Choose Your Own Adventure

If you’ve been at Arena Ready for a while you’re familiar with the WOD format of Wednesday’s workout. Occasionally we do medium-longer EMOMs with the intention of a higher intensity output (think of the ones where you thought to yourself “OMG Rob I HATE YOU RIGHT NOW”) — generally those days have a very specific set number of reps and loading, and sometimes we make it even spicier by seeing if you can “hold a number throughout the entire WOD” (like a sort of expanded Tabata torture method HAHA).

In other instances we allow for a range of experiences in our athletes by giving the choice of loading, and in many ways intensity, to the person doing the workout. Another way of thinking of this is “Choose Your Own Adventure” — lighter loading and a more intentional focus on movement quality for those who seek movement in the vein of a recovery day or lighter intensity stimulus, and heavier loading for those who feel primed to take on more intensity and work. The WOD can feel very different to different people, and that’s exactly our intention.

So, check-in with yourself and take a quick inventory of how your body is feeling this week — have you trained several times over the last few days, how has your sleep, nutrition, and recovery been, what’s the climate like at work and/or home, did you travel recently, etc — and make a smart decision on how to approach this mid-week WOD so that you get the most benefit. Remember that the goal is to be able to come back tomorrow and/or for the balance of this week and continue to train productively and intelligently. Opportunities abound for intensity, speed, and other outputs in the days to follow — so when given a clear choice of how to guide your ship make sure to point it in the direction that best suits your current training/recovery/life situation.

On the other hand, if you look at this workout and think “that’s it?” or think that the Monday Tuesday program was “too easy” then I have a message for you — you don’t need harder workouts, you need to go harder. Trust me, I see all the scores (from in the gym, from remote athletes, from coaches and competitors testing the WODs for me) and NONE of the people posting the fastest times and highest scores report that the workouts are “easy.”

Know thyself, train smart, train hard, be an athlete.

WOD For 04-10-19:

7 Rounds, Start Every 3 Minutes:

5 Back Squats @ pick load

15 AbMat Sit-ups

30 Unbroken Double Unders

*Warm-up to a working weight on the back squat before starting your first round, then either climb in weight with small increases as you go OR stay at the same challenging weight across all 7 rounds.

*Unbroken DUs means if you miss at rep 29 you must start over at 0 to complete that round (or consider the WOD scaled).