4 Beginner CrossFit mistakes we often times see

Focussing too much on others

A lot of times, beginners look up to individuals that have been doing CrossFit or functional fitness for a longer time than them. Whilst this is a good thing, a lot of individuals some times take it a little too far. At the end of the day, you are in the gym for self-improvement. It sometimes really disturbs the crap out of me to see people so desperate to not be the last one to finish while that is completely irrelevant and subjective to the level of fitness of the group. People in the group could be cheating, or they could be just really good at that specific piece, or they are just better then you are. But the way the individuals feel are still dependent on their environment, maybe if they signed up for that day at another time the general level of fitness is lower. Making them feel better, it should not be an indicator of happiness or feeling bad. Making personal progress should be an incentive.

Showing off

We improve by not proving all the time and we prove ourselves through improving all the time. Always showing off during training and trying to max out every lift can really stand in the way of progress. Not only does it take a toll on the body and the CNS when you try to ¨show off¨ your gains, but it also shouldn’t be the intention of every training session to test your limits all the time. We want to test the limits, evaluate the data from that test, and then train to try and improve the next tests result. Don´t study for a test by only doing tests. Don´t try to seek the limits all the time, marathon runners don´t run marathons daily. A lot of Olympic weightlifters only max out 2-3 times a day.

Doing too much

A lot of beginner CrossFitters are really liking it, they are aware of the fact that they can´t do everything. But they still want to be able to do everything in CrossFit as quickly as possible. They become passionate about ¨the sport of fitness¨ and decide to train, every day, multiple hours. While this can be accomplished, for a lot of individuals it is not a sustainable way of training. If you do want to train every day, you should be really precise with the intensity and alternation of movement patterns. There are also these individuals that go balls out at the beginning of the week and end up not being able to train properly for the rest of the week. The most optimal and efficient option is to spread training out over the course of the week. I would much rather suggest training Monday-Tuesday-Thursday-Friday-Saturday for one hour, then Monday and Tuesday for 2 hours. Not only will it be difficult to train compound exercises for 2 hours, but you are also able to put in more hours. The key takeaway is to spread out your effort, instead of trying to put it all in one training session. Also, if you want to start training more days, don´t do it all of a sudden but build it up.

Big and sudden changes

Due to the new sport, you also aspire lifestyle changes. Most will look at nutrition which is a great starting point. They want to change their eating habit, which is a good thing though the problem with a lot of individuals is, that they make a lot of changes all at the same time. Instead of deciding to do things less, they decide to stop doing it at all. For example, if an individual eats burger king 4 times a week, it would be really difficult to change those 4 times a week of burger king to 4 times a week rice with chicken and broccoli. A more sustainable and progressive way would be to try and make burgers for 3 times a week and go to burger king only once. When the individual has adapted to this lifestyle change, then it is time to go and make more changes. The point is that we want individuals to be able to get to their goal, that is the main focus, in which timespan it is done is dictated by the consistency of the individual. If the individual is not able to stay consistent with their lifestyle changes, they fall back again which is something we don´t want and often times take up a lot more time then to just go with slow steps in the first place.

Not thinking long term

You don´t think about it straight away, but the ultimate goal of CrossFit would be to be able to do it until you are 90. The corevalues of mixing strength with conditioning pieces is absolutely brilliant and helps age in a healthy way. When training. You don´t need to directly focus on aging as healthy as possible, especially when you are young. But there will come a time that you will be 30-40-50-60-70-90 etc. Make sure that you are not that person that is not able to walk by himself because of his hip replacement or lacks strengt to get out of a chair by himself because he stopped doing sports due to being overtrained all the time. Think micro and macro. Make sure that training is properly progressed and keeps consistency in as much as possible.