So you’ve just finished your first Tabata workout. It was a mash-up of Dumbbell Squat Cleans (DBSC) and Sit-ups (SU). You pushed hard and got a great sweat, but now you’re wondering what to do with all these numbers!
First things first. You want to record your totals for each exercise and then add them to for your overall score. Now when you come back to this workout in the future, you’ll know whether you’ve improved or not.
But how can we leverage this data to help enhance our scores moving forward?
First, we need to look at the data.
Yup, in CrossFit your scoring is data and as such it can serve as one of the most valuable tools if you used correctly.
So, if in the example workout above your numbers looked like the follow.
DBSC 12/10/8/6/5/4/4/3
Sit-up 15/12/10/9/7/6/6/6
DBSC = 52 (6.5 per round)
Sit-ups = 71 (8.875 per round)
Total = 123
Simply put this athlete came out too ‘hot’ and gassed out
Now let’s say we go back in time and convince this person to pace a bit try for a more steady pace. 7 or 8 DBSC and 10 sit-ups per round. Assuming they could average around those numbers per round, they could be looking roughly 60 DBSC’s and 80 Sit-ups. Total score 140. Total improvement, nearly a 14%. All that from just looking at a little data and applying some pacing.
Now let’s assume you had a different set of figures
DBSC 8/8/8/8/8/8/8/11
Sit-ups 10/10/10/10/10/10/11/12
DBSC = 67 (8.37 per round)
Sit-ups = 83 (10.3 per round)
Total = 150
This person is either holding back or doesn’t understand what they have for an engine hiding under the hood! On the surface, this score might seem great. Unfortunately, without pushing their limits, there will is no reason for the body to try to adapt. So what do we do here?
The answer is simple. Let’s take them just a little bit outside of their current comfort zone. We’ll ask them to maintain a pace of 10 DBSC and 12 Sit-ups for as long as possible. Based on the numbers above this is clearly very doable for them but will require a bit of a push a the end to maintain.
DBSC 10/10/10/10/9/9/9/8
Sit-up 12/12/12/11/10/10/10/9
DBSC = 75 (9.375 per round)
Sit-ups = 86 (10.75 per round)
Total = 161
So again just understanding our numbers and tweaking them a bit we’ve increased the power output and with created a stimulatory response which will force a series of positive adaptation in our athlete.
For more on this check out ‘Know your numbers’
