Unknown and Unschedulable: The Season of a Competitive Fitness Athlete
Before the season, the NFL releases their schedule. This schedule is set in stone and gives clarity and direction for all 32 teams. This is the same practice for most any competitive sport in the world. The Premier League, Rugby League, and the NBA all have a similar set-up in that way. Unfortunately, we have all chosen a sport that does not give this type of clarity, and even more so, it can (and does) change every year. So how should we plan our 2025 competitive season? Let’s start with what our goals and abilities are.
If we were to use last year's system as guidance, what should you do if you’re an open or quarterfinals level athlete? For this athlete, we want to put a high amount of focus on in person local throwdowns and one or two “A” competitions. The local competitions allow us to actually compete. Most local throwdowns don’t require a qualifier and give us the chance to compete in our sport. It does us no good to simply train all year without stepping into the arena and putting ourselves out there. Plus we get the best feedback from competition that we can then carry back into our training. Then we should also pick one big fun competition. One that typically requires a qualifier, or maybe a little bit of travel. Something like Wodapalooza, TFX, Fittest of the Coast, something like that. Allow that to be the one big event of the year to get on one of the big competition floors and show what you got!
Let’s go with our next level athlete, the semifinals athlete. This athlete has aspirations for qualifying for the CrossFit Games, but hasn’t been able to punch their ticket yet. For these athletes, we have a much different look to the season than recent years past. With the re-introduction of a sanctional style season, we can have more than one opportunity to qualify. So with this, we need to choose 1 or 2 events that we want to qualify for and travel to. One way to choose where to go is based on the competition's history of programming style. So take a look at previous competition programming and see which suits your strengths and weaknesses. Side note… with athletes able to qualify out of an online qualifier this year, if you’re a great qualifier athlete, this may be a path you take very seriously.
Lastly, our CrossFit Games Veterans. This is going to be a highly specific scenario for each of you. One that you and your coach will need to sit down and discuss. First thing we need to recognize is the field is now 25% smaller than it has been in the past. This other side of this though, as discussed earlier, is we have multiple opportunities to qualify. We can qualify through the online semifinal, plus we can compete at multiple in person qualifying events. So number one is to identify if you are historically a good online qualifier athlete. If so then we want to really take a swing at qualifying through the online semifinal. That is the first route and sets us up for a long build to prepare for the games, plus we can then compete at the other in person qualifiers with no pressure and test out where we are at relative to the field.
Ultimately this will all come down to what you want to do with your year and what your own personal goals are. What is discussed here is just a few thoughts to use as guidance. At the end of the day, remember why you started training in the first place. Use that as your motivator moving forward, put yourself out there and compete, and be sure to have some fun along the way.
