The Crossfit Open is a grueling time for Crossfit athletes, as the workouts of the Open are typically more intense and taxing than regularly programmed workouts. The 2023 Crossfit Open consists of three workouts over a three week period, starting on Thursday, February 16th. Ensuring proper recovery is a crucial part to staying healthy and performing your best during the Open.
In this blog post, we’re going to share our best tips for recovering after Crossfit 2023 Open workouts (and you might be surprised at what probably doesn’t make that big of a difference in your recovery)!
Sleep
Sleep is one of the top three most important aspects of recovery. During sleep, your body goes into repair mode, repairing damaged tissues and building new muscle. Not getting enough sleep has been shown to reduce athletic performance, and increase your risk of injury during highly demanding physical exercise and activity.
To optimize your sleep, make sure you’re getting at least 7-8 hours of sleep each night. The best way to do this is:
- Making sure your bedroom is dark, cool, and quiet
- Avoid caffeine and alcohol before bedtime
- Avoid screens for 1-2 hours before bedtime, especially those that emit lots of blue light
- Establish a regular sleep routine, including time that you go to bed and wind-down routine, to help your body get into a rhythm
Nutrition
Proper nutrition is another vital aspect of recovery. After strenuous workouts like the Open workouts, your body needs to refuel with the right nutrients to repair and recover. The key is to eat enough overall calories/macronutrients to support your athletic performance and recovery from training, and intake the appropriate micronutrients to support overall health and wellbeing.
When taking part in competitions like the Open, it is important to not be drastically under consuming calories, as this will make it that much harder to perform well and recover from the workouts. Unless you are trying to reduce weight for a specific weight class-based activity like an Olympic weightlifting meet, eating at a maintenance level of calories, or a slight surplus, is your best bet.
Relaxation
In addition to sleep and nutrition, relaxation is also important for recovery. After a Crossfit Open workout, your body is likely to be sore and fatigued, so taking time to relax and unwind can help you recover more quickly.
There are many different ways that you can relax in order to aid your recovery. For example, you could meditate, go for a leisurely walk outside, play with your kids, or simply spend time with your significant other watching your favorite Netflix series. The key is that you simply enjoy your time, don’t do anything too strenuous, and actually relax for a while.
Not As Important – Stretching, Soft Tissue Work, and Other Passive Modalities
While sleep, nutrition, and relaxation are the three most important aspects of recovery, stretching, soft tissue work, and other passive modalities can offer some slight benefits after Crossfit Open workouts.
However, the main reason why things like these make us feel like they’re helping us recover is simply because most of these activities feel good and just help us relax a bit more. Nobody is going to deny that we don’t feel better after some stretching, foam rolling, or massage, but these things aren’t going to move the recovery needle the same way that proper sleep, nutrition, and relaxation will.
If you have the time and resources to add in these passive modalities/tools to your recovery strategy, by all means, do so!
And if you find yourself dealing with an actual injury or pain during the Open and want expert help getting out of pain and back to full performance, Click below button!
