3 Ways to LEVEL UP for Quarterfinals
Need help with fueling prep for Quarterfinals? We’ve got something for you!
The 2024 CrossFit Games Open is over and if you are reading this, it likely means that you made it through the top 25% cut line and are moving on to the next step - Quarterfinals! In the open there is just one test per week and you can focus more on your “game day” performance. In the next stage of competition, you now need to focus on “game week” performance because the competition will last for six days. In order to peak for a competition, there are a lot of things that go into ensuring you have a successful performance over a multiple day event. Many athletes like to focus on the hard training that is required to feel prepared for that weekend. This makes sense, but it is equally important to make sure that you recover in order to repeat the process over multiple workouts. So, it is more important in this final training push to put as much focus on your outside of the gym actions as what you do in training day to day. Oftentimes it’s easy for more advanced people to skip over the basics when the goal is just weeks down the road. But, we think that is a major mistake as those basics can help ensure that you limit your injury risk in the build up, maximize your performance on each workout, and give you the best chance to stay performing across multiple workouts in competition week. As you get ready for the upcoming competition, here are three simple things you can focus on optimizing outside of the gym that will help you perform.
SLEEP
This is #1 for a reason. It plays a huge role in growth and development as we age. Sleep influences everything from improving our ability to learn, calibrate our emotions and regulate appetite. Sleep’s restorative properties allow for muscle repair from our day's activities and helps build and strengthen connections in our brain as we learn new things and sharpen our skills. Ensuring we are well rested allows us to be fully present as our best self and stay emotionally regulated so we can give full attention to what’s important. On actual competition day it can be difficult to sleep due to nerves, but one of your goals as the day approaches should be to get as much sleep as you possibly can to optimize your physical performance.
If you want to increase the chance for you to get good sleep, some best practices include establishing a sleep routine by waking up and going to bed at close to the same time each day, stopping caffeine intake by 1pm, keeping your room very dark and cold (around 65 degrees F), and limiting exposure to artificial light from a screen before bed. These are habits that need to be started soon and not done the day before competition. Making changes to your routines need to be gradual, especially if we are trying to increase hours in bed. The first step to improving sleep is to make a plan to gradually increase your hours each night in 10-15 minute increments and then work to be more consistent with your sleep and wake schedule. A goal would be to try to ensure you are getting at least 8 hours per day, but there is research that indicates that increasing it upwards of ten hours can increase performance.
There may be some outlier athletes that can operate like vampires, but as a coaching organization we recommend thinking of sleep quality as a non-negotiable. This is especially true in the weeks leading up to Quarterfinals. To perform your best, you need rest.
HYDRATION
Our bodies are composed of about 60% water. So making sure we take in enough total water is essential to supplying more than half of ourselves with its most basic building block. The USADA (United States Anti-Doping Agency) states that “research has shown that losing as little as two percent of total bodyweight can negatively affect athletic performance.” When you are not properly hydrated your blood circulation starts to decrease, the muscles at work don’t receive enough oxygen they need, exhaustion sets into the athlete, performance hinders, and the by-products of exercises are not getting flushed regularly. If you are trying to improve your ability to perform at maximum physical output, you can see how poor hydration will impact performance. Many athletes are taking in caffeine products which are a diuretic and they are so nervous prior to working out that they pee constantly as a result of the increase in adrenaline. This is a recipe for having the body dehydrated, which is not what we want for optimal performance. Establishing hydration practices now will make it more likely that you maintain them on game week.
The general, bare minimum hydration recommendations are to drink ½ of your bodyweight (lbs) in ounces per day. So someone who weighs 140 pounds needs to drink 70 ounces of water. And then for every hour of exercise, you need to add 12 ounces. These are minimum targets.. Just like with changes to sleep, changes to hydration should be made on a gradual basis, which means the time to start preparing is now! Our tips for how to stay hydrated include paying attention to thirst, which is generally a good indicator for most people of when to drink water. You can also drink on a schedule or set reminders on your phone to help hit your water goal. It also can be very helpful to carry a reusable water bottle with you as a visual reminder of what you need to drink.
Getting better at a sport, like CrossFit, is going to require a lot of discipline. Developing and creating healthy hydration habits is one great way to take care of one of the major things that you can control in the process. It might not be as sexy as hammering workouts in the gym, but it is fundamental to peaking well for competition.
CARBS
We encourage CrossFit athletes to consume enough carbs to fuel training. Carbs are the main fuel source for physical activity and give us easy energy to move, lift, run, and jump. They are broken down quickly and absorbed into your bloodstream for immediate use or storage within your body. Carbs taken the day before a workout help ensure maximum muscle glycogen storage and carbs taken after a tough session help promote recovery. When dealing with a multi-day competition, carbs usually end up being a huge part of your macro intake each day. They are usually more palatable than protein and won’t slow your digestion like fat. So, it is a great macro for ensuring optimal performance.
The American College of Sports Medicine’s stand on daily carbohydrate intake is as follows:
Moderate activity (1 hour/day) = 5-7 grams per kilogram of body weight
Moderate to high activity (1-3 hours/day) = 6-10 grams per kilogram of body weight
High activity and above (4+ hours/day) = 8-12 grams per kilogram of body weight
CrossFitters usually fall into the moderate to high activity category, so if we take our 140 pound (63.5 kg) person again, she needs to be eating anywhere from 380-635 grams of carbs! That might sound like a huge number to you based on your current intake, but we strongly suggest that you try to increase your current amount, even if you feel like you’re eating “enough”. When it comes to ideal intake, you can never really know until you take the time to slowly increase your carb grams week to week. We recommend adding anywhere from 10-20g to your current intake every 7-10 days. So - like we’ve said about sleep and hydration, the best time to start fueling for Quarterfinals is today.
You’ll be able to tell if you are on the right track if you feel more energy throughout the day, your training feels great and you are able to hit paces and complete tough workouts, you are hungry around meal times but never so much that you are obsessing about your next meal, you wake up feeling rested, and you go to bed feeling satisfied and not hungry. You may not experience all of these things at once or feel them all improving simultaneously, but day by day you’ll start to feel differences which will lead to big gains in your training.
Conclusion
The 2024 Crossfit Games Quarterfinals will start April 17th. Your results on game day will largely be a reflection of the work you put in leading to the competition. If you are going to excel, training will be challenging in these coming weeks to prepare you for the competition. So, make sure that you are prioritizing recovery in this build up. These simple things will allow you to express more fitness on game day.
“Champions are brilliant at the basics””
