“You Have To Remove Emotion From Your Programme” - Sara Sigmundsdottir On Learning To Coach Herself

Sara Sigmundsdottir was so disappointed at not being able to complete the full CrossFit Games last year when she failed to make the cut into the final 10 that she decided to immediately compete in a half-ironman afterwards. It was a bitter blow for the Icelander, who was forced to face the fact that a spark had gone and she needed a change.

So the experienced 27-year-old, who will be competing in her sixth CrossFit Games this year, made the brave decision to go it alone. “It’s been challenging,” she admitted last month in an interview with Morning Chalk Up. “But you can’t connect emotions with your programming. I always have to think of coaching me as another human being.

“And that was a little bit challenging in the beginning because you would go by feel and go by emotion. But I get a lot out of doing it myself. I’ve always been that person that goes, ‘Hey I don’t need this, I can do it myself’.

“Being your own coach you have to get advice in different areas to make the perfect programme. I can’t be the best in programming gymnastics, I can’t be the best in programming Olympic weightlifting. I have to get my knowledge, try it out and see if it works for me. So it’s been a lot of fun and a learning process.”

“I would say now I go a lot by how my body is feeling, and a lot by how my mental state is. I always feel that if I overtrain I get very emotional and everything is hard and nothing is fun anymore.”

Sigmundsdottir is still seeing good progress in the gym off the back of her own methods, even if she’s had to taper her expectations as she’s reached elite levels of fitness.

“I think everything’s improving a little bit,” she continued. “When you’re at the spot where I am now, you want to make everything 0.5 per cent better. And that means you’re doing something right.

“It would be a dream if I could just PR by 10 kilos again, but that was in the beginning of CrossFit when you would PR almost every time you would train.”

Sigmundsdottir will be looking to make the top five in when the online stage of the CrossFit Games kicks off later this month in order to get an invite to the finale of the competition in California.