Another new year means another CrossFit Open season is upon us. There are CrossFit athletes that train all year to have a crack at breaking into their regional competitions through this first filter system towards the CrossFit Games. Last year more than 300k people registered for this online competition. The cost is only $20 and is made up of 5 weeks with one workout each week! Let’s talk about why you should sign up and get rocking and rolling this year in the open!
You may be saying, “Paul, I’m no where close to getting to the games let alone regionals. Why would I pay to do the open? You must be off your rocker.” Maybe I am off my rocker a little bit but that is besides the point. Remember the thing that most people like about CrossFit is the competition and seeing progress. The Open offers you a chance to test yourself on workouts that we wouldn’t normally do. To go through workouts in the gym as a whole group with friends judging friends and then getting to go home and upload your score to the world wide whiteboard! It really is a fun time to upload your score and see how you rank amongst the entire CrossFit community world wide. Seeing where your strengths stack up against other people in your age bracket or for people doing CrossFit as long as you have. Nowadays the CrossFit site allows you to search and filter to look up all those stats. If you have done the open before, there is almost always a repeat of prior years that allows you to see how well you have developed or how well you are hanging in there. It is also amazing to see what the best around the world are capable of doing on these workouts. Comparing yourself to the best can be a very humbling experience even if the WOD itself humbles you enough.
What happens when we do the open at Outlier CrossFit? This year we are going to do a few things for the open. We are going to create a leaderboard with everyone’s scores up on the main boards in the front of the gym so we can see what everyone is doing. Once the open has started and the first workout is released, the following Saturday after each WOD announcement we will have a Saturday event where everyone gets a chance to be judged and their scores validated (in order to have your score uploaded and validated by Outlier, you must compete with the group on Saturday… barring special circumstances that you coordinate with one of the coaches). Everyone will get to cheer on their friends and have their friends cheer them on. We will have the first and last of the Saturdays where we bring in food and wrap up the day with a nice potluck and celebration of the efforts we all put out.
The registration for the CrossFit Open 2017 goes live tomorrow and the first workout is released on Feb 23rd and the first Outlier Open Saturday will be the 25th! Lets get over to games.crossfit.com to register and block out those coming Saturday mornins to make it in and be a part of the World Wide Whiteboard! If you weren’t around last year for the open at Outlier, just ask someone that was and they will fill you in on how much fun it was!
Coach P