Category: Remarkables CrossFit

The Southern Classic

19/4/2015

Event 1

Orange cones and kettlebells were lined up on the dewy grass early yesterday morning at Bayfield Park in Dunedin. Groups of chilly CrossFitters, from the length of the South Island and some from the North rubbed their hands and waited for the announcement of the first event of the competition they had trained for.

Clint Williams and I, from Remarkables CrossFit in Queenstown, had driven across Otago for this, the third annual Southern Classic Hosted by Crossfit Dunedin.

Mucking around waiting for it to start

None of the athletes knew what the workouts were going to be until just before each event. This one turned out to be a run around the inlet, about 1.5km, then 50x16kg kettlebell swings (24 for guys), 25 burpees and a short sprint to the finish line.

A young fulla was standing around alone and looking nervous so I got talking to him. His name was Mitchell and it was his first CrossFit competition. Mitchell won the first event by one second! Watch out for him later on...

RX women went first. I saw an octopus swimming along in the inlet while I was on the run! I think octopi are awesome and got pretty excited about that. Bailey Lovett started her almost unbroken winning streak, toasting this event by almost two minutes. I came in 8th on the run, and although I got through the kettlebell swings unbroken and the burpees steadily, finished 9th for workout one. Most of the Rx guys went in the second heat, then the rest of the guys and the masters athletes in heat three. Our Clint did well as expected with a third place.

I am grateful for my HumanX gloves, purchased recently from FitShop. After the run through the cold air I was so pleased to not have to hold onto the steel kettlebell with bare skin.

At the finish line of the men's RX heat.

Event 2

Everyone got a coffee and met back at CrossFit Dunedin's box for the announcement of the second workout. It was a chipper: 50 double unders, 30 wallballs, 20 chest to bar pull ups, 10 x 45kg clean and jerks then back the other way through the same numbers of C2B pull ups, wall balls and double unders.

I'm sure that if this workout was run a year ago there would only be a handful of females who could get through 40 chest to bar pull ups. Yesterday, there was only a handful who couldn't. The standard achieved oby CrossFit athletes, even as this local-competiton level, is rising rapidly.

I struggled through (holy moly that last set of double unders took some mental fortitude!) for an 8th placing, the same as Clint.

Rebecca Bishop, of CrossFit Dunedin, Bailey Lovett of CrossFit Takapuna (originally Dunedin) and Megan Morris of CrossFit Dunedin on the bar in event 2.

Guys on the wall balls, Clint in the middle in blue Tshirt

Event 3

After two light, fast events there had to be a heavy one where I get to show what I can do. When they announced a snatch ladder I was chuffed. Until a year ago I was training more Olympic lifting than CrossFit, and with the recent powerlifting thrown into my skill set I was confident coming in to this one. I think they may have underestimated us females a bit as the ladder only went up to 60kg.

My previous best snatch was 56kg, although that was done months ago. In the meantime I had been working my snatch skills at Barbell Club at Remarkables CrossFit, trying to learn to squat snatch. Although my squat snatch is still a bit shit, in competition I can switch back to the split snatch that I learnt when training under Anton De Croos in Invercargill.

At the catch in a 55kg split snatch. This far up the ladder the weights were going up in 2.5kg increments.

I PR'd by getting the 57.5kg lift, then made the 60kg at the top of the ladder! I bar hopped as fast as I could afterwards as a tiebreaker but was light headed so had to stop a few times. Bailey and Hayley Whiting, of Trailblazer in Christchurch also got the 60kg snatch and then barhopped much faster than me to put me in a third for the snatch ladder event.

On the way up for my 60kg snatch, let foot is just starting to move forward...

Got it! Caught in the split then feet back together ok. Thanks for getting the photos Clint, you did well.

Semifinal

Clint's faster than he is strong so took the strategy of making a quick little token lift on a weight he knew was out of his reach, then bar-hopped to win the tiebreaker for that weight. It was the snatch limit of quite a few of the guys so his tactic paid off. Both of us just scraped into the top eight to get into the semifinal, Clint in eighth in the guys and me in seventh place for the females.

The semifinal was harder and heavier than the other events so far. It was 3 x 15 foot rope climbs, 8 x 40kg thrusters then 8 x 2 inch box jumps. That was repeated three times, except the rope climbs reduced by one each round.

I did the rope climbs fast and plugged through the thrusters and box jumps to win my heat and get a third for the event. I slipped on a box jump and skinned part of my shin, it's still swollen and a bit sore but no deep cuts. Clint went in saying he could only do maybe two thrusters at the guy's weight of 60kg, but got well into his third round with over twenty thrusters done before the clock ran out.

Final Event

The top four made it through to the final event. Clint and I didn't, and happily skived off to the showers. Clean and refreshed, it's good to be able to relax and enjoy the show.

The final was:

10 calorie row
10 handstand push up

10 calorie row
10 handstand push up
10 90kg/130kg deadlift

10 calorie row
10 handstand push up
10 90kg/130kg deadlift
10 pistol squats

10 calorie row
10 handstand push up
10 90kg/130kg deadlift
10 pistol squats
10 ring muscle ups

Bailey and Bubs Brennan (from Trailblazer) dropping their 90kg deadlifts from the top in the final. Beasts.

Bailey Lovett took out the women's final and the event overall. Her form is amazing. She's little and lithe and amazingly strong. She placed 13th overall for women in New Zealand for the Open. It was fantastic to have an athlete of her standard there for this competition. Bubs Brennan, of Trailblazers came in second, and Katie Robertson of CrossFit FRF in Wellington was third.

Riley Cunningham of CrossFit Uncut in front, Jack James of CrossFit Dunedin in the middle and Mitchell Wilson in back deadlifting 130kg in the mens' final.

The winner of the mens' RX was David Wiggin of Trailblazers. He's come in sixth in New Zealand for the Open. It was great to watch him in action for reals, I'll be cheering him on at the Pacific Regionals soon! Close behind him was Jack James of CrossFit Dunedin and Riley Cunningham of Uncut.
Kirsty Deans of Alexandra won the masters women and Peter Ryder of Dunedin won the master's men. The masters competition was just as full of drama and impressive feats of fitness as the Rx sections. For many of us Rx athletes, we know it won't be that long until we're in that age group so it's good to see the Masters included in serious competitions.
That guy in the back of the above photo is is Mitchell, the alone, frightened guy I met at the start of the day. When he found out he had made the final he went quite pale. He's eighteen years old and only started CrossFit at Christmastime! He finished in forth place overall. Each deadlift was obviously so tough for him but he got through and even did eight of the ten muscle ups with great drama. Obviously a talented sportsperson, he kept good form all the way through those awful last grinding reps. He's built about right, and has the talent and the guts to do very well in competitive CrossFit. Watch out for Mitchell in future.

There will be videos and more photos uploaded to my Facebook page. Official results from the event are here, and screenshots below. Undoubtedly CrossFit Dunedin will be putting photos of the event up on their page soon too.

Congratulations to Daz, Christian and the crew at CrossFit Dunedin for putting on a fantastic event. It was fun but challenging as hell, as it should be! And good stuff all the athletes that showed up and did their best. It's inspiring to watch the beasts, the athletes who are competing at a high level do their thing so much better than I can. And it is a special privilege to compete alongside the normal people, with a year or two of training and a love for the sport. We all have our own strengths and obstacles, but we are all equals out there on the mat and under the bar, pitching fitness and mental toughness in honest competition. Officially, it's against the others in our class, but really it's about each of us finding new depths of our own courage.

The podium finishers for the Southern Classic 2015. I pinched Darren's photo for this one as it's better than the ones I took.

Men's Rx Leaderboard

Women's Rx Leaderboard

Master's Men's Rx Leaderboard

Master's Women's Rx Leaderboard

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2015 Open Roundup

3/4/2015

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As of 2pm NZ time today, the 2015 CrossFit Open is done. The CrossFit Open is a worldwide competition that is the first stage in finding the man and woman who are the "Fittest On Earth". For hundreds of thousands of us, the end of the Open is the end of our part in the process.

During the Open, CrossFit HQ releases a workout each week for five weeks, and participants have four days to do the workout according to prescribed standards, get it officially judged at an affiliate or videoed and upload to be judged, and get their score in. The score goes on a leaderboard that is up for every competitor to see and compare their scores. Then the top few from each of the seventeen worldwide regions (the number varies from 10 to 30 according to how manyCrossFit affiliates are in that region) go onto the Regionals, a tough as guts three day long competition against the other top scorers from their part of the world. Then the top five men and women from each of the Regional Competition go on to The Games. These are held over six days in L.A, California in July. The Games can throw the athletes into any combination of tests of fitness - the classic CrossFit modalities of weightlifting, gymnastics and track and field, to triathlon and watersports.

For many CrossFit athletes, even those of us who don't have a snowball's chance in hell of even getting to the Regionals, the CrossFit open is a highlight of the year. We do the same workouts as every participant around the world, including the very top athletes. Our scores are on the same leaderboard and we know we have gone through the same intense experiences. This year a new scaled section was introduced which made the Open more accessible than previous years. With that, the Rx got harder and thousands of us were humbled by the muscle ups in 15.3.

Celebrating the end of the Open with my mates. The Open is one of those pleased to see you, pleased to see you go things.

I have a worldwide ranking: 7,238th out of around 57,000 Women aged 18-54 who completed all five workouts. This will change a little, probably downwards as a few more scores come dribbling in, I'll update it :) I haven't been able to find confirmed numbers but I hear around 300,000 people entered worldwide, including those in the Teens and Masters divisions.

The Region we in New Zealand compete is called the Australia Region, which is basically Australia New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. My ranking is 522nd out of 4,600 who completed all the workouts. That's a big improvement from 850th last year, especially as total entries are up about 27%. The Open is useful for entrants who compete over multiple years as a concrete way of tracking your overall improvements in fitness.

Custom Leaderboard Fun

The CrossFit Games site has a fun function called custom leaderboards, in which you can plug in filters and compare who scored what in what workout. I'm most interested in the performance of the people around me in Otago and Southland as they are the ones I'll come up against in local competitions. I also like to keep an eye on competitors from New Zealand as I've met many of them and will be cheering on the ones who go on to the next stage of competition. I've made and embedded the national and local leaderboards for this blog post. If you're registered with the CrossFit Games, have a go making your own leaderboardshere!

F.Y.I NZ Individual Leaderboards

For the "New Zealand Individual Women" and "NZ Individual Men" They include those registered in New Zealand according to the CrossFit Games website, but only the individual Open division, not the Teens or the Masters Athletes.

F.I.Y. Otago/Southland leaderboards

These leaderboards include everyone, Teens, Open and Masters, who are registered with the following affiliates:

Remarkables CrossFit
CrossFit Queenstown
CrossFit Wanaka
CrossFit Cromwell
CrossFit Alexandra
CrossFit Gore
CrossFit Wild South
CrossFit Dunedin
CrossFit North D
CrossFit Uncut
And Vickie Moses from Wanaka who has competed mostly by video submission.

If there is anyone else out there in Otago/Southland who is not registered with an affiliate but has been competing via video submission, let me know and I'll add them in.

Check out Ruth Anderson Horrell's Score for 15.5! (She's 51st on this leaderboard) When I talked to her a few weeks back before the open started she was only a few days out of thumb surgery and was not able to recover in time to do the Open, and has therefore sadly missed out on the Regionals and the Games. She has recovered enough to do the last workout Rx and put in an incredible 7:06. That puts her at 43rd in the world and 4th in the Australia region for that workout, and still without being able to grip properly. Absolutely a world class athlete right there.

If, like me, You love a good dose of statistics, keep an eye on Sam Swift's site. He's a data scientist and keen CrossFitter. He'll be waiting for the final numbers to come through them there'll be a whole bunch of interesting graphs and conclusions to draw from them.

Phew it's over! Back to being a powerlifter. Except for the Southern Classic, a CrossFit Competition in Dunedin I've entered that goes down in seventeen days time... Can't help myself.

Deadlifts: what I do best.

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Oh My Quads it's 15.5

30/3/2015

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The last WoD of the 2015 CrossFit Games has been released - we were expecting some combination of burpees, box jumps and thrusters but only got one right, it's thrusters and rowing. CrossFit HQ seems to have started a tradition of the last workout being a psychological grinder, for time. Remember 14.5? Thrusters and bar-over burpees for time with no time cap? This is similar, but blessedly shorter. We don't have any high-skill movements in 15.5 so it will be a test of your fitness in a simpler way than the other Open workouts this year.

I did it this evening. SO happy to have it in the bag. I knew it would be a mindf**k and just wanted to get it over and done with as soon as possible. Now I can get back to being a powerlifter.

How To Do It (if You're an Average CrossFitter)

This on is a test of your stamina more than anything, so there' not much anyone can do to help you with before score submission time on Tuesday (NZ time). Rowing and thrusters are not highly technical movements, but of course can be done poorly. If yours are not efficient, spend some time with your coach and try to tidy them up at least a bit before hitting this WoD for reals.

Prepare Your Mind

It is going to hurt. This workout belongs to the fearless. The people who can suck it up and grind through the pain will have the most to be proud of at the end.

Figure out how you are going to deal with the hurt before you are in the middle of it. What has worked for you in similar situations? Reminding yourself how much fitter this will make you? Remembering our goals for this Open? Thinking about a rival/friend and trying to beat them?

I just wanted it done. When it hurt the most I reassured myself that this was the last workout, and no way in hell was I doing it again. Be sure to yell nice things at your box buddies when they hit the pain cave and they'll do the same for you. The encouragement from my mates at Remarkables CrossFit absolutely helped me get out of the mire of my own mind and get the job done.

I busted this one out opposite Rick, who was doing the scaled. He was much faster on the row than me but I had him on the thrusters, and he finished a few seconds ahead of me. Good to pace off him, thanks Rick!

Warm up

About the only nice thing about this WoD is that it has part of a warm-up in the the 27 Calorie row. You'll need to do your usual warm up routine, focusing on your hips and legs. If you have any issues with squat depth, work that hard because no-reps will suck the will to live out of you in this WoD.

Practice getting in and out of the rower at speed beforehand, and wear Oly shoes if you have them.

Row

Plan your pace, and know that the 27 and 21 cal sets are going to feel long. Whatever you do, don't start rowing as fast as you can. BREATHE, right from the start. Get a mate to remind you to breathe if you're like me and forget on the first few reps. Pace yourself to 85-90% and get a steady rhythm going. Use your whole body on the row - legs push, arms pull, then arms back, legs back.

Thrusters

Plan how you will break up the thrusters. Keep some in the tank rather than a max effort for each set, or they will all go to custard well before the end of the workout. As with the rowing, BREATHE.

Use your hip drive. Legs will be shot to pieces not long into this one and the strength in your ams are needed to get the bar all the way up, so snap those hips like when you're cleaning to boost the bar up. Take short rests in the rack position if you need to. When you do put it down, squat clean into the next rep to save time.

Pause slightly at the top to show your judge that you have full extension. If you get it all the way up but whip the bar back down it doesn't look like your arms are straight.

Mouth open? Oh good, this must mean I am remembering to breathe. Thanks for taking the photos Carly!

Recover

When you're done, cut your legs off and throw them away. Seriously, this will feel better than keeping them on for the couple of minutes after this workout.

Repeat it and try for a better score? Like bloody hell no.

I went for a short swim and hung out in the pool stretching straight after this one. Walking down the steps of the hot pool was really difficult and I was grateful for the handrails! My quads are remembering 13.3 (150 wall balls, 90 double unders, pfft muscle ups). After that one I found rolling my legs out with a rolling pin helpful in the days afterwards. See Adam rolling his quad with a barbell on the far right of the pic above? That will work too. If you can stand it.

It's over!

I'm parked up on the Lazy Boy with my laptop now, with a Fran Cough and stiffening legs. Yes, the Fran Cough is a real thing and you might get it too from 15.5.

Links

Andy from The RX Clinic shows us how to make thrusters easy
Tabata Time's Coaching Roundtable 15.5
Nicole Carroll's tips as posted by CrossFit Inc.
The Outlaw Way's video tips

Good on you, you went hard and deserve to be proud of yourself for making to the end of this Open with full effort given.
Did 15.5 give you the Fran Cough? Any tips of your own to pass on? Show us your 'after' picture? Comment below!

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The Heavy on CrossFit Open 15.3

21/3/2015

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A movement that we haven't had in an Open Workout before was announced today, the handstand push up. With this WoD we can say that CrossFit HQ have certainly made a major shift in this year's Open. The inclusion of scaled workouts marked a change for the start, then in 15.3 all those without a ring muscle up were forced to scale. 15.4 shows that this new level of difficulty is not an anomaly. The raised bar is here to stay. Here's some tips for the average CrossFitter, trying to get through a few rounds RX or scaled.

Pictured is the Rx Workout, scaled: Complete as many rounds and reps as possible in 8 minutes of: 10 push presses, 10 cleans

Prepare Your Mental Game

This Open workout will be the toughest yet mentally. The handstand push up is a movement with a high fail rate, so plan what you need to do to minimise your missed reps and also plan how to deal with it in your mind when you do. Go over your cues about how to do the HSPU most effectively so you have something concrete to focus on rather than just trying harder.

Negative thoughts will creep in, especially after 5-7 minutes when your glycogen stores run low. You mind will be in survival mode then rather than focused cognition. When you start hearing the negative thoughts - I'm useless, it hurts, Dave Castro can go suck some hairy ones - you've got to deliberately push those unhelpful thoughts out. Replace them with a mantra that you have planned that will help you through, such as "I'm strong, I can do this" or "tight core, one at a time".

Warm up

10 mins running, rowing or moving your whole body. Then 10 mins on shoulders including handstand holds, and then 10 mins on your hips. Do a Bergener warm up to drill in that good technique for your cleans. If you're confident of getting quite a few reps in the actual thing, run through 2-3 rounds of three reps each, enough to get your heart pumping, then rest 5-10 mins before starting. If you'll be working hard for every rep save them for the WoD!

The Handstand Push Ups

Use plates and an abmat to reduce jarring on your neck, but note that your head must have a slight deficit to your hands at the bottom of the movement. Get measured while standing on the plates. When upside down, you may need to have your hands closer to your head and your head closer to the wall than usual to get your heels high enough.

Figure out the best place to put you hands so you can push effectively, balance well and get your heels over the line. Mark that place for your hands with chalk or tape. Practice with your judge and ask the judge or a mate to tell you when your heels are over the line before you start each set of HSPU. Pull your toes towards the floor to get maximum leg extension.

PACE YOURSELF. This WoD is primarily a HSPU WoD. When you run out of HSPUs, it gets very difficult to do any more. Ignore the guy next to you pumping them out, or your friends yelling at you to get back on the wall, you need to pick them off in small sets or singles. Keep at least one in the bank. If you feel like you can do three, do two, come off the wall, breathe and go again.

Mel judges Georgia doing the scaled, and Bruce judges Dan going Rx tonight at Remarkables CrossFit.

Push Press

Push press is the substitute for HSPU in the scaled and some of the master's grades. Be careful that you do not push jerk. Show your judge your push press and make sure you are clear on the movement standards. Legs, hips, shoulders, arms all in a straight line at the top of the movement. If you can, cycle them, catching the bar back onto your shoulders as you are already dipping for the next one.

Heavy Cleans

These may be at or near your max. A great opportunity to get some serious weight shifted in a short time. Enjoy the break from the fast fatiguing HSPUs or push press. As with the HSPU, go over your cues so that you can do the movement in the most efficient way possible. Power clean rather than squat clean for as long as you are able. Use that leg and hip drive. Poor technique will overtax your arms and you need them for the other movements.

How Did it Go?

One of our guys hadn't cleaned that much before, but he got the 84kg clean twice for a new PR!

I haven't done it yet as my shoulders and arms are still sore from all my failed muscle up attempts last weekend. Will update here when I do.

Update: Did it on the Monday night night and it was haaaaaard. I went in feeling confident because heavy cleans are totally my thing, but in this workout there were so many more HSPUs which are not so much my thing. I have done very little HSPU work lately, and not even much overhead work so really, I shouldn't have been surprised. I came away with a score of 38, my worst score by ranking so far. Last Open workout tomorrow! To be honest, I'm looking forward to it being over. I have been enjoying it, but the Open is totally messing with my powerlifting training and I just want to get back into my lifting properly!

If you've done it already, did you get the negative thoughts in the second half of the WoD? Or was it happy stuff all the way through? What was your score? Was is a tough choice to go scaled or Rx?

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I Can't Muscle Up But I Can Deadlift.

16/3/2015

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It has been a full on weekend! CrossFit Open workout 15.3 was announced and it starts with ring muscle ups. Not a strength of mine. Feelings have ben hurt all over the world as people who thought they were doing ok at this CrossFit thing have been forced to scale an open workout. I was preparing for my feelings to get hurt too.

One of my many, many, silly little physio-prescribed shoulder exercises that I have been diligently doing to fix my dodgy biomechanics. Shoulders have been declared fixed now, but it's up to me to maintain that.

Muscle ups aside, I had a powerlifting competition. Bench press and muscle ups are tough on the same little bit of shoulder that I have an issue with, so I chose not to even try muscle ups until my shoulders had a chance to recover from the powerlifting. Hard Working Husband and I took the kids plus two of their friends to the family crib in Pounawea, and spent Saturday in Dunedin powerlifting and having family fun.

Southern Club Lift

The squat comes first in a three-lift powerlifting competition. I had planned to do my first attempt of three with 100kg. But I had woken up that morning with stiff, sore hips from the drive across Otago. I had done my best to loosen off my joints, but a 90kg warm-up single was difficult and sore, and so dropped my first attempt down to that.
Magically, out on the stage with my first squat, I came right! The 90kg felt easy and light so I did the next at 100kg and then a successful, if slow, 107.5kg. Good start. My mate Mel got a good 85kg squat.

The Otago Amateur Weightlifter's Club is in this weird, old, dingy building in a largely abandoned industrial part of town. Big bearded guys hang around making clanging noises with heavy prices of metal. The floor is uneven concrete and there's ancient lockers all around the walls. Unfortunately, my car charger had stopped working and my phone was almost flat, I promise I'll take photos next time I'm there!
My friend Mel from Remarkables CrossFit came too to support me and have a go herself. It was good to have a mate there.

Thanks very much Susan, coach at CrossFit Dunedin, for taking some photos while my iPhone was flat!

There were a bunch of novice lifters from CrossFit Dunedin. We enjoyed chatting to Charles, a member of CrossFit Dunedin who had taken up powerlifting and had convinced his mates there to have a go at it. Good stuff Charles. There were also some Special Olympian powerlifters competing who had been training just as hard as anyone there and who were pulling some impressive numbers. Powerlifters come in all ages too, with many New Zealanders holding world records in the various Masters age groups. That's another reason to like powerlifting, it's a very inclusive sport.

Benchpress comes next. Mel learned how to benchpress as we were warming up! On my first attempt at 55kg I made a noobs' mistake of not waiting for the "Start" call. That's why I need the competition experience. Did a good lift at 60kg and then another at 62.5kg. A referee had words with me after about shifting my bum around during the lift, another thing to learn! The referees were very helpful, with so many novices there we needed it. Mel benched 57.5kg - WOW. That was her first go at bench pressing. That shows what good general condition CrossFit gets you into.

Heavy deadlifts make your neck go all red and stringy. We'll stick with photographs from a distance for now.

Ooo then deadlift! I love deadlifts. It had been a while since Mel had maxed out hers and she easily got a max of 120kg. I got 145kg, then 150kg, and then got 157.5kg off the ground but not all the way up.

Big ups to OAWLA for hosting a well run lift, especially with all the newbies there. There was three referees, five loaders/spotters, three people crunching numbers and one announcing the whole afternoon. Rather a lot of work, and all voluntary. Those people are awesome.

Meanwhile Hard Working Husband had taken the kids out to the pool, the museum and visiting relatives in Dunedin. We took the kids to Great Taste, an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant. It was a treat after the day's heavy lifting! We waddled our food babies back to the crib, and then the beach and home to Arrowtown the next day.

Open WoD 15.3

Tonight I fluffed around for 14 minutes and didn't get any muscle ups. My Remarkables mates did, and I'm really pleased for them. Going by the Beyond the Whiteboard preliminary results, it appears that many more times men than women are getting reps at 15.3 Rx'd. In our box, four guys and no women have gotten them so I'm going to say we fit with the normal.
Righteo, I'm off to bed. I need to drag my bruised ego up early to do 14 minutes of light wall balls and single skips. Dave Castro may think I'm scaled, but I can deadlift like a Games Athlete. So there.

Update: Open WoD 15.3 Scaled

Busted out that sucker this morning. The scaled version, for the multitudinous hordes of us who can't do a ring muscle up, is a 14 minute As Many Rounds As Possible (AMRAP) of 50 4kg wall balls and 200 single skips. I was trying for one round every three and a half minutes to make a 1000 rep total, and came nine skips short, or got a 991 rep total. The wall ball was much lighter than I'm used to - I usually train with a 9kg rather than the standard women's weight of 6kg. I'm grateful that these light wall balls felt like air squats and so besides a couple of fumbled catches I did them all unbroken. I had to keep a steady rather than fast-as-I-could pace on the skips to be able to keep going without tripping.
I felt much better about it all when I saw so many other scaled workouts on the leaderboard. In fact, only six females in Otago and Southland got a score for it Rx.
Using the results I could glean from Beyond the Whiteboard, I made some calculations. These are not 100% accurate as I couldn't determine the exact numbers from the data I had available, and I an unable to accurately correct for variables such as which gender might be more likely to log their workouts on the online platform. Also, I am an artist and not a statistician.

15.3 Rx results from "Main Site" members of Beyond the Whiteboard. You can see here how many more men than women did the workout Rx, even though there are similar numbers of men and women doing CrossFit.

But I calculated that of the men who attempted CrossFit Open 15.3, 72% were able to get at least one muscle up and therefore do the workout Rx. Of the women, only 20% could get an Rx score. Both genders performed fairly evenly in the Rx division once they were there though, with a female, Sam Brigs, getting the highest score worldwide. In the scaled the women performed about 0.2 of a round better than the men. I wonder if women were quicker to opt into scaled rather than tough it out trying to get a muscle up?
The muscle up is one of the signature moves of CrossFit so it's no surprise that it has been used to draw a line between the Cans and the Cannots, the Rx and the Scaled.

How was 15.3 for you? Did you get hurt feelings? Did you get your first Muscle up?

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<<Previous

The Southern Classic

Event 1

Event 2

Event 3

Semifinal

Final Event

Men's Rx Leaderboard

Women's Rx Leaderboard

Master's Men's Rx Leaderboard

Master's Women's Rx Leaderboard

2015 Open Roundup

Custom Leaderboard Fun

F.Y.I NZ Individual Leaderboards

F.I.Y. Otago/Southland leaderboards

Oh My Quads it's 15.5

How To Do It (if You're an Average CrossFitter)

Prepare Your Mind

Warm up

Row

Thrusters

Recover

Links

The Heavy on CrossFit Open 15.3

Prepare Your Mental Game

Warm up

The Handstand Push Ups

Push Press

Heavy Cleans

Further Reading

How Did it Go?

I Can't Muscle Up But I Can Deadlift.

Southern Club Lift

Open WoD 15.3

Update: Open WoD 15.3 Scaled

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