Here's a look at the movement standards:
So what do I think of 14.1?
Personally I think it's a mistake by HQ, if the goal is to continue to expand and grow the Open. I'd render a guess that at least a third of the CF community can't string together consecutive double unders and alienating a large portion of your potential audience isn't the best way to grow your product. It also discourages those who are new to CF from signing up next year. I'll go out on a limb and wager that 2015 will be the first time that the number of Open participants decreases. Castro announced that just over 190,000 signed up as of the time of the live announcement, and maybe that number creeps above 200K before the deadline to submit scores for 14.1. The Crossfit Open has reached its peak, 2014 will be the highest enrollment for quite some time.
As for strategy.....
Forget it, I among the vast majority of Crossfitters who can't consistently string together several double unders at a time. I'll struggle through the double unders and spend most of my time with those. Hopefully I'll enough in the tank to make it through the snatches unbroken. That's the plan anyways, we'll see how it plays out.
I'm with you on this. I did my first DU (as of ~10 months of CF) about a week ago. I'm fairly sure I'm going to get a score of ~5 for 14.1.
ReplyDeleteIMHO, this would have been a good 14.3 or 14.4, but too many people are going to be discouraged by this.
I've been a CFer for almost three years now and still haven't mastered DU's (granted the biggest reason for that is that I never placed much of an emphasis on learning them). I can string together four or five at a time but when fatigued sets in I'll probably be reduced to one big jump and two furious swings of the rope. Trying to rep out double unders a single rep at a time really suck.
DeleteDouble Unders is a circus trick, not a true evaluation of any fitness level. There are many people with knee issues, especially older Master's who have a hard enough time jumping rope. If you can step up on boxes instead of jumping, why not singles.
ReplyDeleteCompletely agree, I've haven't put in the time to learn how to do double unders because I never really understand how it improved my fitness.
DeleteSo today I scaled the WOD to 30 singles and 15 65# snatches. Got a score of 148. It won't count but it gives me an idea of what I might be able to do with good knees. I have severe arthritis in both knees and had to wrap them to even do singles.
DeleteThat's a good job of scaling to fit your needs, that's supposed to be what CF is all about. Too often we get wrapped up in the competition side instead of just the fitness side but congrats on tailoring this WOD to you.
Delete