To Open, Or Not To Open – That is the question
The Open is a five week competition which this year will run from February 26th through till Mar 30th 2015.
Every Friday afternoon (NZ time) for the duration of the Open people from around the globe will be glued to their computers eagerly awaiting Dave Castro’s announcement of the workout for that week. Competitors will then have four days to complete the workout and log their score on the Games site.
Last year the Crossfit Open had over 209,000 participants, including myself and James and although the registrations for this years event have only been live for a few days, I’ve already seen a myriad of “Ive entered the Open” posts throughout my social networks.
The Open is the first round of a LONG road to the Crossfit Games and although a vast majority of the participants in the Open have no chance of even qualifying for Regionals let alone the big event it’s always been something that everyone “gives a go”, doing the exact same WODs as the people whose name you wear across your chest, that’s what IMO made the Open cool.
Sure, there were things I couldn’t do last year (in fact a lot) BUT my goal was always to get a score on the board, even if that was a single. In fact, last years open season was like being on an extended holiday at a fun park where you dared yourself into going on the scariest rides!
This year Crossfit HQ have announced a scaled division
“For the first time, scaled versions of the week’s Open workout will be available so athletes can choose the programming that best matches their abilities.
We hope the new scaled workouts will allow more CrossFit athletes to participate in one of the largest community events of the year, and post an official record of their fitness they can return to over time and try to beat.”
From what I can garner if you want to be placed on the same leaderboard as Camille (if you’re female) & Rich (if you are not) you will need to post a score in a prescribed workout. You can however mix and match WODS, doing some prescribed and some scaled BUT you won’t be eligible for Regional contention (go figure) and none of your scores will count towards a team total. Athletes who do all the events scaled will have their own leaderboard.
As I haven’t been doing crossfit regularly I hadn’t given much thought to this years Open, in fact I didn’t even know about the scaled division until yesterday. I guess after all the of moaning that went down during last years event about the weights being too heavy and the movements being too hard HQ decided to give people the option to scale a WOD and still post a score.
I personally think it defeats the entire purpose of the open. I never would have attempted half of the things I did in last years Open if I had been given an “out” however, as I had no other option, I fought for every rep on my score sheet and posted my result with pride, regardless of how low it was because at the end of the day I successfully completed the Open.
I’m still undecided on whether I will compete in the Open this year, I haven’t been doing nearly as much crossfit as I had prior to the 2014 open event so my skills are rusty (to say the least) and I’m no where near as strong but even then I’d still be interested in seeing how I fair and comparing this years results to last (after all I am a numbers girl) 😉
I’ve still got some time to think about it, I’ll let you know.
Lastly but probably most importantly I’d like to thank Nykie The WODographer for letting me use the photo she took of James at the last Crossfit HPU playoffs – she’s obviously a great photographer, look how hawt she made my hubby look!
Till next time
