Wrapping Up Crossfit Open WOD 14.1

Crossfit Open WOD 14.1 is in the books and the leaderboards are filled with names that we know and love. On the both the men’s and women’s leaderboard, top 25 reads like “who’s who” of Crossfit power houses with names like Dan Bailey Rich Froning, Jason Khalipa, Josh Bridges, Scott Panchik, Ben Smith, Graham Holmberg, Samantha Briggs, Rory Zambard, Michele Letendre, Kara Webb, Camille Leblanc-Bazinet and Annie Thorsdottir. Two names that I’ll be keeping an eye on this year also had very good weeks, Josh Golden (no relation to me by the way) and Danielle Sidell. Both these athletes were booted from the Open last year after HQ determined that their 13.2 submissions included reps that didn’t meet the standards. Sidell and Golden are both at least Regionals level athletes and should challenge for a Games spot this year. Sidell is just 25 years old and was fairly new to CF during last year’s Open so her best days are certainly ahead of her. Golden is a bit older, 31 years old, and in a stacked region with both Dan Bailey and Josh Bridges. Barring some very late submissions, Bailey and Briggs won the 14.1 weeks with 461 and 472 reps respectively. For some reason the results from the 2011 Open aren’t available on the Games site so we can’t compare those results yet (the article from HQ has to be in the works).

A couple other parting thoughts before we close the book on 14.1. While I didn’t like the first WOD of the Open starting out with double unders, I did like how this WOD left some “grey” areas for people to strategize more than they have for other WODs in the past. Ground to overhead leaves people a couple different options and I saw quite a few videos and read several posts on CF’s board about people playing around with snatches vs clean and jerks and a mixture of the two. Snatches would of course be faster but once fatigue sets in, clean and jerks can take over and help you get back to the double unders. I also saw some guys using women’s bars because it’s easier to ‘hook grip’ on the skinnier bar. While these options may not support the idea of “finding the fittest,” I do like the idea of allowing some strategy to come into play (the old “work smarter, not harder” mantra). I’ve always thought it would be really interesting if they had a WOD at the Games where there were say 100 reps of five different movements (just random numbers for this example), but athletes could partition and complete them in any order they wanted. That would really focus on strategy and the mental side of a person’s work capacity.

For a final thought, I think it surprised some people that Froning’s final score was worse than his 2011 score, but he also pointed out he’s incredibly stronger now than he was three years ago. His powerlifting and Olympic lifting numbers have gone through the roof in the last three years and it’s apparently cost him a bit of “motor” when it comes to light and fast WODs like this one. This has been a growing topic of conversation the last year or so as more and more top level Crossfitters are basically switching to almost entirely Olympic lifting sessions in the off season. The American Open, held a couple months ago in Dallas, included several dozen Games’ athletes including Aja Barto, Spencer Hendel, Josh Bridges, Kristan Clever, Andrea Ager, Candice Ruiz and Lindsey Valenzuela just to name a few. Smaller guys like Chris Spealler and Bridges have spoken about really having to focus their training on bulking up and getting much stronger to compete at the highest levels of the sport. Crossfit the last couple of years seems to have really pumped life back into American weightlifting and events at Regionals and the Games seem to go heavier and heavier each year. It does make you wonder if at some point we’ll see some kind of cyclical type of programming where HQ shifts a focus off of heavier weights and more onto longer, cardio type WODs.

Ok, closing the door on 14.1 and anxiously looking forward to 14.2, which should be announced in just a couple days. HQ hasn’t yet released which two athletes will be throwing down at the live announcement (which sucks because I could be working on a matchup article already if they had), but you can bet it’ll be a great show. I’m also formulating a new theory on predicting the Open workouts (since my last one crashed and burned big time) so keep an eye out for that. I should have a pretty good idea of what to expect Thursday morning. Check back early and often…..3, 2, 1..GO!