One of the reoccurring themes that has come up over the past 4 years at Vitality is the back and forth of trying to get people to understand the importance of Mobility, Recovery, and Maintenance. It is a battle that I am starting to feel is a lost cause. There are so many of you that are determined to get better at a number of different areas within CrossFit. You religiously attend 3-4 classes a week, you push yourself extremely hard, and you track your results. These are all things that I have emphasized are extremely important if you want to see progress. However, I see very few of you that put time into mobilizing and even fewer that do any type of regular maintenance on your bodies (Massage/Bodywork/Chiropractic).
What has to be understood is that your asking your body to do extraordinary tasks on a daily basis while you are here at Vitality. Many of you are pushing yourselves harder than you ever have at any other point in your lives. It cannot be a surprise to you that there are going to be some parts of your body that are going to be in need of some maintenance work. These areas can be knees/hips/shoulders/back/neck etc. Our bodies are extremely resilient but it is important to realize that your body needs you to give it some TLC at times. This means that you will need to get a massage once or twice a month (from someone who knows what CrossFit is and how it affects your body). You will probably need to find a chiropractor that can adjust you 1-2x/week. And finally, you need to find someone who can be your go-to doc when something hurts for more than a few days and your not sure what to do. It is such a cheesy analogy but is the easiest to understand….Every 3-5k miles, you take your car and make time to get the oil changed and everything tested. How can we make time for this and “find money” for this but yet we can’t take the time to do that same maintenance on ourselves? How many cars have you had? How many bodies do you get?
I have contacts that have been with me for years in every field I am talking about. Let me be clear, this IS NOT a public service announcement to get them all more business. I think one of the biggest misconceptions within the CrossFit world is that it will hurt you. I honestly think that many CrossFitters, without knowing it or doing it on purpose, serve as a type of proof source for this misconception. Many CrossFitters have the idea that they should be able to do 3-4 days of CrossFit per week with little to no maintenance outside of the box and expect to stay healthy and injury free. This is a fallacy. I find it hard to believe that people would actually believe this but I hear it quite often….”My shoulder is really sore….My knee has been hurting for a week….My hips just won’t open up….I can’t get the bar in the rack position”. My first question is, “What are you doing to fix the problem? Show me the mobility your doing”. That is usually when the blank stares start. And it must be a coincidence that quite a few of these folks are the ones that show up a few minutes late and are the first ones out the door when the WOD is over. Coincidence…don’t bet on it:)
When you push your bodies the way that we do in CrossFit or any legitimate fitness program, there are going to be some requirements on you individually to keep your bodies healthy. There are many excuses out there and trust me, I have heard them all.
1. I don’t have time
2. Too much money
3. Too far to drive
4. I don’t believe in Chiropractors
5. My family friend told me …..
6. I tried it and it didn’t work (Which means you went one time and never went back….and surprisingly….it didn’t get fixed)
The decision is yours, it’s like anything else. You will get out of it what you put into it. If you don’t take a proactive role in maintaining the only body you are going to be given in this lifetime…you will pay the price when you get older…and it is expensive, both financially and physically. If you are waking up every morning with some type of ache or pain, at what point are you going to realize that maybe you need to take some action to fix that? To me it is so obvious….it is unacceptable to me that I would wake up everyday in pain. I would do whatever I could in my power to rehabilitate the problem and be pain free. Guess what, that means I would go to a Chiropractor even if I didn’t “believe they worked”, because there is a chance…and newsflash…it’s a big chance…that you have been wrong and there are good chiropractors out there that can help get you fixed up. Again, I am always here to help you guys here but you have to realize that alot of these issues will require a commitment on your end.