Let’s Talk Movement Standards

It’s about every six months that we look around as trainers and decide it’s time to remind everyone about movement standards. With the CrossFit Open, spots on the affiliate team and our main goal to turn you into your personal best, it’s a better time than ever to talk about movement standards. First, read one of our article on why form matters for the long term and your personal health:

It’s easy to revel in short term gains and ignore our weaknesses, but we’re not training for tomorrow, we’re training for the long term.  Good form matters because without it we harm ourselves, we limit our potential and we aren’t seeking true improvement…. Read the full article: http://crossfitcharlottesville.com/2010/10/26/form-matters-do-it-right-or-dont-do-it-at-all/

Secondly, when it comes down to being personally accountable to yourself, making sure you do the entire WOD, at a specific weight, with full range of motion is absolutely important. It doesn’t matter that you can’t do full chest to bar pullups, or you have to do knee pushups.What matters is that you record your time and your movement standards. We want you to improve… that’s the most important thing for us as trainers, constant improvement. Doing half squats in a squatting workout does not mean RX. It will be better for you to record “squat depth needs work” because you impart a sense of honesty and areas of improvement for yourself. CrossFit punishes your weaknesses. Avoiding them, either by claiming we did more than we actually did, or hiding from them behind incorrect records, will assure us that we won’t get the improvement we need.

Finally, I hope everyone in the gym participates in the CrossFit Open. It’s 5 weeks of CrossFit competition with competition WODs every Saturday. It also prevents a unique opportunity to do WODs in a competition environment with a judge. Not only do the demands of movement standards dramatically increase, but also you will perform at a much higher level than in regular class. Going into the Open without being honest with our abilities will be a tough reality check.

I know competition overtakes us in the heat of the WOD, but let’s step back and evaluate our goals. If your goal is to improve yourself, reach your potential and be a better athlete, honesty is the way to go. That’s the only way you can fully address your weaknesses.