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[/caption] With regionals behind us, it’s time for Crystal to gear down just a bit and take some much-needed rest. While Functional Fitness works because of the intensity of the workouts, it’s hard to maintain red-line levels for months at a time. Of course, Crystal is already itching to start training for 2012. She’s competitive, so she wants to eliminate her weaknesses yesterday. I totally understand, but after six months of relentless training, a six-week competition and regionals, it’s time to step off the gas and relax a little bit. With that in mind, I haven’t programmed a damn thing for Crystal for the next month or so. Instead, I just told her to do whatever she wants, and I’m actually encouraging her to work out less and spend more time coaching at Functional Fitness 204 and doing mobility work. That doesn’t mean Crystal’s workouts will lack intensity. She doesn’t really have lower setting. But we will tone things down a bit in the next month. The whole goal is just to let the body and mind recover and make working out fun again. A Functional Fitness gym is a pretty fun place, but elite athletes are forced to spend a lot of time doing the things they hate in order to eliminate weaknesses, so in the post-competition period, it’s a great idea to just relax and have fun. Overtraining isn’t a myth, either, so a bit of down time is always appreciated by tired joints and muscles. And we never want the pressure of competition to take the joy out of working out. There will be lots of time for me to yell at Crystal and laugh like a pirate while assigning penalty burpees as we prepare for the 2012 competition season. After some time off, the plan is to evaluate Crystal’s weaknesses and then put together a program that will eliminate as many of them as possible. We know gymnastics movements, Olympic lifting and upper-body muscular strength and endurance are areas where we’ll spend a lot of time, and we’ll set some new goals. I’d like to see Crystal deadlift 300 lb., for example, and that number might actually be too low. But all that can wait for a little while. Right now it’s time to play and have fun in the gym. Or maybe, just maybe, this isn’t careful coaching but rather an elaborate plan to ensure Crystal doesn’t get stronger than me.