open.
Aside from the obvious aspects of conditioning like efficient technique, cardiovascular capacity, strength and power; mental conditioning is often forgotten or not even considered and plays a huge role in an athlete performing to his or her physical potential.
All too often we see athletes fail well before their physical potential because of a lack of self belief, a poor game plan or most importantly the inability to suck up the hurt. We witness athletes who have failed before they even started because they have told themselves that they can’t do a particular movement or weight and frequently, when asked to try they find that they can do the movement, and sometimes even several reps of an activity that they had just written off as unachievable. With the correct game plan and mental outlook I strongly believe that these athletes could progress at a much greater rate if they took these things into consideration.
The importance of mental conditioning is highly evident when we look at the two most dominant people in the sport of CrossFit, Annie Thorisdottir and Rich Froning.
I have never heard a negative or doubtful comment, witnessed any negative body language or seen a setback such as a “poor” result get in the way of these people dominating their competition? While there is no doubt that these athletes are physically very impressive, I strongly believe that it’s their mental conditioning that sets them apart from the rest.
One of the best ways to develop the mental part of the game is to get outside of the gym and work with objects and in environments that we are not used to.
If any of you have ever done a good day of labour (assuming that you not a full time labourer) you will know what I mean. You can be as strong as you like in the gym but there is a difference between gym strength and conditioning and real world strength and conditioning and it’s important to include this into your training if your goal is to be truly rounded as an athlete.
Getting outside with odd objects leaves us in a situation where we are too unfamiliar to strategize and plan everything to a tee and all we’ve got left to do is get the job done.
