Tuesday
09Sep2008
Managing Your Way to Mediocrity
Tuesday, September 9, 2008 at 12:00PM 
Patrick and I went to the track last week to blast through a quartet of four hundred meter sprints. He blasted, and I ran like a prosthetic-free amputee.
This practice is score-driven, meant to maximize the numbers on the whiteboard for any given level of fitness. Basically, you perform a workout multiple times, systematically varying your strategy in an attempt to either maximize work or minimize time from attempt to attempt. The idea is to find the limits of your ability, and to exist at that level.
The central tenet of CrossFit is intensity. Movements are pursued with aplomb, chasing the elusive goal of ever increasing work capacity.
Unfortunately, ability management has a monumental downfall—the latent tendency to cause detraining. If one trains at the limits of ability, never trying to push the pace beyond current capacity and never exposing the body to an overwhelming stimulus, improvement does not occur. Even worse, ability slowly travels in the other direction, gathering speed on the gradual slope of suckdom.
The importance of this most basic of training principles, known as adaption to imposed demand, did not flash in my little brain until I’d been regressing for two solid months. My fastest four hundred was a swollen 1:21, a full twelve seconds off my personal best and ten seconds slower than my previous performance.
It doesn’t sound that horrible until you realize that the world’s fastest athletes can run more than a quarter of the track in that time. Ten seconds is an eternity.
The culprit was management. I was using running as a moving rest period, sandbagging each interval in an attempt to preserve capacity for other movements. The cumulative effect was a dramatic decrease in ability, and I deserved every inch of it.
The central tenet of CrossFit is intensity. Movements are pursued with aplomb, chasing the elusive goal of ever increasing work capacity. When we throw sport into the mix, ranking athletes and posting scores in black and white, the goal skews toward winning, and intensity suffers in favor of score maximization.
Score-motivated performance is not an unspeakable evil, but awareness of its potential to hurt long term development is a must. Unless there are medals, money, or everlasting glory at stake, it is wise to conduct every exercise with the ferocity of a midsummer hurricane. You might burn out today, but you won’t for long.
I’m banishing management from my athletic toolbox. Next time I charge into a gale-force headwind, I’ll do so with all-out effort, knowing that anything else is a recipe for mediocrity. If I limp in, unable to do a single thruster, pull-up, or swing, so be it. At least I’ll know I gave it everything, and the only direction is up.
Melanie cranks through a 400, mediocrity and management-free. Picture courtesy of The Napping Poet.
Reader Comments (10)
Brilliant... I too (as well as my athletes) look at the 400m runs in WODs as a type of "active rest" period. I always finish a WOD thinking "I could have ran those 400s a lot harder then I did" well not anymore. From now on I am going to either crush my old PRs or spiral into the ground for a glorious DNF.
While I would agree that the 400m run should not be used as an active rest, I would also like to point out that a maximal effort on every movement would not be the best way of increasing overall work capacity (CrossFit's definition of fitness?). The maximal effort should be placed on the workout, not on the movement, in my opinion.
If we were to break down "Nancy" or "Kelly" we would find one's time severely diminished if the person attemtped maximal output during the run portions. Now, I realize this is going back to score-based performance. But you have to look at the purpose of those workouts, which is work capacity. You aren't performing Nancy or Kelly to get a 400m PR. You are doing it to increase your overall work capacity, which is proven through your time.
Now, in a workout that is 4x400m...each sprint would be maximal effort, right? Just my thoughts..whatever works is what we should use. I'd be interested to see a case study, Jon *hint hint*.
Yes Zach that is true, but why should it always be the 400m run that is the "rest" part of it. Why not pace yourself on the OHS, or the box jumps and then run the 400m hard? You can push it hard, or pull it back on anything I suppose, but the 400s (for me anyway) are where I always pull it back and recover when it would be the easiest place to shave 15-20 seconds off every round.
Jon - I like this write up :) When my too much of my crew gets over-managing, I like to set up team workout where your teammate is really the enemy. An example works like this.
2 man teams - the workout is 4 rounds of 400m run and 135# SDLHP, to be completed by both players. To start, player 1 takes off on his run, while player 2 has until player 1 returns to perform as many SDLHP's as they can. When player 1 returns, the roles are reversed (player 2 runs while player 1 pulls). The winning team is the team that's done first, but the overall winner is the one who does the most high-pulls. To win, you need to high-pull like mad, then run fast so your 'teammate" has less time to score.
Jon - 2 things not at all related to this article.
1. I hate you. Reason being I looked through your older entries and saw the Bear Complex WoD. I've been doing Crossfit for a couple months and have made some good gains so I figured I'd give it a shot. You suck.
2. I scaled the Knee to Elbows on the fly during my first round since I've never tried them before and my form sucked resulting in me doing 1 at a time. I ended up scrapping them altogether for round three for two reasons. First, I threw up a little in my mouth doing the push-ups in round three. Second, I've had the fear of God put in me about the connection between GHD sit-ups and rhabdo. I did GHD sit-ups in my warm-up and after round two of the WoD I felt sharp pain in my abdomen. Was it a smart call to scrap the the third round of them, or did I pussy out?
Sorry if asking questions realting to a 2+ year old article is against etiquette.
Thanks,
Paul
John, you are fucking awesome. I just thought I'd let you know that. Over the past couple weeks I've been skimming through the 40 pages of Again Faster posts in my spare time, and it's truly inspiring to look at these snapshots of your training and coaching over the last couple years; way back in May of 2006 you posted a list of one-month, two-month and three-month goals that actually look an awful lot like my current goals. Now, it looks like you absolutely destroyed those goals, so what's to stop me from doing the same?
Cheers,
Jake
Paul,
You should always stop your workouts if you experience sharp pain. A large layoff due to injury takes more from your training than a prematurely ended workout ever will.
Regarding the bear complexes: Luckily, I don't need to hate you back. The movement will do it for me.
Best,
Jon
Chris W,
Some movements do not lend themselves to pacing, OHS being a prime example. The last thing I want to do is hold that F***ing bar overhead any longer than necessary, or, equally bad, set it down or dump it only to have to do an extra power snatch.
That said, I think there's merit in pushing on different or all parts of the work-out, including the runs. I know my Michael time is close to the limit of what I can do with the situps and back extensions, so any improvement will come via the runs.
Great article. I've found myself wondering if I'm taking the easy way out by cutting up the WOD's to prevent 'blowing my load' too early. Let's take a workout including a great many burpees as an example: if there's seventy to do, my first 'set' includes ten, I take a few breaths, do five, pause, breathe, and pace perhaps, do another five, and so on. I know I'm capable of more in one fell swoop (twenty in a row after the first fifty broken up had me hanging with Pukie), but saving that damn clown for the end of the workout often seems a better idea.
I have no doubt this type of strategy aids my time for the WOD's, but what's the cost? I wonder if I spend too much time avoiding Pukie (knowing I'll get up with him later), and not enough time going after the workout with sufficient aplomb, as you might say.
I don't think it's slacking, because I get my ass kicked every workout anyway, but I'm left to wonder... could I have given that WOD a little more blood and sweat? No more 'what-ifs' for me.
Thanks for the enlightenment, Jon.
The Legendary Jon Gilson -
More than any other article you've written (and we've read them all), this is the one that matters most. I point every person I work with to this article, because it's spot on. Hit is as hard as you can from the opening bell, all the time, every time.
You rock, dude.
~W