Question of the day. When you walk into your Crossfit Box and check out the board to see what your workout will be, what is your strategy for completing the task at hand? Do you see a mountain of impossible tasks and decide “I’ll just do me best to get through this one step at a time.” Do you just put your head down and grind through it at 100% effort? Are you just there to shrug off life’s problems for an hour and have some fun working out with your friends? (yes you can have fun working out).
Personally I need a target to shoot for when I work out. Whether it’s smart or not I usually glance at the whiteboard and then look at other people’s scores and see if I can beat them (usually not.) I find that I will work harder if I’m pushing for a goal that’s just out of reach. Rather than if I just try to work as hard as possible for 10 min. So is it wise to compare yourself to others?
Despite what I’ve said in my earlier posts, I would say comparing yourself to others can be a tool for motivation, however it can also hurt your performance. Here’s an example:
This week our coach had us perform Grace. 30 Clean and Jerks for time at 135 guys / 95 women. Awesome! Here is a workout I’m proficient in, let’s get competitive. So on this particular day I came in at noon and checked the board. There weren’t many men who had completed this workout in the morning. There was one man’s RX score of 3:11. Okay let’s try to beat that. Another problem I had was, I had never performed this workout before so I had nothing to compare it to except the other members.
So with a goal of 3:00 min in mind I set off. I broke it into 5s and after all 30 reps were done I finished with a gentleman’s 2:53. Awesome, I beat my goal. Well after work a buddy of mine showed up and did just what I did, he checked the board, saw my time and thought, “Oh I can destroy that guy!” And he did, he beat my score by more than 10 seconds.
What if we had been working out at the same time? Would both our times be faster?
Or 
what if we worked out with the guys who got sub 2 min? When it comes to performance I
keep noticing that there’s always a little more juice for the squeeze. I guess the trick is getting your mind to unlock it.
So what is your choosen strategy for getting the best score possible in a workout? Feel free to leave a reply below. Thanks
Thoughts from an average Crossfit Athlete 
when i see that dreaded white board–hah If there’s running involved I usually get excited because i’m one of the better runners at my gym, so that portion is always an “active recovery” but the days where there are push presses or anything to do with shoulder presses (my weakness,especially the left side) the focus shifts to doing the heaviest weight I can do with the best form. So on those workouts, I almost always finish last or close to last, but i’m ok with being last those days. I’ll catch up soon!
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It takes a lot of humility to scale down and not be afraid to come in last, even when it’s the right thing to do. That sounds like a good strategy.
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Shay-lon
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I love this! I had to learn to stop worrying about how everyone else had done and to focus on the work that I put in. Katrin Davidsdottir said something amazing during the open where she said that if you’ve given it your all then that’s all that counts. It taught me to focus less on everyone else and to zone in on me as the athlete.
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Yep, that’s something I struggle to do everyday
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