There’s definitely a wrong way and a right way to spend your time at Open Gym. Take care to make sure you are supplementing your regular workouts and training, and not over-doing it. More is not better. Choose quality over quantity to be sure to stay healthy and injury-free.

It’s helpful to know why you want to spend time at the gym outside of regular, coached classes. What are your goals? What are you working towards?

Warm up and extra mobility before class.
If you know that you need some extra warm up time, you need some extra hip mobility, or that you have tight shoulders, coming in a few minutes before class is very useful. Maybe there is a movement in today’s workout that you know takes you a bit longer to work into, like muscles ups or heavy squats. Come to the gym early and do what you need to do. Class will go much smoother for you if your body has the things it needs. You’ll also stay injury free by taking care of your body!

Practicing for an upcoming competition.
That may involve reviewing pieces of the workouts. It may involve working on some skills and standards or weights that you aren’t used to. It’s a good time to practice transitions and strategies as well.

Preparing for an event like a Tough Mudder or a GoRuck.
Regular classes should prepare you pretty well for such events. But if you know there is something that you need to work on, like throwing, or sandbag work, or heavy rucking, using some of the equipment that doesn’t get used as often in regular classes would be a good choice.

Working on some higher skill movement.
Small amounts of high skill work after you’re all warmed up from class, like double unders, are great to practice when you are tired. Muscle Up work, handstands – any high skill gymnastics work, for a small amount of time (don’t overdue it.)

Homework assigned to you from your personal training session.
If you have personal training sessions at the gym, you may be getting some homework assigned to you. This is the perfect time to work on those things!

These are all great reasons to utilize open gym time!

Have a plan going in. Be efficient. Make the most use of your time – remember quality over quantity. Be careful of getting distracted and spending time checking your phone or finding other things to do instead of the work at hand.

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