In CrossFit there are a lot of different numbers that get tossed around such as maxes, times, rounds, weights, but one that really never gets brought up is training age. Training age is the time that you have spent pursuing a serious strength & conditioning program. Some of you may ask ‘Why is this important?’ The reason that training age is important is because the more time you spend under the bar the harder you are going to have to work to make gains. When anyone first starts out on a genuine resistance (weightlifting) program for the first six months to a year you will probably see huge gains in almost all of your lifts.
This is because when you begin strength training your body makes initial neurological connections that include firing patterns in muscle and activating the right muscle to fire in the first place. The good news is that when this happens you will see huge gains. One person in the gym had only pulled 185 lbs in a deadlift before and this week he pulled 315, big shout out to Robert Sloan. So for the first year or so you will see huge gains.
The bad news is that eventually your body knows exactly how to fire your muscles and you must now make physiological changes. These take time, unfortunately you cannot do all of the work you need to and then magically lift more weight. You must give your body time to adapt. This means that you must work and you must also rest, and give your body time to repair itself. This means that when you use to see twenty pound jumps in your lifts you may now see only five, or possibly if its a bad day no improvement on your previous max. The key here is to know that you will continue to get better as long as you are consistently working hard and showing up. The key is to not get overly frustrated with yourself, and keep working.
How much have you pr’d by recently?
Ana putting in the effort! ?Click here to check out more pics on Flickr!
