You were born fully equipped for successful skill acquisition. Whether it was learning to walk, talk or ride your bike, you were undaunted by the ups and downs of the process. You see, skill acquisition is a messy process with some distinct stages as outlined in the book Mastery:
Stage 1 Unconscious incompetence: You don’t know enough about a skill to recognize just how bad you are at it. The upside: blissful ignorance. Downside: you don’t yet know enough to understand what it is you need to work on in order to progress. You might not even realize that you need to change anything.
Stage 2 Conscious Incompetence: You know enough to realize that your skills are lacking. This is the painful stage when you become hyper-aware of your every error (I quit Judo twice as a teen in this stage just when my Sensei thought I was beginning to make progress). It is also the stage at which most CrossFitters switch to an easier pastime). The good news is that at this stage you now begin to see exactly where you need to improve.
Stage 3 Conscious Competence: Yay! You are beginning to master a skill. You know when you’re doing it well and when you are not and you know how to correct your mistakes (they’re still frequent). You still have to concentrate hard to get it right. This was like when you first started driving. You passed your road test but every maneuver took all your concentration.
Stage 4 Unconscious Competence: You can navigate busy traffic, carry on a conversation and change the radio station all at the same time. The skills are so ingrained that they are second nature requiring little to no thought, allowing you to focus on other things like is Sandman catching up with you on the muscle ups? This is when you can begin to really refine movements and shift toward mastery.
Everyone wishes learning was a smooth, even road but it is not. It is a messy journey filled with bumps, bruises and sand traps. When we were kids we reveled in the challenge intuitively understanding that the harder the task, the bigger the pay off. You didn’t berate yourself every time you stumbled, fell off your bike or mispronounced a new word. Sure, there may have been a few tears but you picked yourself back up determined to let nothing deter you from mastering that new skill.
When did you lose that fearless passion for learning? As a reformed teacher I like to blame our education system for imbuing us with a fear of making mistakes as if learning is somehow supposed to magically happen without them. But maybe I’m just bitter.
CrossFit is a discipline that encompasses a wide array of high skill movements that cannot be perfectly mastered in any single lifetime. But that is the joy of it, we’re each of us at a different point in the learner’s journey. Each rep, whether a hit or a miss, takes us one step closer to mastery. The trick is to stop pressuring yourself to be perfect at everything, let mistakes (and corrections) happen and rediscover the joy of learning because it is continuous learning that keeps you young! Don’t shy away from challenges, embrace them and celebrate the effort even when the desired result eludes you because it is the accumulation of those attempts that will produce your eventual success and the harder you worked for it, the sweeter it will taste!
Warm up
3 rnds
1 min plank (R,M, L)
1 min crawl
1 min ( hollow hold, super man, hollow rock)
1 min os full body rock
1 min( kangaroo jump, frog jump, jump ups)
1 min hollow to super man roll
Tech
Ghd sit ups
V sit ups
Burpees
WOD
4 rnds
1 min burpee
1 min ghd sit up
1 min rest
Cool down
Walk
Calf drops
Trunk rotations
Dragon and pigeon pose
Downward dog
Rocking