Most individuals at CrossFit Be Someone spend 8-10 hours a day sitting at work or school. That is not factoring in the time spent sitting in traffic as they travel throughout the day.
Now let's factor in quality of sleep (recovery) and nutrition. At CrossFit Be Someone, I know we have athletes who pay attention to their sleep and nutrition but I also know many individuals value fitness more than their sleep and nutrition.
As coaches we know this and as coaches we know our responsibilities. One of our responsibilities is to keep you as safe as we can. We want to help you move at your best when it is time to workout. This requires us to properly warm you up, specifically teach you the movements, have you ramp up your intensity, prove to us you can handle it and protect you from yourself at times.
When we do a general warm up we are doing it for a few reasons. It gets your heart rate up, builds up your core temperature, works you through your range of motions, gets you mentally ready to workout, allows coaches to assess you and address injuries that athletes may have.
For the specific warm up, as coaches we get to really coach you now. We work on our set up positions and help you improve your mechanics. Each movement has their own points of performance and for every rep we call, we are ensuring you are meeting certain points of performance well and consistently. By achieving the points of performance, you are moving in a safe, efficient and effective manner. During this portion, we also get to properly scale you to help you progress in your fitness journey.
As we have you build up weight or complexity of the movement, we are still looking for you to maintain those points of performance. Sacrificing a point of performance for load or complexity is a sure way to get injured. This is also where the "Prove It" round plays a vital role. You get to prove to us if you can actually handle the load or movement under intensity. The "Prove It" round is also crucial because now you are telling your body and mind that it is about to get really uncomfortable. I started off saying most people spend their time sitting down at work which means we don't have any professional athletes at the gym. (If you watch professional athletes, their pre-game warm ups are INTENSE before they even play or perform.)
You may think you are ready to "go hard" after a few stretches and reps, but I am telling you that you are not. And just because you have done it in the past, does not mean your body won't break down in the future if you don't do a proper general warm up, specific warm up and "prove it" test.
So is a "prove it" test necessary? 100% it is. It helps you perform better in a workout, it does not take away energy from the workout. And if you feel it does then that is just showing you that the load you chose or movement is too much for you already.
Respectfully Sent,
Josh Melendez
