Starting any kind of sport can be both exciting and frustrating. The same goes for Crossfit. Many people come into a box just wanting to get fit, loose weight or essentially move. Majority of those people change their goals to wanting to be more proficient in the skills and move away from asthetics. The problem comes in when those people realize how long those skills and strength takes to develop.
For any sport you need to have a general base fitness before you can start moving on to the more skill based movement. Crossfit is the same… Ideally you need to build strength in basic movements such as strict pull ups, push ups and squats before trying to master the more advanced movements such as Kipling pull ups, muscle ups and clean and jerks.
Skills and strength don’t just build over night. They take months and even years to develop, loads of practice, sweat, tears and possibly a little blood. I see many Crossfit members getting discouraged and frustrated because they are trying to achieve all these goals… But the one common problem I see is that they skip steps in trying to get to their goals. They want to do Kipling pull ups without being able to do a strict pull up and they want to do ring muscle ups before they have tried a ring dip.
The body needs to adapt and evolve to every movement and motor pattern you start programming into it before it can become efficient in each movement. You can’t skip steps and expect to accomplish your goals.
For me, I came to Crossfit being able to do strict pull ups, but it took me a couple of months before I could kip, and from there i spent weeks trying to do butterfly pull ups. A year later and I’m able to do a couple of bar muscle ups and I’ve hat recently got my ring muscle ups.
It is a process. Enjoy the process. Do every step right and you will see changes and progress. There is a never ending amount of skills to develop, so be patient!
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