How to Stay Pain-Free (or Get Out of Pain) During the Qualifiers:

By Michelle Pohle

The CrossFit Open, or any major qualifier season, is one of the most exciting times of the year. Energy is high, PRs are flying, and adrenaline is through the roof. Unfortunately, with the increase in intensity and volume, pain and flare-ups can quickly derail weeks of training.

The goal isn’t just to survive qualifiers, it’s to thrive through them pain-free.

Manage Pain Early

Pain during qualifiers doesn’t immediately mean you are weak or broken. It means your body is under more stress than it is used to, and it’s asking for an adjustment. If something feels “off”, don’t wait for it to sideline you. Too many athletes ignore early pain signals until they are forced to stop training, usually right when it matters most. Being proactive means acknowledging the small stuff before it becomes big stuff.

That could mean:

1. Taking 10 extra minutes to mobilize the joint or tissue that feels tight

2. Checking in with your coach to review video and spot any breakdowns in form

3. Using active recovery or movement therapy instead of another max-effort redo or full training day.

At Blacklisted, we care a lot about communication. When you reach out early and say, “Hey, my shoulder’s been talking to me since that last workout,” you open the door to quick, effective problem-solving. Coaches can adjust your warm ups, alter movement prep, or guide you through recovery strategies that keep you in the game. What could’ve turned into a lingering issue becomes a minor speed bump instead. Qualifiers aren’t the time to be stoic, they are the time to be smart.

Pain management is about collaboration, not a solo act. Your body gives the signals and your coach can help you interpret them. Together, you can create a plan that keeps you performing at your best, without sacrificing long-term progress for a short term score.

Respect the Volume Spike

If you’re an Rx or Elite-level athlete, the total volume of any single qualifier workout probably isn’t the problem. You’ve built your base. You’ve handled far heavier, longer, or more complex sessions in training. But what catches even the most seasoned athletes off guard isn’t the workout itself, it’s the density of the work.

Qualifier season compresses intensity into a tight 2-3 day window. Instead of spreading your training over the week, you’re suddenly doing multiple full-send efforts, warm-ups, and re-dos in a 48-hour stretch, often repeating the same movement patterns again and again. That’s where the real stress starts to add up. It’s not just the WOD, it’s everything around it. 

Think about it:

1. You warm up to 85–90% intensity to “feel out” the movements.

2. You film a test run.

3. You rest, analyze, strategize, and redo the workout (sometimes twice).

4. Each of those sessions includes a full warm-up, skill prep, build-up sets, and accessory work.

By the time you submit your final score, you’ve potentially done triple the amount of exposure to those same muscles, joints, and tendons, especially if you’re chasing small improvements or trying to execute a perfect video.

That’s a huge increase in localized load, not just total training time. Even if the total minutes trained aren’t higher than a normal week, the repeated strain on the same tissues (shoulders from thrusters, knees from wall balls, low back from cleans) can tip the balance from prepared to overreached.

Respecting the volume means recognizing that qualifiers come with a different kind of volume. Not necessarily more training, but more density, intensity, and redundancy. If you’re going to repeat workouts or test similar movement patterns over several days, recovery becomes your job between efforts. And if you’re a non-professional athlete, meaning you also have work, family, or other training demands, you don’t have the same recovery window the pros do.

That’s where small habits make a massive difference:

1. Plan your attempts. Don’t redo the same workout less than 24 hours apart unless you’ve fully recovered.

2. Count your exposures. If a workout involves 150 wall balls, and you practice the standard twice, that’s 450 reps on your knees and hips before you even redo it.

3. Treat warm-ups as part of total load. They’re not “free.” Those pull-ups, barbell builds, and positional drills all add up, especially under fatigue.

4. Support the system between sessions. Low-intensity movement, hydration, carbs, and mobility aren’t optional if you’re repeating effort in short windows.

If your load doubles, has your recovery doubled too?

Most athletes think of recovery as sleep and food, and those are the non-negotiables. But if you’re already nailing 8-9 hours of quality sleep, eating enough protein, and staying hydrated then doubling your recovery doesn’t mean sleeping 16 hours. It means being more intentional with what fills the gaps between sessions. Recovery is everything that helps your body absorb the work you’re doing. It’s not passive, it’s strategic.

Here’s what doubling recovery can look like:

Active Recovery Sessions: Low-intensity Zone 2 work, light sled drags, or easy cyclical cardio. The goal isn’t to train, it is to increase blood flow, help flush metabolic waste, and keep tissues supple.

Dedicated Mobility Work: Ten minutes of targeted mobility (hips, shoulders, and T-spine) after each session is more valuable than a rushed 30-minute foam roll on Sunday. Consistency beats intensity here.

Parasympathetic Practice: Stress is stress, mental or physical. Techniques like nasal breathing, guided relaxation, or even five minutes of quiet decompression post-training can shift you from “fight mode” to “recover mode”.

Fueling with Intention: More work means more calories. Undereating is one of the fastest ways to turn a training high into a burnout. Add in recovery carbs post-WOD and an evening protein post to support repair.

Smart Scheduling: If you’re planning multiple attempts, give your body time between exposures. Set yourself up so you don’t need to redo the workout the next day. Test once, assess, then recover before retesting.

Recovery isn’t a luxury, it’s a performance multiplier. The athletes who stay pain-free during qualifiers are the ones who respect how much their bodies are actually doing.

Mobilize With Intention

Some athletes jump straight to the whiteboard or camera setup when a qualifier workout drops. But here’s the thing, your warm-up and mobility routine can make or break your performance, especially during a high-stakes workout.

You don’t need to just get warm, you need to get ready.

A rushed 5-minute bike and a few arm swings aren’t enough when you are asking your body to move about 100% intensity. Every joint, muscle and tendon needs to be primed for exactly what is coming. That means tailoring your warm-up to the demands of the workout, not just doing the same general warm up every time.

A great warm up has two parts:

1. The general warm up. This is about increasing body temperature, blood flow and neural readiness. Think light cardio, joint circles, and controlled movement patterns. Spend 5-8 minutes getting your heart rate up and breaking a light sweat.

   1. 2-3 minutes easy bike, row or jump rope

   2. Controlled articular rotations (hips, shoulders, T-spine)

   3. Band work or tempo squats for positional prep

You should feel warm, not gassed, but definitely more awake than when you walked in.

2. The specific warm up. Now we shift from warm to ready. This phase mimics the movement patterns and loads you’ll actually perform.

   1. If it’s a heavy clean workout, build gradually with positional pulls and front rack prep.

   2. If it’s gymnastics: focus on shoulder stability, scap activation, and midline engagement.

   3. If it’s burpee box jumps: hit ankle mobility, hip openers, and explosive hops to prime your nervous system.

Dynamic mobility means moving through controlled ranges of motion, such as lunges with rotation, inchworms, shoulder dislocates, or deep squat openers. It’s not just about flexibility. It’s about control, coordination and neural readiness. When done well, a good warm up should leave you feeling ready to move, not just stretched.

After qualifiers, most athletes shut down the camera, check their score, and walk straight out the door. But this is the moment your body is begging for attention. Your cool-down doesn’t just help your muscles, it helps your nervous system reset. Every all-out qualifier attempt lights up your CNS. You’re not just tired; you’re wired. Heart rate elevated, adrenaline pumping, muscles tense, breathing shallow.

If you skip the cool-down, that systemic tension lingers. The next day, you wake up feeling stiff, heavy, and “off,” even if you didn’t technically overtrain. That’s not just muscle soreness, that’s your nervous system still running hot. A proper cool-down tells your body: “It’s safe to relax now.”

Your cool-down sets the stage for your next training day and your ability to stay pain-free through the weekend. It’s not optional recovery work, it’s the signal your body needs to start repairing, rebalancing, and preparing for the next push.

A great cool down should have three purposes:

1. Lower your heart rate: Easy bike or walk for 5-10 minutes to bring your nervous system down.

2. Restore range of motion: Now is the time for static holds, long stretches, and breathing into tight areas. Shoulders, hips and low back are priority areas.

3. Flush and recover: Think gentle movement and breath work. Foam rolling isn’t magic, but combined with active recovery, it helps signal the body that the stress phase is over.

Mobility and movement prep aren’t just accessories to qualifiers. When intensity spikes, you need to be ready to load, unload, and rebound without strain. Qualifier season rewards those who move well. So take the extra 15 minutes to prime your joints, warm your  core, and cool down with intention.

Remember: Stress is Stress

When you’re in qualifier season, you’re not just dealing with “workouts”. You’re dealing with life and workouts. That means all the external stressors like deadlines, parenting, sleep interruptions, family logistics, training load and the emotional overhead of competition all funnel into one big bucket.

Your body doesn’t categorize “physical stress” versus “mental stress” and deal with them separately. It processes them together. If your nervous system is maxed out from sleep disruption, emotional strain, or too many life demands it reduces your capacity to recover from your workouts.

Why this matters:

1. A high-volume training block for qualifiers already demands more recovery. Add in elevated life stress and you are essentially running with one brake on.

2. Studies show that when mental or life stress is elevated, muscular recovery after resistance work is significantly worse (PubMed)

3. Recovery isn’t just about what you do after training, it is also about what you allow under the radar (sleep quality, mental load, hormonal balance). 

What does “stress is stress” look like in practice?

1. You might get a push-day where you feel fine, and another where the same weights feel much heavier. Not because your strength changed drastically, but because your system can’t support the same load today

2. Your sleep was 8 hours, but maybe it was fragmented because of family disruptions of emotional stress. That extra micro-waking counts.

3. You’re training at full throttle, but your cortisol and catecholamines (stress hormones) are elevated because of non-training life demands. Meaning you’re in a catabolic state more than an anabolic/adaptive state.

What to do about it:

1. Track your stressors, not just your workouts

   1. Maybe you’re sleep tracking already. Try tracking quality of sleep, awakenings, mood, and family stress

   2. Use a simple check-in: “Today my stress load is low / medium / high.” On high days, adjust your plan accordingly

2. Prioritize nervous-system down-regulation

   1. 10 minutes of guided breathing, diaphragmatic inhales/exhables, activation of the parasympathetic nervous system can make a big difference in recovery readiness

   2. Include a “wind-down” protocol post-training: walk, easy row, mobility flow, then 5 minutes of intention-based breathing

3. Communicate, early and often

   1. At Blacklisted we know you are not just an athlete showing up, you are human with layers. When we know your life-load is elevated, we can adjust the training flow

   2. If you check in with: “I’ve got the qualifier tonight, but I also had two late nights with the kids, my brain is still buzzing,” we can help. We can keep you going without fueling damage.

Stress from life and stress from training don’t cancel each other out, they stack. When you respect that, you won’t just make it through the qualifiers, you will set yourself up to compete well.

You Don’t Have to Do It Alone

If you’re dealing with pain right now or want help staying pain-free through the qualifiers, the coaches at Blacklisted can help.

We specialize in building competitive athletes who move well, perform better, and recover faster. Reach out to Blacklisted for help navigating training while in pain. Let’s make sure you not only qualify but feel your best while doing it.