“I want to get my first ____ but I can’t…” However you filled in the blanks, you’ve been there. We’ve all been there. And the answer you don’t want to hear is that you probably haven’t tried hard enough.
As weird as it sounds, not trying hard enough is common among even the most accomplished athletes. Don’t give up on each attempt until you’ve struggled for 10 seconds with the rings at the chest. This part is very hard. How hard? Not very, really…
The above is an excerpt from an article Greg Glassman, the founder of CrossFit, wrote about ring muscle-ups. But this lack of struggle surfaces in every movement, rep scheme, or load programmed. CrossFit, being threshold training, elicits favorable adaptations by exploiting struggle. Eg. if the weight you choose moves from 115 to 85 by default, we are probably not trying hard enough. If the negative, hold, or heavy bench press is given up on within :10, you’re probably not trying hard enough.
Even if you fail the movement, the system — your body — will adapt because you’ve struggled with performing the work. That makes it advantageous to struggle and fail in the gym. The reward is high and the consequences low. Rx is a stimulus, not simply a task completed.
If you have goals, share them. The coaches and a healthy share of the members enjoy helping you and will share in your successes. Your coach is there specifically to keep you safe and push you to your threshold to move you closer to accomplishing your goals. Yes, this capacity changes day-to-day. No, not every day is it going to be fun or what you want to do — in that same vain, you don’t have to do it and nobody can do it for you.
Definitively, your effort and your willingness to be uncomfortable, to struggle, fail, increase the weight, hold the position, meet the movement standard, slow down, and do the hard work is going to have the most effective impact to getting that first, and even the 20th unbroken, thing you want.
P.S. Success and failure are celebrated enthusiastically with genuine effort.
