Lessons From CrossFit
Many coaches and athletes of other sports give CrossFit a hard time. There are some things about the sport that is questionable, but there are also things in the sport that any and all athletes can take away from it. There are lessons to be learned from all of these athletes and the way in which they train and coach. Here are 8 of them.
Work Ethic
Crossfitters are some of the hardest working athletes on the planet. They have to train multiple disciplines. If you can think of an event that may happen, they have to be prepared to attack it. They workout numerous times a day. They have to give every workout all of their ability or when came time comes they won’t be able to perform to the level they need to.
Many crossfitters have some form of addiction to training, and they need it to get in the amount of work required to prepare for anything that may come up during competition.
Community
The CrossFit community is stronger than most sports communities. You rarely see any drama inside the CrossFit community. They are all incredibly supportive of one another. They compete, but at the same time, they are all rooting for one another’s success. It is really cool to see the CrossFit games all of the competitors looking to encourage and drive the others toward success. Not many other sports are focused on the success of an individual athlete. Or particular sport come together to look to push excellence forward from the most rookie of crossfitters to the most senior of crossfitters!
Lifestyle
Crossfitters live one of the healthiest lifestyles of many sports. They focus on performance at all levels. They are continually looking to hack their performance. Doing whatever it takes to be better than yesterday, whether it is about adding more workouts, changing their diets, even adding in mental training and recovery techniques.
Most crossfitters are looking to do whatever it takes to make them improve upon whatever weaknesses they are. They decided to live a life based on driving human performance. THey change they way they lead their lives to achieve that goal.
Open Minds
Crossfit has filled with some of the most confusing and even ridiculous training. They turn training into a competition. You are talking about having an unlimited pool of workouts that can be turned into dust. Many athletes in their respective sports are very closed minded. They only do what they are used to training and they stick to their guns. However, because of the nature of CrossFit as a sport, all the athletes have no choice but to be open-minded. If they close off to one area of training or another they could be leaving valuable training off the table.
Resilience
Crossfitters must be ready and willing to let things bounce off them. They are going to be dealt with injuries more frequently than many other athletes simply because of the unpredictable nature of the sport itself. They will also have to be resilient when it comes to getting the workouts done. Every day is going to a different day. Programming is controlled chaos and even having that environment of not knowing that your going to be training any particular day can be stressful for many athletes. In general athletes in other sports have their weeks programmed and ready to go. They know what they will be training tomorrow and every other day of the week. Again this will build up some real resilience.
Nutrition
As we all know diet is what drives us to athletes. Without the food, we eat there would be very little high performance. Crossfit has introduced the paleo movement to the world. By no means is this a perfect diet. I am not even saying that it is a proper diet. I am assuming that they focus on nutrition. They make the food they intake a priority. This goes hand and hand with a lifestyle of course. I do however feel like they take a particular interest in learning about fueling the body in the right ways.
Versatility
The ability to be versatile goes right along with being a good crossfitter. If you re not handy, you should be sticking to whatever it is you are good at. The sport of CrossFit is built around the athletes not having a clue as to what events they will have to do during the competition. The purpose is to have athletes ready to attack any and everything. The goal is to find the fittest athletes on the planet, and if you give them a list of events, you do not have a fair playing field. They must be well rounded, and always ready.
Knowledge
If there is one thing about the CrossFit community that we can all take away from them is there thirst for knowledge. Every CrossFit athlete I have met has always looking to increase their awareness. It does not matter as to what aspect of performance. They merely look better themselves. That is why you seem them going to Olympic lifting seminars, mobility seminars, powerlifting seminars. You name it, and they are continually looking to sharpen the blade. They want to do whatever it takes to gain that edge on the competition and if that means learning from others they are generally the first in line. With an insatiable thirst for increases in performance. They know the best way to achieve that is to learn from the best in any particular area.
KHO Health was acquired by was acquire by 9INE POINT in the summer of 2019 and is now referred to as 9INE POINT Health.
