Leading the Charge

By Jon Gilson, Again Faster

After a month of false-alarm heart attacks and projectile vomiting, newbie Crossfitters usually learn to manage their output.  Instead of a blitzkrieg-to-blackout approach, they adopt a more reasoned attack on the workout of the day, maintaining consistent (albeit lower) intensity throughout the WOD.  They finish faster, avoiding the time-wrecker of full-out muscular failure.

The problem comes when this approach gets comfortable.  Carefully metered 15-second breaks become a habit.  Consciously or unconsciously, intensity is kept below the “I just might die today” threshold, and the string of personal records comes to a crashing halt.

This is an incredibly clear signal to crank it up.  Forego the rest, and hit the WOD as hard as you can.  The intensity that used to leave you in a near-coma will now merely spin you into mild hallucinations, and you’ll reclaim that old feeling of nausea with pride.  You’ll also kick the ever-living shit out of your erstwhile athletic plateau.

While I’m sure there are a few thousand biological reasons for this result, I’d like to offer a less technical explanation:  hard work breeds success.  If any given workout is easy, it’s not doing a damn thing to make you a better athlete.

Case in point, me.  I spent the last four weeks managing the heck out of my workouts.  I analyzed past performances, estimated fatigue levels, and executed precise WOD game plans.  Although my times were competitive, I consistently came out the other side with no lasting feeling of accomplishment.

The missing ingredient was intensity. The “about to faint in a puddle of my own making” feeling that made CrossFit so worthwhile was gone.  Intent on managing my fatigue, I was slowly turning into a sandbagger.  The worst part—I knew it.

Last week, I went all out, and PRs fell.  I added three rounds to my “Cindy”, 20 pounds to my overhead squat, turned in a gym record “Christine”, and managed my first two fully turned-out muscle-ups.  During each metabolic effort, I left the gym with the taste of copper on my tongue and a set of seriously pumped-out extremities.  Records or not, I felt like I’d been run over by a truck, and it turns out that’s why I’ve been CrossFitting all along.

The “manage versus charge” debate will rage on in CrossFit Land, and the answer is never black and white.  Nonetheless, there’s at least one good reason to hit those WODs as hard as you can:  you’ll never wonder if there was something left in the tank, and you might just find a few of those elusive personal records while you’re at it. 

After all, a false-alarm heart attack might be a good thing every once in a while, and projectile vomiting is never as bad as it seems.  Intensity is relative to the athlete.

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