CrossFit Talk: Mental checklist poses tough questions

So, you’re thinking of trying CrossFit?  

As meaty as this topic could be, I’m going to keep this succinct and attempt to help you make the best choice possible to advance your fitness.

To answer the first question, though, I must first ask you a question — followed by another question and then another and so on. You see, being a personal and group coach for more than 16 years, I’ve learned that to succeed in any fitness endeavors one has to have cooperation between a few things.

Consider this a mental checklist of sorts before endeavoring on a CrossFit regiment — or any other training regiment, for that matter.

1. What do you want? 

You might be thinking you’re not getting insight with a question like that, but I’d like you to stop right now and answer it! Can you? With absolute clarity? If so, great; let’s move on. If not, you’ve got some soul searching to do.

2. What do you know? 

Do you have the knowledge to get the results you’re after? Something I hear often is people saying they know what they “should” be doing. When I was a young trainer and coach, I would hear this and start trying to go head-to-head and find how much someone does or doesn’t know, but here’s the simple question I ask people now: Then why haven’t you done it?  

3. How badly do you want it? 

There’s a huge difference between, “It would be nice if,” and, “I will stop at nothing until.” Many people, when thinking about goals and wants, have a great imagination and love to indulge their thoughts with what it would be like. The deal is only a few get hungry for those goals, meaning their appetite finds no satisfaction until those goals begin to unfold.

4. When do you want to achieve your goal by? 

“Yesterday” is not a good response here, as this will take time and is a commitment. Think about where you are and what you want. By looking into safe, long-term results and applying science, you can project results given your commitment level, current time available to give to fitness, stress levels and sleep per night. 

Not to mention, you also have to evaluate your personal dedication to manage your nutrition, which will be a huge factor in any fitness goal but even more so if body composition is a primary focus.

5. Do you have a track record of staying the course? 

So you want to go it solo? There are those out there who have that inner drive to achieve anything — regardless of the challenges that surround them. For the rest of us, we need and benefit greatly when we have a mentor to help guide us to the finish line. Accountability is necessary for most people to see it out.

I’ve left you with a ton of questions to answer, so do your homework, go through the mental checklist and stay tuned.

Luis Rodriguez is the owner and head coach at WinStrong CrossFit on Winter Garden Vineland Road in Winter Garden. Find him on Facebook at facebook.com/WinStrongCrossFit, on Twitter at @WeWinStrong and online at http://www.wewinstrong.com/.