Thought I would take a minute to shed some light and hopefully make some sense of what’s happening within Crossfit in the past twelve months. We have seen all kinds of changes in everything from social media and media coverage, to the way the Games are ran and qualifying to get there happens. Another big change that has happened this year will be the Open.
In 2019, we actually get two Opens. The first one happened at the usual time in late February and early March. This isn’t news to any of us. What might be news to some of us, and maybe a bit of a shocker, is that we have another Open starting October 10th. That’s right! A little over a month from now and we will be in the midst of “The Open” yet again.
Reason for it is due the qualification process for the Games. The Crossfit games have traditionally taken place in August. We would have the Open in February and March. Placing very well in the Open would qualify people for Regionals. Regionals was a weekend long event and after the two days, the very top athletes from there would go on compete at the Games. I won’t go into all the “sanctionals” that now happen in any detail but essentially the Regionals are gone. You can qualify to the Games by winning a sanctioned event, or being first place in your country, or being top 20 in the world in the Open. There’s a confusing hierarchy to which one of those things takes prescience if you happen to be good enough to place well in multiple of them but I don’t think we need a whole lot of information on that right now.
For some of us the Open represents a time to get our competitive pants on, giver that little bit extra and see what we can do against our friends, our city, our country or the world. It’s rewarding to put forth your best effort and be able to submit a score and see where you stack up. We don’t need aspirations of “making it” anywhere. We just simply need to enjoy seeing the results of our hard work.
So, October 10th the madness starts all over again. If you are thinking about signing up for the Open, I definitely encourage you to do so. You don’t need to be an “Rx” athlete to do it. There are scaled versions to every workout and divisions for all ages. It’s just a good time and builds into yourself a little bit extra of that sense of “community”. If you are wanting to spend a little extra time getting yourself ready for the fast approaching season, talk to your coach! We would be happy to sit down with you and have a goal setting session. See where we might be able to spend a little extra time and talk about options to get you there. Let us know if that is something you are thinking about.
Until then, happy training and enjoy the process!