Our commentary on the Fight Gone Bad CrossFit WOD a few weeks ago was aimed at how the Hall Pass Watch can help you forget about time altogether, so you can go as hard as you possibly can for a definite amount of time, to get as many reps as possible due to the reduction in distractions, specifically, any type of clock.

This is precisely what any competitive CrossFitter desires. But not only is it exclusively what the Hall Pass Watch can help you with, but this guy is not the only type of athlete that exists.

When I began CrossFit I found it to be the precise alternative that I needed for my training. (Im going to use a bit of personal experience here and there for context, but this isn’t about me, so please bear with me). No longer did I have to endure day in and day out for 90 minutes of lonely workouts with hard to maintain purpose and little to no excitement. Now, CrossFit provided intense couplets and triplets that I could do in only 20 minutes of training. I could try to beat everyone around me AND it left me rolling around on the floor wondering if I was going to die. This type of effect surely meant I was getting fitter, right?

Well yes, and no. I soon started to notice diminishing returns, especially in recovery (plus the very low-carb paleo diet, which was a little more famous back then surely didn’t help). And the metcons everyday were…well they were burning me out from the inside out, slowly, but surely. Writing this now, I have noticed and must point out that I have committed a common but unforgivable mistake. I said I was getting burned out by doing CrossFit, but I was not following CrossFit. I was following the daily metcons and burners Rxed at a gym who happened to be a CrossFit affiliate.

I then ran into a statement that changed my mindset and the way I train. It read: The human body is meant to train everyday, for a specific competition day, not to compete everyday. And I was then saved, even though it was a hard mentality and practice to adopt, since unnecessary peer pressure at a functional fitness gym is widespread.

And this is another major way the Hall Pass Watch can help: by pacing yourself,

and designing workouts that become constructive to what you need, rather than unnecessarily destructive.

This is not the time nor place to go into a big debate into what fitness means and how intense exercise should be to call it beneficial, because even my wife disagrees with me. She is certain training should be done by scaling down the weight in a CrossFit WOD to one where you can perform it with an unbroken flow. Not too easy, but nothing too heavy that will make you rest frequently within the workout.

I argue that, that type of training is super fun, once or twice a week, with friends, but that the other major portion of your programming should be EMOMs or short intervals of mid to heavy metcons, or even straight up alternate ambitious work sets of compound movements (and sometimes even a few accessory/isolation) and rest. This way I can have a little bit of both. A little bit of traditional CrossFit couplets and triplets, with some other days of Strength and Conditioning, or bodybuilding-esque stuff, or whatever the heck you´d like to call heavier sets of an exercise alternated with rest. Something to construct more capacity, not to perform at current capacity with the hope of increasing it a bit for next time.

And no one is right. And the whole internet is packed with this debate. Sometimes I think the whole internet is only devoted to fitness…although that’s probably just MY Internet.

Nonetheless, one fact does remain…not everyone wants to go intense, all the time. The majority of the athletes out there in boxes and garages all around the world just want to lose weight, get healthier, clear their mind, and have fun while doing it. And often, they are not hoping for high intensity through all workout periods. Often they just want to move well, with enough work to shake them up a bit, and that is enough to make them feel great.

So while one type of athlete will want to use their Hall Pass Watch on Stopwatch/For Time mode to time their Fran from zero up to 2, 3, 4, or 5 minutes, the fact remains that many others might want a different approach.

Many others would rather, and would enjoy, using any of the below combinations of Fran:

1. EMOM for 9 minutes: 5 thrusters and 5 pullups
2. EMOM for 18 Minutes: 5 thrusters on odd, 5 pullups on even
3. EMOM for 18 minutes: 5 thrusters on odd, 1 pull-up on even (if pull-ups are a problem)
4. EMOM for 9 minutes: 3 thrusters and 5 pull-ups (if weight or form are the problem)
5. Or VIT (Variable Interval Timer): 60:60, 70:70, 80:80, 90:90, 100:100…Here, if air and work capacity are the problem do rounds with the increasing interval times.
6. Or how about FIT (Fixed Interval Timer): 60:60 x as long as it takes you.

So the main takeaway is that a Hall Pass Watch will help you build the engine that you must build for yourself, at a pace that is challenging enough, but acceptable to you, regardless of what is going on in your crowded class, or regardless of what programming you´d like to follow at home.

What type of fitness is best? Who is right? That doesn’t concern us. We built a tool (and a retro-fashionable one) that will keep you accountable to whatever YOU choose your fitness goal to be. A product that allows you diverse timing and interval options so YOUR workout can be challenging but fun.

You are free to workout with the training philosophy of your choice, as long as you are working out and your health is improving. And that is everyone’s underlying goal.

Our responsibility as a company, is allowing you that freedom to workout Anytime, Anywhere,

and as stated repeatedly in this rant…however you want your definition and intensity of fitness to look like.

CrossFit Podcasts, Higher Education & Learning to like Commuting
November 19, 2016

Has your Orthorexia & Exerciseholism become unhealthy?
October 14, 2016

A New Perspective on “Fight Gone Bad” CrossFit WOD
September 13, 2016