4) Prioritize your sport.
CrossFit is becoming a competitive sport with its own sponsors, competitions and professional athletes. Similar to professional triathletes, these CrossFit athletes demonstrate incredible ability and work capacity through a combination of talent and hard work. It can be easy to get sucked into their competitions, forgetting your own racing season and your own purpose for being there. Remember, you are an endurance athletes using CrossFit for your own competitive ends. You should purposely avoid racing in CrossFit so it doesn't detract from your primary endurance goals.
More: How to Set Inspiring Goals
5) Be patient and keep a long view.
CrossFit will expose you to a whole new and exciting world of technical Olympic lifting, power lifting and gymnastic movement. Be patient with yourself and enjoy being a "newbie" athlete all over again. The majority of injuries that occur in CF are when athletes rush too soon into workouts with too much intensity.
A good CrossFit coach will slow you down and emphasize technique, consistency in movement and intensity, in that order. Remember, (similar to endurance sports) it takes years to sufficiently develop the motor control, positional strength and capacity to run with the top athletes and at your full potential.
More: Why Technique is Vital to Performance
CrossFit can bring an enormous added valued to your endurance program and provide a new athletic spark for the season. To safely incorporate CrossFit into your endurance training: do your research, take responsibility for your own limitations, prioritize mobility and movement mechanics over everything else, prioritize your sport, and finally be patient with your progress. If you follow these steps you will have the ultimate success: fewer injuries and greater performances in this upcoming season and in seasons to come. Train well.
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