How to Get Better at CrossFit With Better Metcons
If you’ve ever finished a CrossFit WOD feeling completely gassed halfway through, and with a subpar performance to finish, you’re not alone.
Many CrossFit athletes struggle with pacing their metcons properly, leading to inconsistent performance and frustrating results.
It’s easy to underestimate how much fatigue will build up over time, and if you start too fast, your power output drops significantly before you reach the finish.
Proper pacing is about maintaining sustainable intensity to get the best possible score.
When you break up work strategically and control your effort, you’re able to move efficiently, keep your heart rate in check, and avoid hitting a wall too early.
The problem is that it often feels like the wrong thing to do if the goal is to finish as fast as possible.
But whether you’re tackling a CrossFit Open workout or daily workouts at your local box, understanding your limits will help you train smarter and perform at a higher level.
The key to better pacing is simple: assess your aerobic capacity, muscle endurance, and strength, then adjust your approach based on the workout in front of you.
Once you understand how to control your pace, you’ll notice a big improvement in your scores.
In this article, I’ll show you how to pace different types of CrossFit workouts, avoid common mistakes, and train pacing effectively to improve your CrossFit performance.
How To Get Better at CrossFit: Better Pacing
The excitement of a challenging workout, combined with the competitive environment of a CrossFit gym, often leads to athletes starting at a pace that’s well above what they can sustain.
You feel strong in the first set, moving through reps quickly, but by the time you reach the halfway mark, your legs are heavy, your grip is failing, and your breathing is out of control.
This sudden drop in power output is caused by three main limitations: aerobic conditioning, muscle endurance, and strength.
If your aerobic system isn’t developed enough to clear lactic acid efficiently, your pace will crash once metabolic fatigue sets in.
If your muscle endurance isn’t high enough to handle high-rep movements like strict pull-ups or ring dips, you’ll hit failure earlier than expected.
And if your strength isn’t high enough for the workout’s demands, you’ll struggle to maintain power in barbell cycling.
The best way to understand this is by looking at how CrossFit athletes often improve when repeating workouts.
Many athletes perform significantly better on their second attempt at a CrossFit Open workout.
Not because they’ve suddenly increased their strength or fitness level, but because they’ve paced more intelligently.
The initial attempt is often rushed, with transitions that are too quick and sets that are too aggressive.
On the redo, athletes are more aware of how their body responds and naturally distribute their effort more effectively.
Why does this matter?
This cycle of crashing and recovering leads to frustrating results, making it difficult to perform our best in competition or feel confident in your training.
Beyond frustration, improper pacing limits your ability to improve.
If you repeatedly train at an unsustainable intensity, your body never adapts to maintaining effort over time.
Instead, you develop a pattern of starting strong and fading quickly, reinforcing inefficient energy usage.
Over time, this prevents progress as your brain learns to go out hot and hold on for dear life then execute the test properly.
Consistently pushing beyond your threshold also leads to burnout.
High-intensity workouts should be a tool, not a daily grind that leaves you physically and mentally exhausted.
If you constantly redline, your recovery also suffers, making it harder to hit training volume targets without excessive fatigue.
Lastly, training at maximal effort too often increases your risk of injury as a result of the factors mentioned above.
Key Pacing Strategies for Better Scores
1. Know Your Thresholds
To pace effectively, you need to understand your limits.
The best way to do this is through structured testing in isolation to assess how many reps you can sustain before fatigue sets in.
These tests help you determine the right strategy for breaking up work in metcons, ensuring you maintain power output instead of fading too early.
A simple way to assess your endurance is to perform a 5-minute AMRAP of a specific movement.
This provides a baseline for the movement to be compared to outside of a single unbroken set.
Similarly, testing your max unbroken sets such as thrusters at 95/65 lbs will reveal your threshold for going unbroken.
This can be useful when determining what is a realistic number to start with for a workout.
For instance, if your max unbroken handstand push-ups is 20 it probably doesn’t make sense to start with 15 unbroken in a workout.
Once you establish these limits, you can tailor your pacing strategy.
If you know your grip fails after 15 chest-to-bar pull-ups, breaking them into smaller sets from the start will keep you moving consistently.
After this initial testing period, you can begin a skill progression to move the movement from isolation to mixed modal settings.
2. Break Up Reps 25% More
One of the biggest pacing mistakes CrossFit athletes make is holding onto large sets for too long.
While it might feel efficient at first, pushing to failure early in a metcon leads to unnecessary fatigue, increased rest periods, and a significant drop in power output.
A general guideline is to break your reps into 1-2 more sets than your gut instinct suggests.
For example, in CrossFit Open 25.3, if your initial plan was to complete the deadlifts in three sets, consider breaking them into four or five instead.
I know this will hurt your pride because it does so for me as well.
But, this approach reduces muscular fatigue, prevents lactic acid buildup, and keeps your heart rate from spiking too early.
The goal isn’t to avoid effort but to distribute it more efficiently so you can maintain a steady pace rather than hitting a wall.
3. Start at a 4x Sustainable Pace
A good coach will tell you that starting too fast is the fastest way to ruin a workout.
Instead, begin at a pace that could be held for four times the workout duration for roughly the first 80% of the workout.
For example, if the metcon lasts 10 minutes, your initial pace should be one you could realistically hold for a 40 minutes race pace.
While this may feel frustratingly slow, it’s the best way to ensure you don’t fade as the workout progresses.
Remember that’s a 40-minute “race pace” not an easy 40-minute workout.
Ten minutes at the pace is still a good clip.
By controlling your intensity upfront, you preserve energy, avoid metabolic fatigue, and give yourself the ability to push hard in the final 20% of the workout when it matters.
4. Train Pacing Through Competition Practice
Understanding pacing is one thing—executing it under pressure is another.
To improve your “skill of competing”, regularly test old CrossFit Open workouts and benchmark WODs, to get used to applying your pacing strategies.
This is a great way to simulate competition intensity while learning how your body responds to different pacing tactics.
Use these sessions to practice breaking up CrossFit movements strategically, managing transition time, and building awareness of your sustainable pace.
Over several months, you’ll get better at pacing and your WOD times will get better.
Matching Your Strategy to Workout Types
Understanding how to pace each type of CrossFit workout is one of the most important factors in improving your performance.
CrossFit training involves a wide range of formats, and each one demands a different approach.
If you apply the same pacing strategy to every workout of the day, you’re setting yourself up to underperform or burn out too early.
AMRAPs
In AMRAPs (as many rounds or reps as possible), your goal is to maintain a consistent pace that you can hold for the majority of the workout.
Try to average the same number of rounds or reps per minute for the first two-thirds of the time domain.
If the AMRAP is 15 minutes, focus on smooth, efficient movement for the first 10 minutes.
You want to leave enough in the tank to ramp up your intensity in the final 2 to 3 minutes.
This is where you make up ground.
Practicing this type of pacing regularly helps you perform better during CrossFit competitions and improves your ability to finish strong in longer events.
Chippers
Chippers require you to complete large sets of different movements before moving on to the next.
Many athletes make the mistake of going unbroken on the first movement just because they can.
This leads to excessive fatigue that affects everything that comes after.
Break up reps earlier than you think you need to, and choose a rep scheme that keeps your rest periods short and predictable.
Your goal is to move continuously through the workout without long pauses.
When you do that, you’re able to maintain high intensity without redlining.
Rounds for Time
For workouts that are structured as rounds for time, your first round is your chance to find a sustainable rhythm.
It shouldn’t be your fastest round. Aim to move with control and efficiency.
Once you establish a comfortable pace, focus on replicating that effort in each following round.
You want your round times to stay as close as possible, without major drop-offs.
If you’re slowing down significantly, it’s a sign that your initial pace was too aggressive.
Intervals and EMOMs
With intervals and EMOMs (every minute on the minute), you’re given built-in rest or work windows that make pacing more structured.
Use this to your advantage.
Push close to your threshold during the work period, then use the rest to recover just enough to repeat that same level of output.
For EMOMs, your pace needs to account for transition time.
You should be finishing each movement with 10 to 15 seconds to spare.
That margin gives your heart rate a chance to settle before the next minute starts.
This type of training builds your capacity for high intensity while staying in control.
When you learn to match your effort to the type of training you’re doing, you become more efficient, waste less energy, and feel more in control throughout your workouts.
These pacing skills can make a huge difference in how you perform on both training days and game day.
Common Pacing Mistakes and How to Fix Them
Even experienced CrossFit athletes make pacing mistakes that cost them valuable reps, time, or energy.
You might be training with the right mindset and the right movements, but poor pacing can limit your CrossFit performance.
If you find yourself hitting a wall halfway through the workout of the day or struggling to recover the next day, your pacing strategy might need a few key adjustments.
Going Unbroken When You Shouldn’t
You may be able to go unbroken on a set of wall balls or kettlebell swings, but that doesn’t mean you should.
The problem comes when those unbroken sets spike your heart rate early, forcing you to rest for longer afterward.
This leads to inconsistent pacing and more time standing around than working.
Instead, plan your sets based on what lets you stay moving.
Short, consistent breaks will help you keep intensity high across the full workout.
Overusing Chalk and Wasting Time
Chalking is useful for grip, but too many athletes use it as an excuse to rest.
If you’re walking to the chalk bucket every few minutes or chalking up before a short set, you’re wasting time and breaking your momentum.
Try limiting your chalk use to specific moments before pull-ups or barbell cycling, and keep your hands dry without turning it into a ritual.
When you trust your grip and your training, you’ll spend more time moving and less time adjusting.
Starting Too Fast in Long Workouts
In longer workouts like chippers or 20-minute AMRAPs, it’s tempting to attack the first movement aggressively.
But starting too fast leads to early fatigue, especially in movements involving heavy weight or large muscle groups like front squats and olympic lifts.
Instead, focus on controlled breathing and a steady cadence.
Your goal is to finish with strength, not survive the back half of the workout.
If you’re slowing down dramatically, your first five minutes were likely too intense.
Taking Water Breaks Out of Habit
Hydration is important, but in a 10- to 15-minute workout, pausing for water isn’t necessary unless you’re in extreme heat or training in places like Saudi Arabia or South Africa.
Most water breaks during workouts happen out of habit, not need.
If you’re pausing mid-workout for water, you’re also breaking your mental focus.
Practice completing workouts without reaching for your bottle, and save hydration for before or after your session.
Fixing these pacing mistakes can make a big difference in how you feel during and after your training.
When you’re aware of your pacing habits and intentional about correcting them, you’ll start to see improvements in your conditioning, movement quality, and overall CrossFit performance.
How to Practice Pacing in Daily Training
You don’t need to wait for a CrossFit competition to sharpen your pacing strategy.
Your daily CrossFit training is the best place to build awareness, control, and consistency.
Pacing is a skill like any other, and you can train it deliberately with the right methods.
When you practice pacing with intent, you’ll start to feel more confident in your movement pattern, recover better between sessions, and get more out of each type of training.
Use EMOMs to Build Consistency
EMOMs (every minute on the minute) are one of the best formats for developing pacing.
They force you to complete work in a structured window while managing fatigue and effort.
For example, you might do 8 to 10 minutes of 10 calorie bike sprints, 10 deadlifts, or 8 overhead squats each minute.
The goal is to move with urgency while keeping a consistent finish time.
If you’re finishing early in the minute every round, you’re pacing well.
If your work bleeds past the minute mark, you know you went out too hot.
EMOMs help you learn how to repeat efforts without fading and are useful across all kinds of CrossFit workouts.
Track Round Splits in AMRAPs and RFT Workouts
Whether you’re doing an AMRAP or a workout for time, tracking your round splits gives you real-time feedback.
If the workout is 5 rounds of power cleans, front squats, and double unders, time each round.
Your goal is to keep the splits consistent or slightly faster toward the end.
If your first round takes 1:20 and your third takes 2:00, you’re losing control.
Use these numbers to adjust your pacing next time.
This habit teaches you how to hold your effort across multiple rounds and makes you more mindful during the workout of the day.
Set Goals for Transitions
One of the most overlooked parts of pacing is your transition time.
Walking slowly between movements or standing still before picking up the barbell adds unnecessary seconds.
To fix this, set clear targets for how quickly you transition.
A good standard is under 5 seconds between movements.
If you drop from muscle ups, take a breath, count to three, and go.
Practicing quick transitions will keep your heart rate from spiking and help you maintain high intensity without overreaching.
Practice Negative Splitting Workouts
Negative splitting means finishing a workout faster than you started.
You can apply this concept to any workout format, but it works especially well with AMRAPs and intervals.
For example, if you’re doing a 15-minute AMRAP of rowing, handstand push-ups, and box jumps, hold a moderate pace for the first 10 minutes, then push harder in the final 5.
This teaches you how to manage your output and close workouts strong.
Over time, you’ll become better at controlling fatigue and adjusting your intensity on the fly.
Using these pacing strategies consistently in your daily training will help you stay in better shape, improve your CrossFit performance, and reduce burnout during high intensity workouts.
You’re training your awareness as much as your physical capacity, which pays off in a big way during CrossFit competitions or benchmark tests.
Build pacing into your training program like you would any other skill, and you’ll see the difference within a couple of months.
Wrapping Up on How To Get Better at CrossFit
Mastering pacing in CrossFit metcons leads to better scores, consistent training progress, and reduced injury risk.
By understanding your limits, breaking up reps intelligently, and starting at a sustainable pace, you’ll maintain power output instead of burning out too soon.
Ultimately leading to success in the sport and as a fitness training methodology.
Start applying these strategies in your daily workouts, track your performance in benchmark WODs, and refine your approach over several training sessions.
If you commit to learning how to pace, I promise you’ll see noticeable improvements in your endurance, overall fitness, and competition results over time.
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