Competitive athletes and Non-competitive athletes

(文底有中文版)

Based on my personal training experience and observations, I noticed there are a couple of things that separate people whose goal is to become a competitive athlete and people who do CrossFit for wellness.

Intensity

Intensity is crucial. The training intensity of training for wellness, and being a competitive athlete are totally different in terms of volume, frequency. Most people do 1 WOD(Workout Of the Day) a day, and train 3-5 times a week so the soreness stays at a manageable level. However, competitive athletes train 2-3 sessions a day, 5 days a week, and they train in such frequency for years. Here you can already see the huge difference in terms of volume and frequency.

Safety-Efficiency-Efficacy

Take a look at the Safety-Efficiency-Efficacy graph. When we do CrossFit for wellness, we are trying to find a balance point among these 3 factors. Competitive athletes, on the other hand, push themselves to the limit because they want to maximize efficacy and efficiency, which means they may have to compromise safety.

Recovery

I rarely see people pay attention to recovery stuff(which you should), at least not serious enough. Competitive athletes do everything they can to optimize their recovery. After each high-intensity training session mentioned above, competitive athletes don’t just call it a day and go hang out with friends. They stretch, they eat, they go get a massage, they do active recovery and they make sure they get enough sleep.

Nutrition

CrossFit already pointed our that Nutrition is the foundation of fitness. In most cases I observed, the biggest difference between CrossFit competitive athletes and average CrossFitters in the diet is the intake amount of carbs. For competitive athletes, they may need a lot of carbs a day(could be up to 400 grams) to support their training. If you are doing CrossFit for wellness, you just need the amount to support your daily activity.

Regardless of what kind of diet you are following, you need to stick with it long enough and adjust it along the way.

Commitment

What’s in your mind when you hit a wall? You definitely will if your goal is to become a competitive athlete. It always takes longer than expected to really see the results. The suffering is no joke, there are more bad days than good days. Whether you can put yourself back together and continue the grind shows how much you are committed. A better question is: “Can you not quit?”

Sound like it requires quite much to be a competitive athlete… Yes, it does. None of the dedication and sacrifices are easy,  and that’s why we respect those elite athletes. You need a very good reason to be training competitively because training for competition is painful and not everyone is genetically made for a competitive environment. But it doesn’t mean that you cannot join local throwdowns for fun and be involved in the community. You can still compete with your friends and try to beat him/her down on every single WOD in the group classes. You can have a pleasant life with your family and still be the fittest version of yourself. You can do and achieve anything you want, just make sure you work hard and have fun!

“Don’t strive to make your presence noticed, make your absence felt.”

 Kingson

我們的訓練是為了成為一個專業的選手? 還是為了健康? 就我個人的訓練經驗以及觀察，兩者之間存在著幾項關鍵的差異。

強度

強度是第一個關鍵。選手跟練健康的人在訓練量、訓練頻率、以及訓練中所面臨的風險有著很大的差異性。一般人一天就是做一個WOD，一個禮拜大概練個3-5次，在酸痛的程度上也都還算是可以接受的範圍。然而專業的選手一天就可能練到2-3次，一個禮拜練五天，並且維持這樣的訓練頻率好幾年。光是這一點我們就可以看到兩者在於訓練量以及訓練頻率上的顯著差異。

安全-效率-效果

接著藉由 安全-效率-效果的三角圖我們可以看出兩者在訓練風險上的差異性。當我們為了健康做CrossFit，我們會盡可能在安全、效率、效果這三項元素中取得平衡，就如以下右圖所示。但對於選手而言，他們必須想盡辦法讓訓練的效果以及效率達到最高，而結果就是如以下左圖所呈現的，他們必須在犧牲掉部分的安全性，每天的訓練將自己推向極限，但同時也面臨著相對高的受傷風險。

恢復

我很少看到有人真的夠認真得看待恢復這件事，但其實恢復是一個非常重要的環節。專業的選手會盡可能的將他的們的恢復做到最好，在每一次的高強度訓練過後，他們會伸展、吃東西補充能量、按摩、動態恢復、並確保自己有足夠的睡眠時間，不像大多數的我們練完以後就跟朋友出去玩，或是就回家看電視、熬夜。

飲食

CrossFit 金字塔的基底就是飲食，由此可見飲食的重要性。在大部分的案例中，選手的飲食計畫跟一般的飲食計畫會在澱粉攝取量上有很大的差異。CrossFit選手的澱粉攝取量會比一般飲食計畫來的高出許多(可能會達到一天400公克)，為的是能夠支持他們極大的訓練量。

無論你採用的是甚麼樣的飲食計畫，都必須持之以恆，並不斷地做出調整才會有效。

堅持

當你遇到瓶頸的時候你會怎麼做? 如果你的目標是成為一個專業的選手，那你一定會有遇到瓶頸的時候。達到目標前的過程往往比預期中得來的更長、更久，那過程中的煎熬絕對不是開玩笑的，低潮的日子更是難熬，是否能夠撐過那些低潮取決於你對於你的目標有多強烈的渴望。用一個更白話的說法來說就是: 你能夠堅持下去不放棄嗎?

結語

要當一個選手沒那麼容易，要當一個好的選手更是難上加難，所需要付出的努力跟犧牲絕對不是每個人都可以輕易做到的，這也是為什麼我們尊敬、崇尚那些頂尖的選手。要當一個選手，你需要有一個明確的目標與動力，因為選手的訓練過程很辛苦，也不是每一個人天生都適合處在一個高競爭性的環境下。多數的人都不是以當選手為目標，但這並不代表我們不能參加比賽或是類似的社群活動，你還是可以跟朋友較勁然後試圖每一個團課的WOD都做得比他快比他重、你還是可以享受你的生活，同時努力成為最強健的自己。

你可以為自己設定各式各樣的目標，努力朝那目標前進，並且享受過程中的每一刻。

"努力不是為了給別人看，是為了不留下任何遺憾"

Kingson