3 DAYS ON – 1 DAY OFF. PART DEUX.

Crossley sporting the newest CrossFit accessory...the kettlepurse!

Is 3 days on, 1 day off too much training?  We got a lot of really good responses yesterday and I appreciate everyone who chimed in.  Personally, I believe that if you are using CrossFit as a general health and fitness regimen then, the 3 on 1 off model is probably too much for any length of time over a month in duration – especially if you have another physical hobby or sport.  That’s only 1 full day off a week.  Considering how intensely we train and how hard we push ourselves, the recovery period needs to be longer than 1 day per week to allow our bodies to fully benefit from it.  
That being said though, I do believe that if your nutrition and lifestyle are set up to support such a high physical demand, then using 3 on 1 off to train for a specific event or competition is managable.  Mentally knowing that the training period will come to an end and a longer rest period will be implemented after the event does wonders to stave off overtraining.  Yes, that does mean that there’s a mental and emotional aspect to overtraining.  I know of athletes that trained for the Games using 3 on 1 off, and even doing double workouts in one day, but then they made sure to have an offseason that lasted at least a month and had no hard exercise in it at all.  CrossFit doesn’t have an “offseason” so one of the things that we have to be vigilent about is giving our bodies those week long, 2 week long, even 3 week or longer breaks once or twice a year to simply heal and enjoy not having to mentally gear up for a workout.
One of the great things that Rip kept emphasizing this past weekend was “People do not get stronger from training, people get stronger from recovering from their training.”  That means that the recovery has to happen in order for the strength gains to happen.  Even further on that continuum then is the notion that training on days that should be used for recovery actually puts you further behind!  Not only are you not getting a benefit from the training, but it is costing you as well.  Remember we’re not only interested in how healthy and strong we all are this week, we’re also interested in how healthy and strong we’re going to be 5 years, 10 years and even 20 years from now.  Train hard, rest hard.

Today’s Workout:
“Angie” – For Time
100 Pull ups
100 Push ups
100 Sit ups
100 Squats

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