Prioritization of Goals

16May10

The pyramid above is from the CrossFit foundational article "What is Fitness?" This is the Theoretical Hierarchy of Development.

"A theoretical hierarchy exists for the development of an athlete. It starts with nutrition and moves to metabolic conditioning, gymnastics, weightlifting, and finally sport. This hierarchy largely reflects 

foundational dependence, skill, and to some degree, time ordering of development. The logical flow is from molecular foundations, cardiovascular sufficiency, body control, external object control, and ultimately mastery and application. This model has greatest utility in analyzing athletes’ shortcomings or  difficulties. We don’t deliberately order these components but nature will. If you have a deficiency at any level of “the pyramid” the components above will suffer." 

We often in CrossFit (as well as life), fall victim to "what we think" we need and what we really need. What we think we need is usually what we thrive at or enjoy the most. After a couple of weeks and PRs on the Westside program, I was ready to put CF on a sabbatical and delve a bit more back into powerlifting. I think that I can do really well in this arena and the Westside gives me a template with reduced volume that my body can handle. The only drawback is that I'm a CrossFitter at heart. It didn't sit well with me to "suck" at CrossFit.

As I sit and reflect, I revisit the hierarchy above. My nutrition was on the path to correct and my weightlifting was spot on. I told myself it was okay to lose some metcon and certain body-weight things were just going to have to take a hit as I got heavier. Bad bad wrong wrong. I started to do this "little of this, little of that programming" ie I was using Westside for my strength then merging small metcons here and there. A big part of Westside is what you supplement your max efforts and dynamic days. The beauty of CrossFit is increased work capacity across broad time and modal domains. So I was missing supplemental training that would help to continuously increase my major lifts and side as pre-hab/injury prevention and I was missing the frequency of CrossFit workouts reducing my work capacity. All in all I ended up irritating my shoulder, then rehabbing it, then straining my neck/trap (yes, demo'ing a 75# snatch in the am) most likely because my shoulder was bracing to reduce it's range and it ended up calling on it's neighboring muscle for help and support and "pop".

Anyways, on the road to repair I was excited to start back up on the Westside but I'm going to follow the Theoretical Hierarchy. I'm not going to take the jump to what I enjoy most and what I thrive at. I'm going to truly stabilize my base. I'm eventually going to re-draw out the pyramid but the true base is going to be REST (including rest, recovery, and sleep).


Rest: Be in bed by 10:30pm every night, up and about NLT 515am. 
Nutrition: eat a breakfast! Preferably upon waking.
Metcon: mod for neck compensations no strength work this week.