By: Alvie Hafen
Congratulations! You completed the 2018 Welded Open! It was a wild ride this year! Dave Castro pulled out all the stops and made this probably the most challenging Open to date. Double unders, ring muscle ups, heavy ass weights, and even chin over bar pull-ups for the scaled division. There was probably one or more workouts which ended up frustrating you.
18.3. This workout had 800 double unders! I knew when this workout was released I wouldn’t do as well as I wanted. It was my worst score of the open by far. I placed 962nd in the region. 500 places lower than my next worse score. Why didn’t I do very well? Double unders, they are a weakness of mine and one I have been neglecting to correct.
There are a couple different ways I can approach this. I can call Dave Castro an a$$hole for programming such a dumb workout, I can whine and complain, I can blame my jump rope, I can blame my judge. I can blame everything else. But the only person to blame is MYSELF. Do I have double unders? Yes I do. Are they very efficient? NO! Double unders are one of my weaknesses and they have been for a long time. They can continue to be a weakness OR I can learn from this workout and actually take the time over the next year to work on them.
I’m not talking 5 minutes here and there. If I want to get better, I have to practice and relearn my technique. I will have to do workouts with 100s of double unders to get better at them. It will be frustrating, it will be challenging, but if I work consistently on this movement I will get better.
What movements are your weaknesses? Have they been your weaknesses for a while? Did you whine and complain about the workout? Are you actually going to commit to getting better? We all want to be better, but not all of us want to put in the work.
We can’t control what workouts we are going to see. What we can control is how we REACT to the the workouts. Are you going to whine and complain? Or are you going to put your head down and grind?