Alright grasshoppas, the highly anticipated moment you have been anxiously awaiting is finally here!
Boxes of Girl Scout cookies across the nation are on sale for $1 a box through the rest of this month!!!
…Kidding…that’s the moment I have been waiting for…and will continue to wait for…
The REAL occasion is of course the 2017 CrossFit Open!
If you have been a member/follower of mine, you know I am extremely passionate about CrossFit, and its many facets.
I am a firm believer that there are 2 very distinct sides of CrossFit: Recreational, and sport.
I feel like this idea has only been further perpetuated with the growth of competitive CrossFit on regional and national levels over the past few years. To ignore the sport side of CrossFit would be a disservice to the evolution of CrossFit. I would venture to say that the sport side of CrossFit can sometimes get more exposure than the recreational side, when in actuality, it is the recreational CrossFit that put us on the map.
Recreational CrossFit is what at least 90% of my athletes take part in…and they pretty much do so by second nature, aka simply being a member at my gym. The daily classes, gym activities, and personal training that happens in my gym would all account for what I consider as recreational.
The sport side of CrossFit that the other 10% of my athletes could be categorized under would include using CrossFit to further propel athletic performance towards a specific goal that is related to ANOTHER sport, or to specifically measure and test their CrossFit preparedness in CrossFit competitions regularly.
I support and cater to both recreational and sport. I cater to both with my approach in teaching through personal experience, the way I conduct and coach my classes, as well as the programming cycles we follow from season to season. Whether it is sport or recreation that my athletes are pursuing, we always have, and always will adjust accordingly. I take the role of making sure my athlete are prepared very seriously.
The CrossFit Open is the first level in global competition, and in my opinion, it is where recreation AND sport COMBINE.
Before we dive into that sentiment, let’s get one thing straightened out….
Everyone say it with me…”The CrossFit OPEN”…with emphasis on “OPEN”…
I have googled far and wide to try and find the origin of where the hell people came up with “OPENS”…
As in:”The CrossFit OPENS”…
As in: ”Hey…are you doing the OPENS this year?”….
As In: ”I Just signed up for the OPENS!”…
As In: ”Are you excited about the OPENS?”….
To me that is almost as annoying as gyms who refer to their work out of the day as the D-WOD…which would break down to reading as the Daily Workout of the Day….
Department of redundancy department, much? But I digress….
The CrossFit OPEN!!!! It is time…
For my noobs:
In a nutshell, the CrossFit Open is STAGE 1.
It is 5 weeks of “online” competition. I say online because that is where the scores are submitted, but the actual workouts will be hosted at CrossFit gyms around the WORLD during this time…ours included.
The workouts are announced by Dave Castro every THURSDAY at 6pm MT.
For those of you that don’t know, Dave Castro is the longtime director of the CrossFit Games.
Ever since he got himself an Instagram account, his announcements, reveals, and everyday posts have been followed, analyzed, and even highly scrutinized. He is the face of the CrossFit Open, and it is perfectly ok to not like him, or his face, during the next 5 weeks.
Immediately after the Thursday announcement, a handful of pre-chosen games athletes (the big dogs) do the workout live online! From that point, the rest of the participating athletes have until MONDAY evening to do the workout, and submit a score.
The part about submitting a score is ONLY necessary if you sign up to participate.
The cost to register for the Open is $20. This $20 registration fee has been a hot topic of discussion among some gyms and athletes. Where does this $20 actually go? What is the point?
Honestly, the $20 registration fee is simply just to get you access to the games website, and ensure your name is on the leaderboard.
Is that enough justification of someone’s hard earned $20 to get some them to sign up?
Definitely not, and I respect that.
You DO NOT have to pay $20 to do the Open workouts with us this year, or ANY year for that matter. Even if you do sign up, and accidentally forget to submit a score, or miss a workout, it’s not like they are going to spank you and take away your birthday or anything, like I said, registering is mainly just to get your name on the leaderboard, and allow you to submit your workout scores to that global platform.
While I respect people’s desires to not OFFICIALLY register for the open, in my opinion, the leaderboard and being in the database as a competitor is more than enough of a selling point.
Regardless of your ability level, when the CrossFit Open comes around, this is a chance to participate in something with every other CrossFit athlete in the WORLD. Yes, the competition gets weeded out as the levels of competition increase, but as I mentioned last year, the top tier athletes make up a small 2% of registered athletes. There are literally THOUSANDS of athletes that sign up for the Open, and this signifies that the Open is more about recreation and community than it is about sport and competition on higher levels.
The Open is a chance to set new personal records, try new movements, push your perceived limits of work capacity, and ultimately, learn more about yourself as a person, and as an athlete!
If you want to read my post from last year where I got super nostalgic about how the CrossFit Open has evolved over the years, you can do so here:
“…Why, if we were all wiener dogs, our problems would be solved…”
If you are fine with the condensed version, I’ve got the simplified timeline here of how the Open has evolved:
2010: There was no Open, various gyms hosted individual “sectional” competitions that led to regionals. The regionals were also different workouts, but the fittest of each still advanced to the CrossFit Games.
2011: The first official year of the CrossFit Open. It was 7 weeks long…initially slated for 6 weeks, their system crashed in week 1, and they couldn’t handle the volume of registration online. They extended the deadline for the week 1 workout.
2012: 4 words: Seven Minutes of Burpees…. And we also saw that Dave Castro wasn’t afraid to repeat workouts from the year prior.
2013: Workouts were more complex this year as far as reps and movement combinations.
2014: More repeat workouts, and this is the first year a workout FOR TIME was announced rather than sticking with only AMRAPs.
2015: More new workout formats, a max lift portion, and the rower makes its first appearance in the open, and a scaled division was added!
2016: Overhead lunges and bar muscle ups make their first appearance in Open workouts, and Dave Castro programmed bar facing burpees TWICE in two separate workouts!
2017: Dave Castro breaks the internet announcing that dumbbells will be used in this year’s open…
So now you are all up to speed…
This is what needs to happen.
- Go to games.crossfit.com
- Click “Sign In” at the top right
- Click create an account, or if you have registered before, simply login
- There will be prompts to fill out your personal info and sign a digital waiver. The digital waiver may look funky on your smartphone, so if you need access to a computer to register, let me know and we can set you up at the gym.
- Finish your personal info and make sure to join the affiliate AND join the team. Every week the top 3 men’s scores and the top 3 women’s scores contribute to an overall team score. So any given week, any top RX score can contribute since that is our goal this year to send a team to the regional competition.
- The final page should prompt you to pay $20, and you will be set with an email receipt confirmation.
It is as easy as that!
The way we do the open has also become a tradition. The workout is announced on Thursday, and I will do everything I can to accommodate anyone, at any time, that needs to do the workout between then and the deadline on Monday every week. Open gym, after hours, on the side during class, it is all fair game, and we will get it done.
The ONLY time we will do the Open workout as a class will be each Saturday morning for the next 5 weeks starting with THIS SATURDAY Feb 23rd.
The gym will be set up to accommodate the workout, we will roll in heats, assign judges, and knock it out. Again, you DO NOT have to be registered to participate, but it is going to be the workout of the day anyway, so you might as well sign up and post a score!
Saturdays are always fun! Great vibes, positive energy, and some inspiring performances. As always, in years past, I will need some help on Saturday with judges. For those interested in being official judges, you will need to take and pass the Judges Course which costs $10 and will take anywhere from 15 mins to an hour to complete. If you can help judge, but don’t want to be official and take judge’s course, that is fine, but you won’t be able to judge anyone looking to post a top score for the gym.
Find the judges course here:
https://oc.crossfit.com/course?id=12
Another element I am adding to make Saturdays more fun is weekly sponsors!
Each week of competition at our gym will be sponsored by a different local business!
More information will be released week to week, but our Week One sponsor is Max Muscle of Fort Collins!
To summarize, The CrossFit Open is a junction where recreation meets sport, where community and family combine to perform, encourage, and foster success! All accomplishments are celebrated, no matter how big or small they might be. I don’t care if you have been an athlete of mine for 2 days or 2 years…you can, and SHOULD sign up for the OPEN! This is a great time of support, a great time for improvement, and more importantly, it’s just a great time, period. Don’t miss out.
If none of that motivated you…I will just sick this guy on you to pester you until you register or participate…
“…you have been warned…”
W.I.L.D. Horizons CrossFit 