Dial in These 4 Things to Help You Crush Your Open Workouts

Credit: Frank Nguyen

It’s almost that time of year again and we are all getting ready to crush our workout attempts this year in the CrossFit Open. 

• Whether this is your first Open season or your tenth, if your name is on the leaderboard, you want to do well. 

Check out the recommendations below to start “fine-tuning” and optimize your performance for every workout attempt.

Prioritizing Recovery Outside of Training

It’s not just about what you do during your training sessions, but how your body repairs and adapts in the hours and days that follow them. 

Here’s a couple of reasons why recovery outside of training is so important:

Muscle Repair and Growth 

Training causes micro-tears in muscle fibers. Recovery allows those fibers to rebuild and grow stronger. Without proper recovery, your muscles never fully repair, which can lead to overtraining, fatigue, diminished performance, and overuse injuries over time.

Preventing Injury 

Chronic fatigue and overuse without adequate recovery increases your risk of injuries, as mentioned above. Your muscles, tendons, and ligaments need time to repair and adapt to the stress of training. Including things like stretching, foam rolling, getting enough sleep, staying hydrated, and prioritizing your nutrition can help reduce the likelihood of overuse injuries. 

Restoring Energy Stores 

Training depletes your body’s glycogen stores. Recovery through proper nutrition and rest allows these stores to be replenished. Without fully restored energy reserves, you won’t be able to perform at your best when it counts the most to you.

Reducing Mental Fatigue 

Intense training can lead to burnout, anxiety, and mental fatigue, which can negatively impact focus and motivation. Giving your mind time to rest through proper sleep, relaxation techniques, stress management practices, and time off from high-intensity training helps you stay mentally sharp for your upcoming competition.

Adaptation and Performance Gains 

Adaptation doesn’t happen during the workout, it happens during recovery. When you push your body to its limits during training, it’s during recovery that your body adapts, and becomes stronger, faster, and more resilient. Without proper recovery, you can plateau or even regress. 

Sleep and Hormonal Balance 

Sleep is the most powerful recovery tool out there. During deep sleep, your body produces growth hormone, which plays a key role in tissue repair and muscle growth. Lack of sleep can impair your body’s ability to recover and reduce the effectiveness of training. 

Put Intensity Over Volume

A common mistake we see in CrossFit athletes is increasing training volume too much in preparing for the Open, resulting in overuse injuries and burnout. 

• More does not always mean better. 

To help you move the needle in your fitness, consider bringing more intensity into your workouts, instead of adding more workouts. Adding “extra” volume, just to “do extra”, most likely will only make you feel more run down and tired.

Practice the Skill of Competing

Competing is a skill in and of itself and one that, like anything else, takes practice to improve. 

Consider some of the following practices to help you feel more comfortable with competitions, more specifically, online qualifiers and the CrossFit Open:

Practice With a Judge 

Ask a buddy, coach, or trainer to judge your workout every so often. You can even tell them in one or a few of the workouts, be sure to give you a “no rep” so you can experience what that situation feels like. 

• If you’ve never been “no repped” in a workout before, it can be a humbling experience in a hyper-competitive setting. 

Take the time to practice now, so you know how to handle it in the future.

Practice Setting Up Your Film 

This is a good practice to get into in general, but learning which angles work the best in your gym’s facility for different movements is a good thing to start practicing now, so you aren’t holding your judge up in the first week of the Open.

Practice Faster Transitions 

Consider for the next couple of weeks, putting your equipment for workouts as close together as you possibly can.

• Although this is a great tactic for sharing the space in your gym, it’s purpose is to save as much time as possible as you move between movements or parts of the workout.

If you haven’t practiced doing this before and try to for your first attempt, it will likely feel a lot “harder” than it should.

Taking the time now will at least create exposure for you of how it feels to start the next movement that much faster or get on the rower with one step instead of two to three.

Execute with Intent

This recommendation is a good habit to help simulate competitive situations. 

• It requires you to take the workout a little more seriously than normal. 

Set a realistic goal that is not outcome-based, and work towards it.

Consider doing this in a metcon – just dial in your rest management (For example, I’m going to take a five-second rest every time I finish a rep on the barbell movement).

• By setting intentions and being more purposeful in your training, you can learn more about yourself as an athlete and what you’re capable of doing. 

This also allows for even greater reflection and an analysis of whether you executed the workout properly based on your current abilities.

There is still time left to move the needle with your fitness before “Go Time!” So, take the time to take the recommendations outlined above to help you feel more confident in all your CrossFit Open attempts this season.