Sometimes A Break Is Exactly What Is Needed

Sometimes A Break Is Exactly What Is Needed

The hallmark of successful and driven people (who most people who step into CrossFit Gyms to either participate or coach are) is that they expect a lot from themselves, usually 100% the whole time. Here's the thing, nothing works at 100% the whole time, in fact the more we work at 100% the sooner it is that we are going to either need to give ourselves a break or our body is going to force us to take a break (by either getting ill or injured). In a few of my recent posts I have been saying how things are busy at the moment and right around the time of the house move I got a minor injury (wrist - still managing) and ended up feeling really ill (a mix of bad hayfever and something else). As I said we were moving, I was also finsihing up a job, trying to cram in exams (which were passed) and I had taken on some coaching classes that I maybe shouldn't have given everything. Alas it was my bodies way of saying that after weeks, maybe months, of 'Go', it was time to take a break.

Fast forward 10 days, I was finally feeling myself again, but worried that I had lost it completely and that all of the work I have put in to getting stronger and maintaining the CV fitness at the same time will be down the drain. That session though there I am hitting a new lifetime PB Power Clean by over 25% (even if the Metcon afterwards had me reaching!). I felt awesome afterwards and after a few days of feeling pretty unmotivated to train and almost like my body was telling me not to I felt really ready to jump back in both from a coaching perspective but also as an athlete. For some this may be a controversial take, but I do believe that coaches should be following the same programme that they coach in an affiliate (there are of course exceptions to that rule, for example a coach aiming to be an elite athlete is going to need more volume and potentially a different stimulus to your everyday crossfitter or if they are focusing on a specific element of fitness). So being able to go back to coaching knowing what the team were going through or how their bodies may be feeling makes a big difference to me and my confidence when I stand up in front of people.

I'm going to talk about Relative Vs High Intensity in a future post but it's also worth noting that Crossfit recommends a 3 on 1 off schedule for training. Even they admit that this does not fit with the modern 5 day a week work schedule but have found significant evidence to suggest that by day 4 the impact of high intensity activity is really seen and can be detrimental to performance. Definitely food for thought on why the body might be feeling like it needs a break if its been going intensely for 6 days a week, every week, for a while.

Once again it all comes back to the fact that everyone is different, everyone recovers differently and in an affiliate, anyone on any given day, is going to come into a class potentially really fatigued. It becomes pretty easy to recognise after a while but always difficult to manage depending on the people and the workout. Sometimes people need a break but don't take it, sometimes their body forces them to (and sometimes they still try and keep going, something I have been guilty of a lot in the past, making injuries significantly worse whilst doing it!).

The moral of the story, no one can operate at 100%, 100% of the time. Give yourself a break!

Andy