Fran-Su

Workout date: 1/19/16

Has a whole year really gone by since I embarrassed myself during the 2015 Open?  The answer would be yes.  On January 14th, registration began for this year's Open.  My reaction to this news?

Actual footage of Greg Glassman giving birth to Dave Castro

My opinion of the Open has drastically changed since last year, primarily due to the way Crossfit HQ handled the Open.  The Open format changed from one where everyone attempted to do the workout announced each week to a new format where each workout had an RX and a scaled version.  Sounds great, right?  Theoretically, yes.  In practice, no.  There was a large disparity between the RX and scaled versions of the workouts and sometimes the scaled version didn't even correspond to what was being done in the RX version (looking at you 15.4).  Advanced and Beginner would have been more appropriate labels for the new format.  This huge gap between the two versions of the workout upset many Crossfitters, especially those who have been doing Crossfit for some time but were not advanced enough to handle some of the RX movements (like muscle-ups).  A lot of those folks were doing everything RX in previous Opens and now they were being relegated to the scaled level.  It was without a doubt a shot to the ego.  HQ could have avoided this problem by laying out what types of differences athletes could expect between the RX and scaled versions.  They could have created an intermediate version of the workouts.  Instead, for the first time, the Open became more about defining the best people for Regionals rather than coming up with programming that brought together the Crossfit community.

Fast forward one year and there are no longer any misconceptions about what to expect.  The vast majority of people will have to do scaled for at least one if not more of the workouts.  Someone getting one muscle-up will jump ahead of someone who did 300 reps of the scaled workout, even if the former athlete would not have been able to get 300 reps of the scaled workout had they done that version.  If you are ranking athletes, does this system accurately portray who the better/fitter athlete is?  It's a debatable point.  There are some bugs that still need to be worked out, but at least there will be no more misconceptions.  Is that worth $20 of your money?  After all, what are you getting out of it?  A poorly updated leaderboard?  It's no wonder that some people have begun to view the Open as a way for the powers that be in Crossfit to fatten their wallets.

This diatribe has probably made you think that I am not signing up for this year's Open, but I am.  Why is that?  For starters, I've spent $20 on much worse things.  (Note: This is even more true after spending a week in Vegas.)  But beyond that, it goes to what makes the Open special for me.  It isn't about where I end up on the worldwide Crossfit Games leaderboard.  (Spoiler: There are 60,000+ male Crossfitters who are better at this than me.  I don't need to worry about how often the leaderboard is refreshed this year.)  It is about going and working out with my friends at KOP.  It is about being part of the Team Competition at the gym (that has some bugs that need to be worked out as well).  It is about seeing newer members compete for the first time, seeing them get that first rep on a movement that they never thought they'd be able to do.  It's about coming together and pushing fellow athletes who are struggling to finish a workout.  It's about hanging out afterwards, drinking beer, eating pizza, and overanalyzing the workout you just completed.  In short, the positives greatly outweigh the negatives.  So if you're reading this and on the fence about doing the Open, JFDI.  (If you don't know what that means, ask Michal.)

Why the rambling Open open to this blog post?  Because Tuesday marked the first night of the Open efficiency series.  Over the next 5 weeks, Doctor Coach Sommelier VP Giulz will be coaching classes two nights per week that go over certain skills you should expect to see in the Open, as well as techniques that will help you improve your score in Open workouts.  The first class was on pull-ups and I was there to learn how to get better at butterfly pull-ups.  Also in attendance was Queen Pam because we are kindred spirits when it comes to body-weight movements.  Giulz walked us through a bunch of progressions on butterfly pull-ups.  We started out with some strict pull-ups, then some kipping pull-ups, before getting into the buildup towards butterfly pull-ups.  And let's just be clear: I am nowhere near ready for butterfly pull-ups.  The first progression involved hanging from the bar and rotating your body in a small circular motion, almost like you were turning the crank on a jack-in-the-box.  Even this very simple step was difficult for me at first, but eventually I got the hang of it.

Then it was time to increase the intensity of the movement such that our heads would come closer to reaching the height of the bar.  That same circular movement was necessary, but now we were adding a couple of wrinkles.  One was that we needed to be looking up at the ceiling during the motion, which is very disconcerting when your head is moving towards a steel bar over and over again.  I was convinced that I would hit my face on the bar and concuss myself.  That fear kept me peeking forward instead of upward, which is not the way to do butterflies.  We were also supposed to let our heads and bodies go forward past the front of the bar on the way down rather than come straight down (yes, I realize I am explaining this horribly).  Just as I've had difficulty pushing away from the bar on kipping pull-ups, I had trouble with this as well.  It feels more natural to drop straight down once you're near the top of the movement, but dropping straight down kills your momentum, which is why I can't string pull-ups.  I tried these progressions a bunch of times over the hour that this clinic ran, but I will need plenty of practice on my own if I'm going to even come close to getting butterflies.

With the pull-up clinic over, I headed over to Coach Rachel to do the 7:30 WOD.  It was just me and Olan taking on the following workout:

21-15-9

Thrusters (95/65)

Toes-to-Bar

*EMOM 7 KB Swings (70/53)

Hopefully it has become clear how much I hate EMOMs.  We tend to hate things that we are bad at and I am very bad at EMOMs.  Add on to this that the EMOM involved KB swings (a movement that I tend to struggle with for unknown reasons) and this was going to be a rough workout for me.  My first question for Rachel was whether I should go heavy and do Russian swings or go lighter and do American swings.  She said to go lighter and do American swings.  I figured I could handle a 53 pound KB.  This was a bad miscalculation on my part.

The WOD was one part Fran (21-15-9 format, thrusters and a bar movement) and one part Kalsu (an EMOM combined with a thruster workout).  I had gotten some redemption last year with Kalsu as it was one of the two workouts that I've ever had to quit on since joining KOP.  But when Kalsu joined forces with Fran, I should have known that the pendulum was about to swing in the opposite direction.

Olan and I got started and things began innocently enough.  After 7 KB swings, I managed to finish 10 thrusters before heading back to my KB.  This was very Kalsu-like: just nibble away at the reps and hang on long enough to finish.  In the second minute, I managed 7 more thrusters.  In minute three, I finished off the final 4 thrusters of round one.  I had time to run over and knock out 1-2 toes-to-bar, but I thought it would be wiser to catch my breath, do a fast set of KB swings, and get in a solid set of toes-to-bar.  In minute four and five, I got 6 toes-to-bar each time.  I was nibbling away, but I was exhausted too.  My shoulders were growing tired and the 7 KB swings were exhausting me.  I got 3 toes-to-bar in each of the next three minutes, wrapping up the round of 21.

As much as I may have dreaded the thrusters and the toes-to-bar, it was the KB swings that were kicking my ass.  The buzzer would go off to indicate a new minute had begun, but I still needed some time when I got back to the KB before I could swing it.  Faby, Michal, and Ashley B were trying to encourage me through the KB swings, but there was no part of me that wanted to pick it up.  Once I got it going, the swings absorbed precious time and energy.  It took the next 5 minutes to get through the 15 thrusters of the middle round.  The KB swings were particularly bad in minutes 12 and 13, leaving very little time for the thrusters.  Rachel had tried to help me with my thrusters by giving me the advice to keep my elbows up, but the eye roll she got in response let her know how much I cared about my form at this point.  I was spent, physically and mentally.

When I got back to the KB for minute 14, I needed to sit in my squat for a little bit.  I couldn't breathe and lifting my arms was a real chore.  I finally talked myself into standing up and putting my hands on the KB.  I needed a big hip pop to get the first rep.  Despite another big pop of the hips, I barely got the KB over my head a second time.  I needed to put the KB down.  A look at the clock let me know I was running low on time to finish the 7 KB swings for this round.  There was no hope of getting any toes-to-bar done.  I was whipped.  I left the KB on the floor and called it a day.  The evil Fran-Kalsu empire had gotten their revenge.  Once again, there were two WODs that I had started, but never finished (excluding time caps).

I laid on the floor for a while trying to get my breath back before getting up and cheering on Olan as he completed the workout.  He would end up needing to trim the KB swings down to 3 per minute, but he stuck with it and finished up about 6 minutes after I had surrendered.

If I had to do this again (I would really rather not, but let's just pretend), I would use a 44 pound KB instead.  I think I could manage that for a longer period of time.  The KB swings were much worse than either the thrusters or the toes-to-bar.  I don't think shedding thruster weight would have been much of a help.  Doing a toes-to-bar scale probably wouldn't have done much for me either.  It was that stupid EMOM.  Man, I hate EMOMs!

Wednesday preview: 3RM Deadlift and pistols for speed!