The Open is Over...Now What??

by Grace Lin

Congratulations on finishing the 2017 CrossFit Open!  We hope you had a blast these past 5 weeks and are excited to tackle it again next year!  Now, for a small percentage of the population, the Open was stage 1 of advancing to the next level, Regionals or the Masters Qualifier.  And an even smaller percentage will advance from Regionals to the CrossFit Games.  But for the majority of people, our “Games” was the Open.  So, now that it’s over, what do we do?

Now is the time to reflect upon your performance during the Open.  Did you have any glaring weaknesses?  Was there a particular workout that you struggled with more than the others?  Was there a workout where you performed extremely well?  What can you identify as your strengths?  The list of analyzing questions goes on.

We are going into what’s called the off-season.  This is the time to get better at those weaknesses you identified from your reflection.  Don’t try to take them on all at once!  That’s a recipe for failure.  Make a list of things to work on and chip away at them.  Each of these items should have an attainable goal.  Just pick one or two at a time.  Create an actionable plan to attack each weakness.  Once you attain your goal, move to the next item on the list.

Take this example of a goal and actionable plan of attack:

GOAL – consistently string together 10+ DU.  

PLAN – spend 10 minutes before/after class working on DU, 3 times a week

The Open is a great test of fitness for everyone.  The workouts are expertly designed to highlight strengths and expose weaknesses.  Now, for the majority of us, we have the next 365 days to work at improving upon our exposed weaknesses to become better, well-rounded athletes.  And when the 2018 Open rolls around, we will be fitter and ready to test our progress!