When is it appropriate for athletes to adjust their training based upon how they're feeling?
If an athlete is fatigued and stressed going into a session and they're supposed to max out their snatch, should they adjust the session?
For a sport like CrossFit, athletes and coaches should consider the goal of the training session. Are we trying to target a specific training stimulus? Are we hoping to prep an athlete for a competition on a specific date? Are we looking to build resilience and the ability to perform under sub-optimal conditions?
Recognizing what our intention is for a session can be a challenge since training for CrossFit looks an awful lot like competing in CrossFit.
There are situations where the right thing to do is to push through and attempt to perform at your peak abilities in a given session. More often, adjusting the training session based upon how you feel - or potentially scrapping it all together - will be better for long-term development.
Check out episode 90 of the Legion Strength and Conditioning podcast to learn more about how trying to force improvement can lead to a cycle of bad training, how training experience will affect auto-regulation, and how to create flexibility in your training.
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