There’s so many options out there for you as an athlete. My goal here is to help you pick the right choice for your ability level and your wallet. Finding the best fit for you will keep you consistent, and consistency is more times than not the thing that’s stopping you from achieving your goals. First what I’ll do is summarize each and then we’ll get into more of the specifics of choosing what’s right for you…

In the sport of CrossFit, you may have heard the phrase “that athlete has an engine”. What that really means is the athlete is very aerobically fit. This athlete who is known to have an engine will look like they can just keep going for hours on end, without ever needing to stop. An athlete's aerobic capacity is the base of their performance. Aerobic capacity is the maximum amount of oxygen an athlete can utilize for a period of time.

Burnout is no joke; you begin to see a dip in performance, increased anxiety around training, and just generally feel like you don’t want to “grind” anymore. Some people would say that you’re not burnt out, but rather you're just under-recovered… Personally, I think that’s bullshit.

When considering all the ways that someone could maximize performance, one thing that is typically mentioned but maybe under-appreciated is recovery. That’s not to say that good behaviors around recovery do not exist, it’s that it seems to get an uneven amount of attention as compared to the actual training program.

For a long time, accessory work was not commonly included in a CrossFit athlete’s program. I have to imagine that it wasn’t because people thought it was unimportant, but rather that in those early days of CrossFit the method and style of training was just different. But now, as the sport has evolved and the baseline level of fitness needed to be “competitive” has gone to a level that I don’t believe anyone could have imagined, more care must go into the training programs for these individuals. Accessory work, although a small part of a program, is a simple way to support the athlete as they deal with the physical requirements of the sport.

There is a saying that goes like this, “There is no such thing as overtraining, only under-recovering.” Now, I am not sure I fully agree with that, because I feel that if I wanted to, I could put anybody in a training hole. However, recovery in itself is an artform.