Lessons From 20.1

One of my favorite things about the Open season are the conversations that take place both leading up to each weeks new workout AND especially afterwards.

Inevitably, we always make our way to a laundry list of would haves, could haves, and should haves. In essence, the lessons that we learned.

Given that, I thought you all might like to know what some of my lessons from the first open workout of this season were:

1. They are a universal rallying point for all the people that do them. This is true for most of the workouts we do on a daily basis, but there is no denying how much more this takes place when such a large percentage of the gym does the exact same workout. Its a mark of our shared belonging, a representation that we are better when we do things together!
2. Warm-up matters! Year after year, we see people trickle in on Open workout days just a bit earlier to do a bit of extra work to get ready for that days workout. Not surprisingly, at least to the coaches, most everyone seems to do better than they give themselves credit for going into it.
3. These are things we should be doing on a daily basis if we truly want to maximize our results from coming to CFG – myself included!
4. “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Mike Tyson famously said that when he was the baddest man on the planet, but we’ve repeated it ad nauseum at CFG over the years.   I changed my strategy three different times during the workout. It was like using a help line and helped me stay moving.
5. Everyone still goes out way harder in the first 90 seconds than they said they were going to…or that they should be going, me included, LOL!
6. Singles on snatches is something that would (could?) have yielded a better score. This was a burpee workout 100%, so if I could have controlled my heart rate better through singles, I should have been able to hold a more consistent pace instead of flopping up and over the bar ten times every round.
7. No, this does not mean I could have finished. My fitness, no matter the strategy, is simply not there.
8. Redoing it is rarely something I look forward to doing with Open workouts, but this one I really do hope to see again soon!
9. Thanks to Jim Godin and EXOS, my shoulder seems to be around 80% now…and the movement that aggravates it most, snatches, are out of the way!