Behind the scenes at the GLC2000 UK Athlete Camp 2017
Training Is a 9 – 5
We are lucky enough to work with elite Crossfit athletes regularly. Most have them have been using our product way before they were top athletes. These athletes all treat their training as a full time job; absolutely everything they do in the gym is done with purpose and intensity. They still love every minute of it.
Their Warm Up Is Longer Than Your Workout
Not in the typical Crossfit ‘our warmup is your workout’ cliché. The warmup these guys do before they even look at a barbell has more volume than a number of benchmark WODs.
Injuries or even small niggles can derail months of hard work for athletes so you won’t see anyone jumping on a rower for two minutes at the beginning of the day then launching straight into a WOD. The first warmup of the day is often close to a full hour and methodically prepares the body for that specific day’s training.
Maybe Top Coaches Carry Treats
If you’ve ever owned a puppy it will come as no surprise that food can be a great motivator during training. But I lost count of the number of times, after a gassy workout, that thinking about food post-WOD spurred the athletes on to finish as fast as possible. As soon as the workout was finished they caught their breath and started to wonder where their next meal was coming from.
Sleep Sometimes Beats Food!
The enthusiasm for food only ever seems to be surpassed by a desire to sleep. Much like a teenager, the desire for an extra 15 minutes in bed overtakes the need to have breakfast. This was often after 11+ hours of sleep. When you are pushing your body this hard every day rest and recovery need to be taken just as seriously as training.
Carbs Are Life
When you are training 4 or more times a day everything becomes fuel. Athletes seem to loosely track macros but don’t stick to any specific diet regime. In order to support her training goals one athlete was eating close to 450g of carbs a day, at a bodyweight less 65kg.
Supps Not Suds
Now hand on heart nobody smelled. When you are a guy and sharing accommodation with three girls, you do not feel the need to pack shampoo. My guess was there would be a choice of three shampoos to use. The reality is when you need to get an already full bag onto a plane as hand luggage, supplements and mobility tools are more of a priority than shampoo and conditioner. So I wore a hat for three days.
Every Night is like Christmas Eve
There is genuine excitement every night about what is programmed for the following day. Athletes sit and watch their coach update their programming in real time, cheering or groaning (depending on each exercise & rep scheme) and sharing war stories about similar training days or WODs. Once that’s done they head off to bed and dream about how they are going to tackle each workout and what food they will be rewarded with after they’ve given it their all.
