This is going to be my fourth CrossFit Open.  I’m by no means a veteran or in Regionals contention but I love this time of year – the start of the CrossFit sporting season.  If this is your first CrossFit Open or even your second, third or fourth I wanted to share some lessons with you that I’ve learnt.

1. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself

This can be a big trap!  By all means get nervous and excited by the release of the workouts (I’ve scheduled my lunch breaks into the Live Announcement timeslots!).  But don’t put so much pressure on yourself that it is detrimental to your performance.  Like every week at the box you’re going to have good days and bad days, there’s going to be workouts that you like more than others and no – Dave Castro doesn’t have it in for you personally when he programs your weaknesses, he’s just an evil genius.

What you can control your preparation and recovery, watch and do the mobility and skill videos that K-Starr, Carl Paoli, and Diane Fu release, hydrate not just the day before but for the whole week, stay on top of your nutrition and fuel your body with good clean food, do the mobility, and have a massage.  But when it comes down to the 3 2 1 of 15.1, remember that you don’t have the weight of the world on your shoulders and that there will be no apocalypse if you don’t make that 60kg snatch, 40kg overhead squat or have to break up your pull ups into 5s!

2. Have fun

Yes, you heard right – HAVE FUN!  Make sure you get around the other athletes at your box and support them.  This is the time that you need each other, try and speculate what next week’s workout is going to be, talk strategy and help each other up off the ground with a massive high five and maybe a bum slap when the workout is over.

This is the time where the common experience of going through the Open brings you together with not only other people in your box but people you know in other boxes because everyone is doing the exact same thing!  Make sure you’ve got plans to celebrate the end of the open.  I plan on making a Tim Tam cake that my mates shared on Facebook and I’ve been thinking of it ever since!

3. You can’t control what happens at other boxes

Aghhh!!  The movement standards and the ability of people to interpret them into something easier – it has driven me crazy and I’ve had to come to peace with it.  Although this is a sad truth, it’s still going to happen.  Hopefully with the video requirements that CrossFit has brought in this year it will help increase the quality of the movement standards amongst Regional hopefuls however this still leaves over 100,000 people to do the right thing.  Is that too much to ask?

Be the box with integrity, make sure you’re not counting ‘bro-reps’ but also realise that you can only control what happens at your box.  If you hear of a box that is allowing dodgy movement standards like the chest hitting underneath the bar instead of the collarbone being above the bar etc,  then so be it, let them live with it.  You will know that your score is 100% legit and you’ve deserved your score and placing.  This will make you proud of your Affiliate!

4. Pick someone random to compete against

After week one do a bit of ‘leaderboarding’ and find someone from another country that you want to compete against!  This could be someone with the same name, same score for week 1 as you, someone you don’t even know or someone famous.

Last year I chose Marion Thompson (aka Marion Jones).  I was her biggest fan during her athletic career and defended her to everyone when the drug allegations came out.  Then she was found guilty and no lie, I was shattered and the trust and admiration I had for her disappeared.  So last year I found out she was competing and she became my number one competition and I was determined to beat her!  Each week I’d leaderboard her and compare results – I’m happy to say that I won!  It made me work harder and put some fun into it, which I needed because I took the first two weeks way too seriously!

5. Be proud of what you achieve

The CrossFit Open is there to see what you can achieve, compare it to the next year, see how much you’ve improved.  Be part of a unique competition that puts you amongst 100,000 people in the world doing the same workout and tests your fitness!  This weekend I watched one of our athletes get through 10 overhead squats and then spend the remainder of those 3 minutes trying to complete a chest to bar pull up.  It was heart wrenching to watch as she tried so hard, but at the end of the day this is one of our athletes who usually completes pull ups with a band.  She won’t be using the band anymore as I’m not sure how many pull ups she did complete, but she proved she could do them in a workout (so proud of you Kat for not giving up!!) !!!!

Whatever your result will be for 2015 don’t forget to look back at it and be proud of everything you have achieved not just in those 5 weeks but from when you started.  Could you do pull ups? Could you snatch half your bodyweight, could you do a box jump?  Never lose sight of how much you have improved in the bigger picture.  The CrossFit Open is just the opportunity for you to showcase everything you have achieved over 5 weeks and share the experience with some good mates!

– Victoria Jarvis

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Victoria Jarvis is a Level 1 CrossFitter who helps her husband Russ run their affiliate Hilltop CrossFit in Mount Barker, South Australia.  She has a background in athletics, gymnastics, netball and rugby union; has a strange affection towards thrusters, is learning to not hate the air bike and loves watching and helping the community at Hilltop CrossFit grow.  Follow her blog GrowEatRun for healthy recipes, and gardening tips and fitness posts.