Let’s be honest--skill work is boring. Many of us come to CrossFit because we love the grunt work and the sweat, the slog of burpees, the strain of heavy weight, and the collapse of relief on the mats. There is definitely something satisfying about knowing you kicked your own ass. What is less fun? Doing slow and controlled movements for quality or stretching with a band.
CrossFit has a glory element that we admire. Just watching The Games this year we see moments like Cody Anderson's 28 unbroken muscle-ups or Josh Bridges wobbling a yoke almost four times his body weight over the finish line with a roar. We want our own moments of victory like these. But behind every visible moment of victory there are a thousand hours of boring, behind-the-scenes skill work.
The process for improvement is tedious. There is nothing exciting about handstand push-up negatives or L-sits. We drill and drill for what feels like forever, but just when we think our efforts are futile, magic happens. Proper skill work creates our moments of magic and assures that they happen safely.
There are four modalities we need to assess if we can't perform a skill or a movement in Crossfit: strength, mobility, coordination, and body awareness, in that order. We know when we are strong enough but aren't mobile (overhead squats), or when we are both strong and mobile but cant get our coordination down (butterfly pull-ups). Sometimes we know where are weaknesses are and other times our coaches can tell us. Skill work targets one or more of those four modalities and fills in the gaps.
There are no shortcuts in training. Actually, there are lots of them, but they are temporary. Our bodies are resilient and can tolerate our bad habits for weeks, months, or even years, but they will catch up to us eventually. It is only through repeated practice that we will improve and do so safely. Try it out: pick a skill and give yourself one month of proper, consistent practice then wait for the magic to happen.
