Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Rule number 4, Bring your training diary

               We have only a few house rules to keep the gym running smoothly, wipe down your equipment, 3 burpees every minute you’re late (I slept in once 50 min late, times 3 = 150 times 2 for trainers = 300 burpees, haven’t slept in since!!) The one rule that I think is neglected a lot is: bring your training diary.
A basic part of crossfit is evidence based fitness. It’s what separates us from a spin or pump class or a group of mates lifting heavy stuff. What did you lift? how heavy? how fast? Repeat in 2/3 months, did you get better? If so great, continue on what you are doing or if not let’s look at why you didn’t. Was work stressful? Kids sport taking over? Or did you have multiple buck’s nights/weddings in that period? At least we can measure our results in the real world and not debate it with some keyboard warrior.
I know people come to the gym for many different reasons and some don’t really care what they lift but we, the coaches, get a massive kick out of someone ringing the PB bell. We enjoy your success probably more than our own.
When you first start crossfit you are hitting pb’s every cycle and are probably thinking at this rate you’re off to the Rio Olympics but then start to plateau off. Big Azza Mac, one of the real heavy hitters of the gym, is an excellent example of using his diary. When he first started even I had a bigger deadlift than him but soon he far surpassed that. He was getting 10kg plus pb’s every time he lifted, but after a while that slows down. He still gets pb’s now but 1kg a cycle, 271-272.5kg just recently, BOOM!! Now his choice of a diary is a ratty old exercise book but it works for him.
We have the iPads at the front that when you check in you can record your results as well. There are many apps around or just in your phone notes, whatever works for you. The level of your entries needs to be at minimum what you lifted and how fast and/or heavy it was. Extra data is up to you and like with most things the more you put in the more you get out. Data like how much quality sleep you got, if you failed was it a technique issue, or simply made too much of a jump up in weight and nutrition. Nutrition and sleep (or rest and recovery) are a massive subject to get covered at another time.
A diary also gives you perspective of how far you have come. During a big clean out recently I found my first crossfit training diary. The first wod was crossfit total, 1rm of back squat, strict press and deadlift. My numbers then were 130kg squat, 75kg press and 160kg deadlift. I thought I was strong then but compared to my all-time pb numbers they don’t come close. A 190kg squat, 85 kg press and 225 kg deadlift shows the program works.
For a conditioning reference about the 5th wod in my diary was ‘DT’. That is 5 rounds of 12 deadlift, 9 hang power clean and 6 push jerk all at 70kg. My time then was 22 minutes. I remember my grip failing (I knew nothing about hook grip, thanks Saccy) and thinking the weight was impossible to move. In tier 2 class just recently we did double DT so 10 rounds instead of 5. I was sub 15 minutes. I beat my old time even having to do double the work. Now I look at the guys and girls at the world games and they absolutely destroy me but that’s not who I am comparing myself to. I’m just trying to be better than I was yesterday. The only way to know this is to keep track of all your workouts. It doesn’t take long to do and at worst you get a laugh at yourself.
Hookgrip for life, KB.

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