Ever wondered why you aren’t competing at the CrossFit games yet, or simply why you feel like you’ve been battling away at CrossFit for years and you just aren’t where you want to be? Here are the reasons why.

This is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs - basically it says that it’s no good worrying about achieving your full potential if you have nowhere to live or cannot put food on the table. Once your basic needs are met, then you can tackle your world domination goals, existential dread or desire to do good in the world.

CrossFit’s Hierarchy of Needs with sleep added to the base

This is the CrossFit pyramid of needs; basically it says there’s no use worrying about getting to the CrossFit Games if you can’t even get a good meal into you, let alone a good night’s sleep.

The base of both pyramids is where it’s most important - I added sleep to the CrossFit pyramid as without it, you cannot make good decisions on the rest of it. Nutrition trumps metabolic conditioning (working on sprint, medium, long and heavy workouts) - metabolic conditioning is more important than gymnastic skills and gymnastic skills are more important than strength. All of these need to be in place before you even start thinking about CrossFit as a sport.

Think about it like this - you need a good base of fitness to be able to deliver oxygen efficiently to your muscles in order to move safely and with intensity. Once you can deliver oxygen to your muscles, you’re in a good position to begin working on your gymnastic skills (bodyweight movements executed under control) You need a good base of gymnastics as this is what delivers strong joints and connective tissue - vital for building strength. You cannot lift as heavy as your potential allows if your joints aren’t in a position to support muscle or external load. Once all of these are in place, then you can start thinking about CrossFit as a sport. Most people have not put themselves in this position. Honestly.

The ones who are in this position are at the CrossFit Games but these people also have another layer to their pyramid called LUCK. They are lucky that their genetic makeup means the extreme hard work and dedication they put in delivers extraordinary results. They are lucky that their neurological capabilities mean they have the mental capacity to tough it out when they don’t feel like it and that they can push harder when it’s required. There are plenty of people who put the work in but whose genetic makeup means they’ll never make the Games. So keep it all in perspective and remember It’s no good aiming to be a CrossFit Games athlete if you can’t even get a decent night’s sleep!

Both these pyramids are telling us not to get ahead of ourselves. That doesn’t mean we cannot aim for great heights, only that our towering desires crumble without decent foundations.

So what is stopping you reaching your full potential? Let’s look at each in turn.

1 - SLEEP

If you aren’t sleeping well, it doesn't really matter how much effort you put into everything else, you just won’t get optimal results. Fact. Don’t bother reading any of the rest of this until you have decided that good quality and adequate quantity of sleep are a priority for you. Some of you work shifts, some of you have young children - which is basically the same as shift work - some of you are menopausal and waking multiple times a night hotter than the sun - that just means it’s even more important to make sure that the sleep you do get is of good quality and quantity.

You can improve the quality of your sleep by sleeping in a pitch black room; cover up all those little, annoying lights or even better, banish them from your room and don’t leave anything on standby (better for the environment and fuel bills anyway) Use an eye mask if need be and avoid caffeine at least 10 hours before the time you want to sleep and think about sleeping to some white noise - try asking Alexa to play rain sounds.

2- NUTRITION

I’m not going to go into what is a healthy way to eat and what isn’t here as that’s a whole other post - although it’s pretty simple - avoid the crap, eat more veggies. But how much are you eating? What is the balance of what you are eating and very importantly, how much alcohol are you consuming? Alcohol disrupts sleep - go back to number 1.

3 - TRAINING

Regularity and consistency trump volume every time.

It really is no good training sporadically - you just will not see consistent results with inconsistent training.

2 times a week is better than nothing. 3 times a week will get you very decent health and fitness results. It will change the way you look. You’ll gain muscle. 4+ times a week will change your life and I’m not exaggerating.

Don’t bother adding volume if you can’t get to the gym regularly and consistently. More isn’t better - better is better! You can’t train with intensity if you don’t fuel your body well - go back to number 2! You can’t train with intensity if you don’t sleep well. Go back to number 1.

4 - RECOVERY

Please ignore the man on Instagram who tells you his 20km hike, swim and bike count as ‘active recovery’. He’s wrong.

If you are sleeping well, nourishing your body and training regularly and consistently and you still aren’t seeing results perhaps you are not recovering optimally.

Recovery consists of actual time off from training with rest days where you don’t do much of anything and active recovery days, where you might do a gentle swim or long walk. Your muscles need actual time off to repair and grow bigger and stronger - if they are constantly working, they literally can’t repair or get bigger - what a waste of a workout!

Recovery also requires you to address your muscle fibres with foam rollering or massage therapy to release jammed up muscles followed by stretches (maybe like yoga or RomWOD). Prehab and rehab exercises that have been prescribed by your coach or another professional are important in reprogramming how you move and in addressing imbalances in how your muscles work together to move your body through space safely and powerfully.

Muscles require actual work to grow bigger and stronger; don’t be annoyed at the results you don’t get from the work you don’t do - go back to number 3!

Muscles require decent mixes of protein, fat and carbohydrate to build back bigger and stronger. Go back to number 2!

You need actual time for your muscles to recover and repair and build back bigger and stronger and most of this happens while you sleep. Go back to number 1.

5 ATTITUDE

Do you work really hard on the workouts you like and the movements you are good at and sandbag or even skip those you don’t like or are no good at (basically the same thing. - you don’t like them because you’re no good at them). Are you focusing too much on one area of your training becasue you think it’s a weakness? It’s good to focus on weaknesses, it’s how Matt Frasier got better at rowing and how Rich Froning got over falling off the rope climbs but if you do that to the detriment of all else, you’ll get worse, not better.

Think about why an area of your training is a weakness - for example - are you no good at toes to bar? Are you lats just not up to par? Then focusing on keeping your shoulders tight during deadlifts, making sure your core is super switched on during front squats and pointing your toes when you kip so you generate a global tension rather than just swinging like a crazy will make a difference - perhaps not immediately but just doing toes to bar over an over with a unengaged core and weak lats will not get you better.

Perhaps you can do toes to bar really well but after 5 you’re done. Well, you just need to do loads of toes to bar, right? Wrong - you need to get your muscular endurance and aerobic capacity up - so on every workout you do, start saying, ‘Just one more rep, just one more rep…” increase your work capacity. Ring a bell? Do more deadlifts in Diane before you give up, keep going on wallballs for more reps than you think you can. All these things will feed into better toes to bar!

The beauty of CrossFit is that it doesn’t get you really, really good at one thing whilst ignoring other things (Mo Farrah - really, really good at long distance running, shit at deadlifts….) it gets you less shit at everything, making you a better human!

Got a great attitude but shoulders so tight you can’t kip properly? Not going tohelp toes to bar, is it? Go back to number 4.

Got a great attitude but only once a week? Toes to bar won’t benefit from a lack of variance - go back to to number 3.

Got a great attitude (actually, it’s starting to sound like perhaps you don’t….) but you’re trying to train on a packet of hula hoops and half a snickers bar. Go back to number 2.

Got a great attitude but didn’t sleep. Go back to number 1 and sort your life out! =)

6 INTEGRITY AND INTENTION

Got all the above in place, well done! Still not really hitting that mark? Perhaps you need a bit more focus.

You need to train with integrity, intention and attention to detail. That means having an idea of what your immediate and long term goals are (for me at 50, that’s longevity of training, so avoiding injury but also a strict bar muscleup…) for someone in their teens or 20s or a fit 30s, those goals might be way more adventurous. It means going to full depth on every squat you do. It means not letting your right arm do all the work on a wall ball or bench press. It means not cherry picking your workouts to boost your ego. It means not going heavier than you can control or heavier than the workout requires just to boost your ego. It means working on better movement ALWAYS. ALWAYS. Better movement will get you stronger, it will get you fitter, it will get you better and faster.

It’s unlikely that if you strive to move well you have a shitty attitude. So if you are moving well and sleeping and eating well and keeping on top of your mobility and still not getting the result you feel you deserve, then there’s one last place we can look.

7 - GO HEAVY

What’s the one thing (other than fitness and great movement) that will make 21 - 15 - 9 thrusters and pullups easier? Being stronger, of course. If 30kg is your 1 rep max thruster, 21 thrusters at 30kg is going to be a bloody nightmare RXd. (Obviously, you would scale it but still.) If 30kg is half your 1 rep max thruster, Fran is going to feel a lot ‘easier’, right?

Every opportunity you are given to go heavy, take it! When your coach asks you, ‘How does that feel?’ the answer should never, ever be: ‘That feels OK.’ It should scare you a little. It should feel like you are pushing the boundaries. If you want to get stronger (and if you don’t, you need to rethink your entire life) you need to lift heavy. That doesn’t mean being a dickhead about it and going dangerously heavy but it should challenge you. It should make you feel like you’d rather not do it.

Then it should make you feel proud!

Get your pyramids sorted, in the right order and with a bit of luck thrown in, you can reach the stars (if not the Games)!

Why Aren't I a Games Athlete, Goddammit?