Crossfit Already Looking Past the Games and into the Off Season

Towards the end of Thursday night’s Dave Castro said something that peaked my interest when he quickly mentioned some of the plans that HQ had for the upcoming off season. In years past there has been a significant “Games Hangover.” That means basically that the sport disapears for several months following the Games in July. There's very little news out of HQ, very few competitions and little to no buzz. I almost compare the CF yearly rotation to most Olympic sports. For three years they're totally out of sight, then one year we're all supposed to care and then they vanish again. For the past couple years Crossfit has been comparably cyclical, building in excitement and momentum from January to July, then falling off a cliff right after the Games.

We’ll normally get video clips of the events at the affiliate Big Sky event and the past two years they’ve started the USA vs. the World competition but that’s really all Crossfit HQ has had to offer from basically late July through the end of the year. During that time most athletes dive into off season training programs that center on getting stronger or shoring up individual weaknesses, not to mention allowing time for their bodies to recover from the grind that Games preparation demands. While that down time and off season training is necessary, it frankly sucks if you're a fan of the sport. While it’s an unfair comparison, I look at how the NFL manages to stay top of mind all year round despite their season only running from August to February. The NFL is the top of the sports pyramid in the US, so why not try to copy some of their methods? There are ways that Crossfit could stay on the 'front burner' during the off season, so what can Crossfit HQ do to change this recent trend?

2014 Crossfit Games Open 14.5: Reactions and Looking Forward to What's Next

Well Dave Castro didn’t disappoint last night as he rolled out another “first” for the Crossfit Open. Despite using only the two movements that everyone expected, Castro shocked us all by turning 14.5 into the first “for time” Open WOD. Needless to say, all these “firsts” are going to make predicting any future Open WODs virtually impossible (as if they weren’t already). So on to the workout…

So it’s basically a buffet of thrusters and burpees. Have fun with that!!

Crossfit Games Open 2014: Predicting 14.5

The final live announcement of the 2014 Crossfit Games Open is less than 12 hours away and it should be quite an entertaining show. Five, past and present, champions will compete head to head in the live throwdown. Of those five, we have the top two men and women in the world after four weeks of the Open. Yes, Rich Froning, Jason Khalipa, Graham Holmberg, Sam Briggs and Annie Thorisdottir step onto the big stage tonight to take on a WOD that just about everyone in the world thinks will center around burpees and thrusters. After four weeks of WODs, those are the two major movements that have yet to show up, but Dave Castro has shown that he’s willing to break from the mold in 2014.

Last week we saw a rower for the first time in an Open competition and while it created arguably more debate than any other WOD so far in 2014, it’s clear that HQ wants to take the Open in a different direction. Despite their claims of the Open being “inclusive,” I think they’ve proven this year that their only goal is get the fittest of the fit to Regionals and also that they’d really like all of these Open WODs to be completed at a CF box. I’ve never personally completed an Open WOD from home and had to upload a video submission but the process of videoing all the components of 14.4 would have been a nightmare, not to mention that the WOD included the use of a piece of equipment that costs nearly $1,000 brand new. My home gym, which has only been open a couple years only, has one rower so even for us completing this WOD took some time. Enough of that though back to the task at hand, which is of course, predicting 14.5.

With the movements that have been eliminated so far in the Open, just about anyone who’s in the guessing game is thinking that 14.5 has to be centered around burpees and thrusters, even the Games Update show predicted those two movements. It’s for that reason, and that reason alone that I think Castro will pull something else out of his hat tonight. I think he’ll want to surprise everyone will something else entirely new. I also think this is finally the week where we finally see a triplet. So with that being said, here’s our fearless prediction:

12 minute AMRAP
15 Thrusters
12 Bar Facing Burpees
9 Sumo Deadlift Highpulls

I'm thinking they start at 95 pounds and increase each round. That gets two of the major missing movements involved while also throwing something at everyone that hasn’t been seen before in the Open. Sumo deadlift high pulls are a fundamental CF movement though and I’m sure almost every person who’s been in a CF box for any length of time is pretty familiar with the movement. So what are your guesses?

Crossfit Open 2014: Predicting 14.4

With three weeks down in the 2014 Crossfit Open and the live announcement for 14.4 less than 24
hours away, I'm quickly running out of chances to get even close on one of these predictions. As the weeks go by though the list of exercises that Crossfit HQ has to choose from is dwindling so I'm liking my chances this week. First let's recap some of our basic assumptions:

Crossfit Open WOD 14.4: Josh Bridges vs. Scott Panchik

The live announcement of the 2014 Crossfit Open 14.4 is creeping up on us again and tomorrow night Dave Castro will pull the curtain back and shock us all for the fourth week in a row. We’ve done pretty terrible on our weekly predictions so far, but that’s to be expected and I think it’s pretty clear that HQ wanted to break free of the mold they’d developed over the past two years. We’ll still take another shot at predicting 14.4 later on this evening or tomorrow morning, but first let’s talk about predicting something we have been better at so far. With three live throw downs in the books, we’ve correctly predicted the winner on twice with only the lovely Talayna Fortunato spoiling our fun on 14.2. This week HQ offers up another star studded pair in which they’ve combined for four Games appearances and of those four appearances, the worst overall finish was a 7th place. We’re of course talking about matchup between Josh Bridges and Scott Panchik.

Tale of the tape
Josh Bridges is 30 years old and reports himself as 5’5 and 165 pounds. Bridges is a two times Games veteran and a podium finisher in the 2011 Games. So far his CF resume looks like a donut. He broke out in 2011, finishing second at the Games and looking like the biggest competition for Rich in upcoming years. Then active deployment and a severe knee injury completely wiped out his 2012 season. He returned in 2013 to so much fanfare that an eventual 7th place finish at the Games felt like a letdown. Bridges cruised through the 2013 Open collecting four top-10 finishes and winning 13.5 en route to a third overall finish in the world, behind only Froning and Mikko. He continued to dominate at Regionals winning four of eight events and finishing in the top-4 in all but one event. At the Games, many expected Bridges to be Froning’s biggest competition but it was a somewhat mixed bag of results. On the positive side, he won just as many events as Khalipa and Froning (3) and logged two more top-3 finishes (pool event and Cinco 2). On the negative side though outside of those four events, his average finish was 28th place with three finishes of 36th or worse.

Scott Panchik is 26 years old and lists himself as 5’9 and 190 pounds. Panchik is only entering his third year of CF competition but there hasn’t been much of a learning curve. He burst onto the scene by winning 12.1 (7 min of burpees) and even an article on the Games site described him as an unknown. He’d go onto to finish 27th in the world in the Open and then place 5th in the stacked Central East Region, behind two previous champions (Froning and Holmberg) so he earned a trip to the Games. Once he got to the Games though, Panchik no longer looked like a rookie. He collected eight top-10 finishes, including a streak of six in a row to close out the weekend, and won the final event, Fran. When the dust settled he was in fourth place, not bad for his first trip the Games. In 2013 he continued to prove he belonged among the big boys, finishing fourth in the world in the Open and then taking second place in the Central East at Regionals. At the Games he got off to a bit of a slow start with two 11th place finishes then a 16th and a 30th,but he again closed out the weekend with an impressive run of five top-10 finishes. In the end he again took fourth overall.

Head to Head
There’s less data here than previous weeks considering Panchik is only entering his third year and Bridges was absent during 2012, so that leaves us with all of 2013 and the three Open WODs so far this year. This almost might be the closest head to head matchup we’ve seen so far in 2014. Of the 27 WODs these two have both completed over that span, Panchik holds a 14-13 advantage over Bridges. Since we’re talking about an Open WOD though it’s worth looking at how they’ve fared in the past eight Open WODs and in those Bridges holds a 5-3 advantage. Panchik’s wins have come in 14.3, 13.1 and 13.2. The first two of those are both WODs that included ‘increasing weights’ so this matchup could very well come down to what kind of workout Castro announces. It would make sense that any workout with heavier weights will favor Panchik, considering he’s got 25 pounds on Bridges, and that any WOD basically mostly on movement will favor Bridges.

Conclusion
Since I obviously don’t know what the workout will be yet, this is really more of a gut feeling that anything else, but I’m going to go with Bridges for two reasons. The first, I don’t think we’ll see heavy weights this week after seeing the heavy deadlifts last week. Secondly, I think Bridges will come into this week feeling like he has something to prove after a somewhat poor showing last week. He only completed 148 reps, good for 1,336th place in the world, dropping him from 2nd overall to 157th in the Open standings. While all of the elite level athletes don’t put much emphasis on the Open WODs, that’s still a disappointing result. His coach, CJ Martin, has addressed the result as well, saying that he was still recovering from a taxing deadlift WOD a few days earlier and ‘played it safe on 14.3.’ That’s a very legit excuse considering Bridges isn’t competing to win the Open, he’s competing to win the Games. Still though, no one is going to enjoy being called out like he was on the CF Games Update Show and I think he’ll have a little something extra when Castro calls out 3,2,1… GO.

Friend or Foe of Crossfit: National Pro Fitness League

If you follow Crossfit, The Sport of Fitness, at any level then you've most likely heard of Tony Budding. Budding was Crossfit's media director for many years and often seen as Dave Castro's right hand man at the Games. That all changed though late last year when Budding left Crossfit to build something of his own. What has resulted is the National Pro Fitness League, a team based version of  the Crossfit Games (my words not his). Here is how Budding describes the league:

2014 Crossfit Open Update: Rich Froning is Dominating

We’re officially past the halfway point of the 2014 Crossfit Open now and in just two short days Dave Castro will again step to the microphone and announce 14.4. We’ll take a look at the live throw down matchup between Scott Panchik and Josh Bridges tomorrow, but today I wanted to pass along some thoughts so far on the Open, mostly concerning how the leaderboards are shaping up.

• First and foremost let me announce that Rich Froning will be crowned the Fittest Man Alive until he decides to no longer compete. I wondered if he’d limp into the Open after flirting with retiring or going “team” in the off season but he’s been absolutely dominant in the first three weeks of the Open. In true Froning form, he hasn’t won a single event but he’s placed fourth, second and eighth. Seriously. With tens of thousands of men competing against him he’s been in the top eight of all three WODs so far. While you might think that’s not particularly impressive for an elite Games level athlete, consider that no other male athlete can even boast two top-10 finishes. Froning’s average finish so far, is 4.7 and no other male or female athlete has an average lower than 11 (Jason Khalipa and Samantha Briggs both have an average finish of 11).
• On the women’s side, (surprise, surprise) Samantha Briggs holds a healthy lead with an event win in week one and a fifth place finish in week three. She’s one of only two females (Camille Leblanc-Bazinet being the other) with two top-10 finishes. Sitting in third place overall right now though is Annie Thorisdottir who’s on the rebound track this year after sitting out last year with a back injury. She finished 35th overall in 14.3 and perhaps more importantly reported no issues after the deadlift intensive WOD.
• In an eerie coincidence both of this year’s redemption stories, Josh Golden and Danielle Sidell, sit at 16th overall on their respective leaderboards. Sidell announced herself in a big on 14.3 by winning the week and destroying the box jumps that got her booted from the competition last year. Despite posting such a high score though, Sidell wrote her blog (another good read if you’re wondering) about some minor missteps that cost her a couple extra reps:

  First, I stopped jumping for a split second after 10 reps and headed back to the deadlifts, wasn’t thinking! Then, I got my jumps mixed up and totally missed the box, haha, ugh those two things are going to haunt me for a while. I am never 100% satisfied with the end result of my workouts. I always look back and think shoulda/woulda/coulda… I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help myself.

• One note on the negative side, two time Games athlete Daniel Tyminski is currently 716th in the North East region after injuring his shoulder during 14.2. He rebounded nicely on 14.3 but the damage has already been done. It’ll be interesting to see if Tyminski resurfaces as a member of his boxes’ team or if he’s one of the “celebrity demonstrators” that HQ has used the past couple of years at the Games. I didn’t see any other notable Games’ athletes who are currently in danger of missing a trip to regionals though.

Open WOD 14.4 is right around the corner so stay tuned the next two days as we'll take a look at the live throw down matchup and take a blind stab in the dark at guessing the WOD.