If you have been CrossFitting for a while, you’ve probably had this happened to you.

You just completed a workout and you fall to the ground as time expires. You are breathing really hard and you can feel your heart in your chest-thumping up and down. You’re drenched in sweat and your arms and legs are aching. A coach walks by to tell you good job or to give you a fist bump and you can’t even audibly hear what they say to you.

You lay there for a moment until you’re able to get up. Then you think to yourself ‘man, that was awesome. I want to do it again.’

That feeling or sensation is called dopamine. It’s a hormone that’s released through your brain that makes you feel good after an intense type of workout like we do in CrossFit.

But here’s the thing. That dopamine effect can make you want to make you have that feeling again and again. Sometimes in CrossFit, we chase that feeling as well. That can be good because it can make us want to work out regularly.

If you chase those types of workouts they are not going to help you in the long run. You are more likely to wear your body down quickly. You will be more likely to get injured.

That is why at No Excuses CrossFit we don’t have those types of workouts every day. It’s just not safe for you. We try to approach our programming as though you’re training for the long haul. Yeah, we are going to do those types of workouts because you need them in your training. But we’re also going to do types of workouts that involve intervals, or a workout where you sustain the same pace, or some workouts that are short in time duration and some that are long.

These are things that are well throughout and planned weeks in advance. The coaches don’t wake up and decide that we are going to do a heavy squat in class. Nor do they decide at the spur of the moment that we’re going to do some pull-ups, so let’s do some in a workout.

Every workout has a purpose. Every exercise movement has a specific intention to help you become a better athlete. That doesn’t have mean be a CrossFit athlete. It could be someone that enjoys being athletic, enjoys being fit, or healthy.