Why we track the results of our workouts each day
We have several new members at the gym and a question about tracking workout results in Wodify has come up enough times that I thought I should address it to the group.
“So it’s a way to compete?”
The answer to that question is yes, in a manner of speaking. CrossFit gyms traditionally track all workout results and you can see that as a competition. Who did the most rounds of pull-ups, push-ups and air squats in 12 minutes for example. Or how fast athletes performed 21-15-9 thrusters and pull-ups. You can see all the results of the day on a part of Wodify called “Whiteboard” which is a reference to old school CF gyms using an actual whiteboard to put up the scores. The person on top of our daily whiteboard in any given lift or workout doesn’t get a prize, there are no scholarships to be handed out or anything like that. When I talk about beating Daniel Scullion on the whiteboard i’m only joking around (OK, I’m kind of serious)! While it is beneficial to your fitness to have a score in mind and try to do better than that, I would much rather you use your last performance as your target and try to beat your own self from last month or last year than to try to beat someone else’s score. Nobody cares if you do “better” than some other athlete, but you get a gold star on Wodify if you beat your old self for setting a new PR, which is awesome!
That brings us back to tracking… and tracking accurately. If you do the workout Rx, click the Rx button so that when we repeat the workout a month or a year later you can accurately know how you performed previously. If you used a lighter weight, put it in the notes instead of clicking the Rx button. If you scaled handstand push-ups to regular push-ups, put that in the notes. And if you didn’t do all the rounds, or all the reps on each of the rounds, that is fine… we all scale the workout to push ourselves but not overdo it. But in order to accurately track your performance and to see, understand and know your fitness as it changes and improves, you shouldn’t put a time into the Wodify results that isn’t accurate. When we repeat that workout down the road you want to be able to say that you did better, and by how much, after putting in all the work that you have between those tests.
Here is an example. If you claim today to have done Karen, which is 150 reps of wall ball shots in 6:36 but only did 120 reps, how will you remember 6 months from now, when we repeat Karen? 120 reps instead of 150 reps may have been the workout you needed today and that is fine. Again, we all scale workouts. But when we repeat Karen and you check your history you’ll just see your time of 6:36. If you do all 150 reps in 7:01 you may be disappointed, thinking your fitness has declined. But if your notes remind you that you scaled to 120, you can see how much progress you have made!
Another great reason to track results in Wodify is all the percentage work that we do with lifts. Knowing your percentages on all the different lifts that we do is really hard! But if you keep track of your cleans, squats, deadlifts, presses, etc on Wodify, you, or the coach in your class, can easily look up what 50% is so you know where to start, or what 85% is so you know what to load on the bar for 6 sets of 3, or whatever the day calls for.
To sum it up, I encourage everyone to enter their results in Wodify each day. Use your previous performance and sometimes other athletes’ performances to motivate you to go a little faster or a little heavier. But don’t claim scores that aren’t really your results. Nobody is impressed and it will be harder for you to accurately understand what kind of progress you have been making with all the hard work you are putting in!