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| Ryan fighting though some ring push-ups on thursdays WOD |
WOD:
Barbara
20 Pull-ups
30 Push-ups
40 sit-ups
50 squats
Rest Exactly 3 minutes between rounds
You are responsible for keep track of rest periods and time of rounds
Post Total time to Comments/ Chalk Board
It’s time to talk about journaling. Until now had you do the minimum required in your journals and that is to track progress. This means that at the end of your WoD you copy down the work out and write down your score. This was the next time the same or similar WoD is up on the board you have something to compare it to. Many of you have used your journals well in this regard. Tracking your progress over a period of months and all of you have seen great results thus far. Now however it is time to take it to the next level. Your performance in the gym will be affected by any number of different factors. All of which you have some control over others. Yes you will have more control over some than others but still you will be able to control all of what we will look at to some degree. So lets take a look at what we will be tracking from here on out.
WoD
Both score and feeling
Nutrition
Everything you ate from the right after the last WoD to right before the one you are about to or just completed.
Hydration
Tied to but still independent of nutrition. The best anabolic/fat burner is water, that’s not just my opinion it’s a fact you must be hydrated for your body to function properly.
Sleep
You need a certain amount and while everyone is different I’m willing to bet the amount you need will fall somewhere between 7-9 hours give or take an hour either way.
Relationships
Friends, significant others, family, co-workers, it all affects you in some way
Relaxation/Meditation
Everybody needs some alone time, some need a few hours, and for some 15 minutes will suffice. Take some time every day to be alone and get a little introspective.
Warm-up
Tied to the WoD but we need to track it separately as it will have some slightly different goals
Stretching
Could be the Mob WoD or some stretching you do at home
This is CrossFit of course we need measurable results and rules on how to score each of these categories. Well you are in luck because I have just the thing. And here it goes each of the categories will be graded by you on a 10 point scale. There will be groups that the categories will wall into that will help us monitor and track general trends without having to over analyze each category
Nutriton:
3 points for breakfast
2 points for lunch
3 points for dinner
And 1 point for 2 other snacks during the day
Obviously the better food you eat the better off you will be but for now lets just focus on getting into eating 5 small meals a day
Hydration
1 point for every time you finish off a FULL glass or bottle of water up to 10 points. If you don’t finish it, it doesn’t count you cannot count to half glasses at 2 different times of the day.
Sleep
Minimum number of point is 6 points for 6 hours of sleep anything less than that you get zero points in the category. Add 1 point for every extra hour you get up to 10 points
Relationships
Obviously this is a category with out exact rules. If all your relationships are going great give yourself 10 points if you had a fight with your Brother, but you and your significant other have never been closer, maybe a 6 or 7. If every one hates you including your dog then its probably a zero and you should work on that.
Relaxation/meditation
2 points for every 15 minutes you spend alone up to 10 points or 1hr:15m ( watching T.V. does not count) if you are a person of faith prayer or study is a great way to spend this time, if you are not simply being a little introspective ( perhaps about why even you Dog seems to hate you right now) is acceptable. You do not have to do this all at once 3 separate bouts of 15 minute quiet time gets you 6 points for example . or 2 bouts of 30 minutes Gets you 8.
Warm-up
The goal of the warm-up to get your body temp up, maybe start sweating a little and spend some time working on your specific goals. This will be subjective much like the relationships category but there are some things to look for. Was it real hard to get yourself going today didn’t do much during the warm-up and just went through the movements, maybe you only get a 3. Came in early warmed up and spent 10-15 minutes working on your goals probably an 8,9 or 10. Late and missed the warm-up completely 0 points or even negative points
WoD
This category had both subjective and objective pieces to it. If you crushed the WoD did everything unbroken and set a PR then you get 10, if you just moved half heartedly through it because you felt like you should be there. Maybe only a 4. if you skipped a day you were planning on coming 0. Took a planned rest day and actually rested 10 screwed up and went on a 5k run on your rest day probably a 1 or 2. Perhaps you felt great but performed poorly anyways( or vise versa), Well that is where it gets subjective maybe you give yourself a 6 for it. Over time you will get the feeling for what is a 10 for you and what is not.
Stretching
Minimum 4 points for 4 minutes. That is just enough time to see some sort of change, though likely not permanent. 1 minutes = 1 point. Bonus points are allowed up to 5 points. So less than 4 minues stretching = 0 points anything 4 minutes and over = 1 point for 1 minute if you do a total of 15 minutes you et 1 points but that is the max points you can get. You do not have to do all the stretching in one sitting but anything less than 4 minutes at a time does not count. That means you have to spend at least 4 minutes stretching any time you want to earn points for this category.
Add it all up and you have a max score of 85/80 points for the perfect day. I am willing to bet if you have sting of theses types of day you will be setting a number of different PR’s during that time.
Now lets talk about groups, You may see you own groupings present in this categories but I see three important ones.
Workout/practice
Includes:
Warm-up 10/10 points possible
WoD 10/10 points possible
Stretching 15/10 points possible
Total of 35/30 points possible
Recovery
Includes:
Sleep 10/10 points
Nutrition 10/10 points
Hydration 10/10 points
Total of 30/30 points possible
Life
Includes:
Relaxation/ meditation 10 /10 points possible
Relationships 10/10 points possible
Total of 20/20 points possible
You can give yourself a grade in each of these groups i.e 27 and up in workout/ practice is an A 24-26 is a B ect. And if you notice that any one area is falling behind then you have something to focus on.
CrossFit is about be prepared for the Unknown and the unknowable. That means more than just coming into the gym and hitting the WoD with everything you have it means you are recovering correctly and that you are living a balanced life. There is no one thing on here that is more important than the others. If you fall behind in one the others will soon suffer as well.
It is time to start taking responsibility for all areas of your life to insure you are living a balanced well rounded one. So take the time to implement this into your journaling everyday, Be honest you are the only one you sees your journal this is a great tool if you would use it like this.
Example journal entry:
Sleep
6 points asleep by 11pm up by 6 am. 7 hours but woke up in the night a few times.
Nutrition 8
Breakfast: 3
3 points eggs and fruit
Lunch 0 had a surprise meeting so I didn’t get to eat
Snack 2 brought beef jerky and nuts to work and munched on those through the day
Dinner: 3 wife made enchiladas… yum
Hydration: 10
Seems like I spent all day re-filling my water bottle
Warm-up: 6
Got to the gym a little late but was nice and warmed up in time to start to WoD but didn’t get a chance to work on my goal of 300lb clean
WoD: 7
Was real hard to push the work out maybe my warm-up wasn’t as good as I thought. Or it could have to do with the fact that I hate burpees
21-15-9
HPC 155#
Burpees
12 : 36
Stretching: 10
Spent 10 minutes on the Mob WoD after wards. Felt good my squats are feeling a lot smoother now.
Relaxation/meditation 6
15 min reading the bible this morning 2 points
30 min turned off the radio on the way to work and just thought/prayed instead 4 points
Relationships5
Brother got mad that I still haven’t paid him back, but Dad and I plan on going fishing this weekend and I am really looking forward to it
Workout/practice
Warm-up 6
WoD 7
Stretch 10
23/30( C+ )
Recovery
Sleep: 6
Nutrition: 8
Hydration :10
24/30 ( B- )
Life
Relaxation/meditation 6
Relationships 5
11/20 ( F )
Total of everthing
58/80 ( C- )
So what should we look for with this type of journaling.
Well first off we want all aspects of our life to be relatively high. This imaginary person should probably think about paying his brother back because it is obviously impacting him. Next we want the recovery grouping to be equal to if not slightly higher than the workout/ practice grouping as this will ensure that we are protecting ourselves from over training. It will also be important to watch for any changes in these categories and how they affect your performance in the gym. If the life grouping is down and you notice that you haven’t hit a PR in a while perhaps you are more affected by that than you thought. While I doubt that any one is capable of getting perfect scores in all of the categories for a sustained period of time it is important to make sure that you are not sacrificing one or 2 areas for the sake of others. Balance is the goal.
