PRE-WORKOUT BLUES

Nervous, anxious, apprehensive, fearful? Maybe some excitement and hopefully a little joy. This is how we all feel before a workout. We see it every day as our members gather round the whiteboard and we go through the sessions workout and we feel it as athletes ourselves before we train too.

A workout might contain a movement that’s on your shit list. It might seem impossibly long. It might have enough reps to make your eyes water. It might look so brutal you feel like tearing up.

This is the pre-workout blues and we all feel it. No one is immune to the nerves that creep in before a session. Watch any of the glitzy CrossFit Games videos on YouTube and you’ll see every single ‘professional’ CrossFit athlete looking nervous and being anxious before a workout, its natural.

The important thing is to remember not to let those nerves beat you. If you just focus on turning up and giving 100%, we, as coaches, will focus on making the workouts achievable for you, challenging for you and modifying it for you. That’s our job. Programming is where our coaches get to express their creativity and demonstrate their abilities. Trust us to give you a hard but doable workout and hopefully it will alleviate some of those nerves!

Then trust us to push you. Our role is to help you get the best out of yourself each and every session, to help you achieve more than you thought possible and to push your comfort levels to the max. ‘Mediocre’ won’t get you fit, fact.

So, when we encourage you to go heavier or more advanced don’t get more nervous, get excited. It’s us telling you we know you’re capable. Just look forward to that feeling, and I have seen it a thousand times, where you complete something you thought you couldn’t. It’s a high you can’t find anywhere else.

And remember, next time you feel apprehensive, scared, like binning it all off, nervous or uncapable before a workout – we all feel like that sometimes too. We all have workout fears and express them in our own ways. And we all generally realise it’s never as bad as we thought it was going to be!

As Pat Sherwood, CrossFit Games analyst, says ‘The goal is to get fit, make it the best hour of your day. Stay safe, turn up the music, high five some people and blow off some steam. So, remember that. Relax. Have fun. Workout.’