PR everyday. Seriously.

     

     Feb 8, 2015 I went to the Donny Shankle seminar.  One of his theories is to PR everyday.  He went so far as to say that he hadn't PR'd his snatch for a period of YEARS early in his career but he would always find something to PR in his training sessions.  He is an Olympic weightlifter so he would do squats, front squats, C&J, position work, pauses, doubles, triples, complexes, etc....

     As a crossfitter its WAY easier to "find something" to PR in at each session.

     So that's the "theory".  In practice, I've found something to PR in at almost EVERY workout for the last month plus.  This has done exactly what Shankle said it would do, kept me excited.

     The other thing it has done is applied overload to my limits.  Which is the only way you improve.

     As a CF athlete, I can log a million things on my little mywod app (and I do).  I can look at things like unbroken double unders, max wallballs in 60 seconds, in addition to the big lifts for various rep schemes and position work and benchmark wods, etc....

     I was speaking to my coach about this (Blair Morrison) and he said this is component that is part of the success of the Westside barbell ideology with their powerlifters conjugate training.  Using bands, chains, inclines, declines, dumbells, deficits, etc...allows them to constantly vary their attack and always work to PR "something" and the sum total is increases in the big 3 lifts they care about.

     As far as what I care about it's a lot more than the big 3 powerlifting lifts, its those, the Olympic lifts, engine work, gymnastics, and on and on.....

A couple big principles:

1. You must record your sessions.  I use mywod as I mentioned to log the big things/milestones.  But I also write on the little hand held whiteboard my session and take a picture of it each day.  This lets me look quickly if I've done something and if so at what weight/reps.

 2. You want to sneak up on your PR's but not repeat them.  If your PR hang snatch is 165, go for a little less and then a little more.  That's why I have a ton of 1 kilo or 2.5 lbs PR's.  It breaks down a mental barrier for one, and then it absolutely counts as overload since you've never done the weight before.  The longer you've been lifting the harder PR's are to come by.  1 kilo is 1 kilo!

3. If you have to sandbag from time to time, do it!  If I'm having a bad gym day, I may have to go stretch to find something, but I am not leaving the gym till I have a PR.  Then record it and come back to fight another day.