Lessons Learned from Semifinals

By: Kyle Spears

Syndicate and NCC wrapped up this past weekend, sending a new batch of athletes to the 2026 CrossFit Games. While I say “new,” this is only new for the 2026 season.

As we look across the leaderboards, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: time in the sport is extremely important if you want to compete at the highest level. Most athletes heading to the Games this year are multi-year veterans. Many have competed at multiple Semifinals or the Games on a team, and nearly all have close to a decade of experience under their belts.

With that experience comes a wide range of tools these athletes have developed or been exposed to over time. Intensity in training, finding strong training partners, and managing emotions during competition are all skills that must be built if you want to climb the ladder in this sport.

The foundation of this blog post is time in sport—because it allows you to learn critical lessons. The first one we’ll discuss is training intensity.

Many athletes on the competition floor found the intensity and speed of racing at that level significantly higher than anything they had ever done in training. You could see clear differences in intensity and speed of contraction from heat to heat. There are levels to this sport, and if you want to reach the next one, you must train at the intensity and speed required at competition. That’s much easier said than done—which brings us to the next point.

Most of these top athletes have training partners or train in a highly competitive environment. A good training partner—one you can genuinely compete against—pushes your intensity far beyond what you’d reach on your own. This helps you climb the ladder of training speeds and prepares you to move at the pace of the sport’s best athletes.

Even if you’re the type of athlete who finds another gear on game day, if you’ve never touched those intensities in training, your body won’t be prepared for the physiological demands. The result is often a major blow-up or worse, a psychological breakdown mid-workout or mid-competition. This leads us to the next lesson.

Having a training partner doesn’t just improve your physical output—it also develops the psychological tools needed to compete at a high level. Your mindset is a critical tool that must be sharpened daily to handle the stress of competition.

For example, Danielle Brandon entered Sunday in 8th place, multiple points out of a qualifying spot. Many athletes would have folded at that point, telling themselves it wasn’t their year, they weren’t good enough, or giving in to whatever insecure thoughts arose. Becoming a fighter is a skill that can only be developed through countless reps in training.

Training alone all the time tends to do one of two things to your mindset:

1. It can keep you in your comfort zone, never forcing you to experience vulnerability or being a sub-par performer. This creates a false sense of security. When adversity hits—such as a mid-pack or last-place finish—you lack the coping mechanisms to recover, and it snowballs into poor competition.

2. It can allow negative thoughts to compound. Living inside your own head leads to competing scared on the competition floor.

   
   

A training partner forces you to confront these challenges regularly. You learn to accept defeat, move on, and avoid needing to win every single workout. Danielle Brandon had two tough finishes on Saturday (13th and 15th) that dropped her into 8th place. Instead of letting negative thoughts snowball, she kept her energy high and fought back on Day 3, earning her spot at the Games by just 5 points.

This sport is one of inches. One bad swipe on a legless rope climb can cost you a crucial rep and leave you starting the weekend in 20th place. To compete with the best, we must be dialed in on all fronts. That means training with razor-sharp focus, attacking weaknesses, pushing intensity and speed with others, and developing a resilient, competitive mindset.