Last season, after six consecutive appearances at the CrossFit Games, Amanda Barnhart failed to qualify for the 2024 Games, finishing 14th at the North America East Semifinal.
A big part of her was relieved.
- “I was really, really beat up… I was surviving, but it was not good,” Barnhart told the Morning Chalk Up in an interview. “The thought of training for the Games all summer sounded terrible… I didn’t want to admit that out loud, because I loved training for the Games.”
Barnhart’s shoulder wasn’t fully healed at the time, and she felt mentally exhausted. Additionally, she was on antibiotics for an infection in her armpit that had returned for the third time, indicating to her that she was overly stressed and that something was wrong with her body.
- “Every time I would go hard, I would just feel tired all day. Or I would feel grumpy, drained. And I was having trouble controlling what I was eating because I just felt like I was craving sugar,” the 33-year-old said.
After Semifinals, Barnhart returned home and went back to training, but still didn’t feel like herself.
Backing Off
Last summer, Barnhart committed to decreasing her training intensity and slowing down to see how it would affect her recovery, sleep, and mood.
She continued to go to the gym but lengthened her workout durations to keep a lower intensity. She backed off from many of the classic CrossFit movements and occasionally included bodybuilding training.
- “I was kind of making up my own workouts; I was kind of doing HWPO; I was kind of doing stuff at my gym. I was just finding workouts and adapting them to a length that felt like I got a solid workout, got my breathing up, and sweated,” she explained.
But then Barnhart received an invitation to the Rogue Invitational, an opportunity she didn’t want to turn down. Part of her was excited, but another part thought, “Oh my gosh, I have to train for Rogue,” she said, laughing.
To prepare, Barnhart increased her intensity once more and felt much better than she had before heading into Semifinals.
One day, she did some sprints at the track and couldn’t believe how good she felt.
- “I was like, no joke, that is the fastest I have sprinted since 2019,” Barnhart said.
She credited the performance to the fact that she had finally given her body a chance to recover.
Barnhart finished 15th at the Rogue Invitational and once again returned home, feeling the urge to reduce her intensity.
Her close friend, Jessica Cahoy (formerly Griffith) – a two-time individual and three-time team Games athlete – had been posting about and selling training programs for a while, highlighting the value of lower-intensity training, which resonated with Barnhart.
So, last fall, Barnhart began following one of Cahoy’s training programs, and her body and mind immediately responded positively to the lower intensity.
In the past, Barnhart said she would finish her training session and want to lie on the couch all day because she “was trashed.” Suddenly, she was able to train five or even six days a week without feeling beat up.
A couple of months later, just before Christmas, Barnhart discovered she was pregnant, which only reinforced for her that what she was doing was precisely what her body needed.
- “It forced me to do what I needed to do and gave me a reason that I could take my ego out of it,” she admitted.
LIIT Is Born
Most recently, Barnhart joined Cahoy as a coach, and the two teamed up to create a new program, LIIT, which combines lower-intensity interval training and strength exercises. They already have over 2,000 subscribers.
Most days, the hour-long program includes a longer, lower-intensity conditioning workout that typically lasts 20 minutes. The purpose of this is to prepare the body for the strength session that follows.
Further, they encourage people to walk between sets during the strength portion of the workout, “so you move the whole hour,” Barnhart said.
- “You finish, and you leave the gym, and you feel like, ‘OK, I lifted well. I sweated, and I walked a ton. I didn’t stop moving for that hour, but I feel great rather than feeling rough afterwards,’” she explained.
And although LIIT might sound like the antithesis to CrossFit, Barnhart is adamant it’s not, and both CrossFit and LIIT can actually coexist harmoniously.
- “I love CrossFit… I don’t regret anything. CrossFit changed my life in so many ways. I have met so many amazing people. It gave me a career and put me where I am now,” she said.
But on the other hand, “Over the years, I did start to struggle with recovery a lot,” Barnhart said.
The purpose of LIIT isn’t to stop people from having hard training days; rather, it provides a program that shows people it’s not always effective and can even be counterproductive to “push through” all the time.
- “I feel like a lot of people need someone to say, ‘It’s OK to slow down. Give your body what it needs. We tell people, ‘Go hard when you want to.’ If you feel that urge, do it. But we’re not going hard every day. We’re not running ourselves into the ground,” Barnhart said.
That said, it’s all about balance, and many of Cahoy and Barnhart’s subscribers do a combination of CrossFit and LIIT. She couldn’t be happier about it.
- “I don’t at all want to take people away from CrossFit,” Barnhart said, adding that she will always encourage people to continue to be a part of their local CrossFit communities “because that’s what we all love.”
Barnhart added, “But I also just want people to know it’s OK to slow down a little bit.”
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Featured image: @joeandacamera / Instagram
