The chalk dust has settled, and the first round of the 2013 CrossFit Games has ended.
First, I’d like to give a big congratulations to Jon Colborn for qualifying as an individual competitor for the North Central Region. Although Jon competed at Regionals as part of a team last year, he has also aspired to qualify individually, and I’m so happy to see his hard work pay off. His work ethic sets a great example for what’s possible through dedication and the excellent programming and coaching we have at The Foundry!
For most of The Foundry members, this was the first time you participated in the Open. This was my third CrossFit Games Open, but this year has been my favorite by far, for several reasons.
1. Improvement Over Previous Years
Because of the format of the Open, athletes that participate each year can measure their progress. Movements, lifts, and even entire workouts are repeated in subsequent years, so you can compare yourself to where you were the year before. I saw vast improvement in almost every tested movement, even those I don’t consider myself good at. You can bet that next year will have a similar format/style to allow for you to see what kind of difference a year makes.
2. Sense of Accomplishment
These workouts test even the most elite CrossFit athletes – the sense of accomplishment you feel when you get done with one of these workouts is awesome! My personal barometer – you know you’ve done serious work when walking down stairs becomes a challenge (as it was post 13.3).
3. Exposing Weaknesses
Every single person competing in the Open had a movement they didn’t want to see in a workout. I talked with a lot of people in the gym about this exact subject. Burpees, pull-ups, wall balls, muscle-ups – everyone has a weakness that probably got exposed during the Open. And that’s a good thing, because now you have a new goal to work on!
4. Team Pride
This year was the first year that I was a member of a team that was in contention to qualify for Regionals. While we may have missed the cutoff this year, I LOVED that people were redoing workouts multiple times just to squeak out more reps to help our team score. The level of commitment I saw from our athletes made me so proud to be a member of The Foundry team. To top it off, we had our own team competition in the gym, which added another layer of fun to the Open experience.
5. PR-palooza
This is seriously the best part about the Open. Seeing people trying (and succeeding) at lifting weight they had never done before, doing more reps of wall balls than they thought possible, hitting 90 double-unders, doing their first muscle-up – all these amazing moments are why CrossFit is my favorite sport. I saw snatch PRs and clean & jerk PRs. I witnessed many of you getting your first ever chest to bar pull-up. Seeing many of our newer athletes set PRs was just as exciting (if not more so) than watching our most experienced athletes set the top scores.
Moving Forward
For the majority of us, our season is over and we’re going “back to normal” in terms of training. As you look back on the last 5 weeks, I urge everyone to dig a little deeper, write down some new goals, and really “get after it”, as Coach Jon would say. I know I’m already looking towards 2014, and my goal is to go to Regionals next year as a competitor. Let’s up the ante and qualify not only multiple athletes, but also our entire Foundry team!