The second workout of this year’s CrossFit Games Open is a repeat from a few years ago. I created a strategy video for the first time we did workout when it was named 22.3 and you can CLICK HERE to read/watch it!
I told myself NOT watch that post from 2022 before recording today’s video with my suggestions on how to approach the workout and I’m thrilled to share that my strategy has not changed much at all!
I hope that you find this advice helpful and that after watching you feel better prepared for how to break down your reps and attack the Pull-Ups and Thrusters. Let me know your thoughts on my strategy and I’d love to hear how it goes for you!
The 2025 CrossFit Games Open is here! Today, they released the first workout of the three-week worldwide competition and it looks like an awesome AND accessible kick-off to this year’s Open.
Three main pieces of advice for this one:
1- Practice foot and hand placement for your Burpees over the Dumbbell. Your hands should end up in front of the DB so that when you jump or stand up your feet will be directly next to where it sits on the ground. Since you’re not required to stand all the way up before jumping over the weight, remind yourself to “Stay Low and Go!” Don’t waste any time taking extra steps or risk missing directly over the weight. Deliberate movement here will help ensure that all of your rep attempts count.
2- Keep Dumbbell Hang Clean-and-Jerks as efficient as possible by prioritizing a tall chest throughout the rep. Laying on the ground and getting up over and over again for the Burpees will likely lead to some lower back fatigue. Forcing even more hingeing with the DB complex will only make that worse. I’m going to attack these like a quick little Russian Swing to get the DB to the shoulder and then immediately link into a smooth Push Jerk. While Push Press reps may be possible out of the gate for some, it’s simply going to require more upper body strength to press the DB to a full lockout. A smooth Push Jerk will conserve shoulders even more, allowing for more powerful Burpees later on in the workout! I also plan to repeat reps with the same arm until I *start to* fatigue before switching arms. The first few rounds won’t be a problem at all, but one the rounds of 12 or 15 hit, I’m sure switching hands will be a welcome break. That said, despite the fact that I feel fairly proficient alternating reps with a DB, I think it will end up being an unnecessary use of energy to switch so often. As long as the goal is to aim to keep sets unbroken, just try to complete consecutive reps with one arm, and switch to the other arm before you get close to failure!
3- Lunges will likely end up being the “rest” portion of this 15-minute workout. While most athletes will have the ability to come out swinging and sprint these, as the volume continues to grow for Burpees and DB reps, it may be more and more difficult to maintain a faster Lunge pace. Instead, keep your chest tall and eyes across the room, your entire front foot flat on each step so that your vertical front shin allows for smooth steps every time, and try not to over-extend your steps whenever possible. Use this time to shake out your arms and reset your heart rate before getting right back to your DB!
From a pacing perspective, I think most athletes should approach this one as a marathon, not a sprint. Anyone can complete the rounds of 3, 6, and 9 at breakneck speed. If that means you’re spending the last 5 minutes standing around trying to catch your breath, though, that doesn’t make too much sense to me. Give this one an 8.5 out of 10 effort out of the gate and see if you can make it through the entire 15 minutes without really needing to stop at all!
In the morning, I’m going to try to record a video briefly demonstrating some of these key points. If you come back and watch it, please let me know if this advice helps!
Regardless of your experience or ability level, if you’re going to try this workout: Good Luck, Have Fun, I Believe In You!
Week one is done and it’s time for the second workout of the 2024 CrossFit Games Open!
For most athletes, my main piece of advice is going to be to move slower and to break things up more than you think you need to for the first part of the workout. A 300m Row can be a misleading distance and if you come out too hot it’s going to be really tough to sustain that pace later on into the workout.
I feel like most athletes should plan to *not* hang onto the Deadlift bar for large, unbroken sets. Instead, work to find what rep range is repeatable while allowing good technique. I absolutely suggest using a switch grip on the bar, too. As you get deeper into this workout, remind yourself to keep your chest up and back flat. The cue I use for myself is to actively brace my core before every single rep and to drive myself away from the floor using my legs. Don’t less this movement come from your back!
The high volume of Double-Unders in this workout are going to catch up to some people in the later rounds. Large sets may be possible early on, but when you realize that you may be three or four HUNDRED reps in by the end, working to complete 50 reps unbroken each round might not make the most sense! My advice is to break them up on your terms early on, take a quick breath, and then get back after it. For athletes who are proficient, breaking them into a set of 30 and then a set of 20 may help keep your heart rate under control for longer.
I don’t think this workout will be WON on any one part in particular. That said, I think it can be LOST by pushing too hard on any one part too early on. Trying to hold a comfortable pace between 1:50 and 2:00 on the row and then completing the Deadlifts and Double-Unders in 2-3 quick sets is likely where most of us are going to see the best results. If you feel great at the ten or fifteen minute mark, by all means turn it on and finish strong!
If you’re interested, watch my video and let me know if this advice helps!
Regardless of your experience or ability level, if you’re going to try this workout: Good Luck, Have Fun, I Believe In You!
How has it already been a year since my last blog post?!
The first week of the 2024 @crossfitgames Open is here! Workout 24.1 is a 21-15-9 descending ladder of Dumbbell Snatches and Lateral Burpees over the Dumbbell.
My goal was to break down my advice into three easy steps. First, be sure that each rep of Dumbbell Snatch is as efficient as possible. Don’t turn this into a curl with a press-out! Then, for the Burpees, eliminate the guesswork when it comes to hand placement so you can be as consistent as possible, and…. “Stay Low and Go!”
If you’re interested, watch my video and let me know if this advice helps!
Regardless of your experience or ability level, if you’re going to try this workout: Good Luck, Have Fun, I Believe In You!
The second week of the 2023 CrossFit Games Open is here and for the first time ever in this stage of the competition, we’ll be running!
Why are we running and doing burpees, you ask? Because at my gym I programmed shuttle sprints two days ago and burpees today. (ha!)
In Colorado, this winter has been *FREEZING* so not a lot of people have been running. The fact that runs are only 25ft will encourage a lot of athletes start running way too fast, but remember that you need to run TWENTY intervals at a time. The requirement of touching the ground also means that athletes are going to be bending and standing a lot. Try your best not to twist every time and instead square up your hips and shoulders prior to pushing off and heading in the other direction. Make sure your shoulders stay loose during the run, since a lot of people shrug when they run tired.
For Burpee Pull-Ups, ask yourself which variation will allow you to keep moving for as long as possible. If the jump back + jump up Burpee plus a powerful vertical jump right into a Pull-Up works when you’re fresh, are you going to need to change that technique drastically once you start to fatigue? This is not going to be a 15-minute sprint for most people so don’t start off sprinting if you’ll have 8 minutes of suffering on the back end.
I encourage athletes to build up to a heavy, but not 1RM Thruster during warm-up to use as a gauge on where you hope to get during Part B. View this like an Olympic Weightlifting meet where you only expect to get THREE attempts. The first weight should be one that you KNOW you can hit when you’re tired and out of breath to “get on the board.” The second attempt can be a challenging weight that you’re confident you can still hit after that first attempt. Based on how much time is left, gear up for a really challenging final attempt that you take with less than 15 seconds left.
My strategy video is below and I hope it helps some of you! Thank you all for tuning in for another year of these videos!
***GOOD NEWS! With the programming we’ve seen these first two weeks, it means that we likely won’t see Rowing, Thrusters, Burpees, OR Pull-Ups for the final week!***
As always: Good Luck, Have Fun, I Believe In You!
Please let me know if this helps and I’ll see you back here next week!
The first week of the 2023 CrossFit Games Open is here! Let’s get this party started for yet another year and have some fun along the way. (As an added bonus for all of you, I’m sharing my strategy video from 2014 at the VERY bottom of this post! What I love most about it is that in TEN YEARS, my advice remains really similar!)
As with nearly every workout I’ve ever provided advice for, your number one goal should be to control your heart rate and pace yourself. It will be really easy for athletes to look at this workout and think, “Rowing is the easiest movement here so I’m going to go fast as I can so I have more time to do the other things!” Simply put, redlining any one part of this workout will lead to *most* athletes “having a bad time” through the rest of 14 minutes.
For the Row, find a sustainable pace that you can finish and quickly get started on your Toes-to-Bar. I think a great “pace estimate” for fairly strong male rowers could be to aim for ~around~ 20 Calories per minute. If women are able to hold ~15 per minute, that means nearly all athletes should hope to be off of the rower between 3-4 minutes.
I advise breaking Toes-to-Bar sets into repeatable reps to chip away at the FIFTY required reps. If you can repeat sets of 3-5 reps without fatiguing too much, stay on pace and go. Some athletes will try to break these into singles at least at the end of the set. My only suggestion there is to use a slightly lower bar that still allows you to kick your heels behind the plane of the bar and still get full range of motion but NOT one that is so tall that it becomes exhausting to jump up to it every time or too time-consuming to get repositioned under the bar for the next attempt.
While many athletes could probably knock out 40 Wall Balls in a row when fresh, I’m going to strongly discourage most of you from going that route. Instead, decide if you want to break these into four sets (try 13/11/9/7) or three sets (maybe 16/14/10), never redline your heart rate, take quick breaks between sets, all while keeping it moving and keeping your heart rate lower. This is where I think some athletes can pull it together a bit more before heading over to their barbell.
On Cleans, a lot of athletes will likely go for singles out the gate. While that is certainly one way to conserve energy, when done INEFFICIENTLY it can actually end up adding MORE time and stress to your set of 30 reps. The “careless” launching of the bar off of your shoulders as you stand will lead to it bouncing all over the place. Instead, (1) get set every single time with long arms, a tall chest, and a flat back, (2) drive up with your legs and then pull under the bar with those straight arms, (3) stand all the way up at the top, and then (4) drop the bar back to the ground with intention so it lands balanced and reduces the amount of chasing you need to do. By this point of the workout it won’t be feeling like a sprint for too many athletes. Being methodical and deliberate will allow you to keep moving and waste less energy.
If you make it to the Muscle-Ups, congrats! My number one piece of advice for this part of the workouts is to NOT MISS A REP. You’re probably going to be tired when you get here. If trying to link reps together under fatigue is going to cause a ton of missed reps, that can be really demoralizing. Instead, keep that hollow position tight, use a BIG hip drive on every single kip, and be sure to keep those rings CLOSE to your body as you dive through to the receiving position. If you make it this far, you’re most likely strong enough to dip yourself out of that transition position. Let yourself get there instead of trying to catch yourself halfway out of your press-out. Quick singles here will conserve grip, allow you to keep your heart rate under control, and not require as much time under tension between reps. You’ve got this.
My strategy video is below and I hope it helps some of you! Thank you all for tuning in for another year of these videos!
As always: Good Luck, Have Fun, I Believe In You!
Please let me know if this helps and I’ll see you back here next week!
And for the added bonus video, here’s a much younger (and more fit!) me giving advice on how to approach this one back when it was originally released back in 2014! We were just kids!!
The final week of the 2022 CrossFit Games Open is here! Check it out below and close out this Open season with a bang!
What better way to close out this year’s competition than by performing a version of one of CrossFit’s most notable workouts, Fran? Oh, but they decided to make it heavier, more advanced, add reps, AND add an extra movement to make it EVEN MORE fun!
Advice on pacing and strategy for this workout will differ significantly depending on where athletes find themselves with their Gymnastics/Pull-Up proficiency. That said, advice for Double-Unders and Thrusters is pretty consistent across all divisions. (If you’re a top-tier athlete, you just need to go. It’s as simple as that.) If you’re in the majority of those completing this workout, your primary goal should be to break up your sets of Pull-Ups and Thrusters BEFORE fatigue sets in too much. Think QUICK RESTS from start to finish in order to keep moving! As the exercises on the rig increase in difficulty as exhaustion becomes more of an issue, prioritize not missing a rep. That could mean dropping off of the rig a few reps before failure or letting go of the barbell a few reps earlier than you’d like. If an earlier break leads to less time between efforts or sets, you’ll save time and energy in the long run. This workout won’t just challenge grip, the high heart rate will impact one’s ability to perform every exercise. Control your heart rate more efficiently and you’ll be more successful with this one!
My strategy video is below and I hope it helps some of you! Thank you all for tuning in for another year of these videos!
As always: Good Luck, Have Fun, I Believe In You!
Can’t wait to be back with all of you again next year!
The second week of the 2022 CrossFit Games Open is here! Check it out my advice below and let me know what you think!
Quick and dirty suggestions: 1- Easy, Champ! Don’t come out to hot. Over 2/3’s of this workout happens from the round of 6 on the way up to the round of 6 on the way back down.
2- Full Body Deadlifts: We already know the lower back is going to get lit up. Be deliberate with every single rep, brace your midsection, and stay connected to the bar from your big toe to your neutral neck.
3- Stay Low and Go! Over-practice the rhythm and timing of your steps in order to remain as efficient as possible on your Burpees. While this workout may not be won on the Burpees, inefficient reps here will certainly lead towards too much standing around just keep it moving!
Regardless of your experience or ability level, if you’re going to try this workout: Good luck, have fun, I believe in you!
It’s week 2 of 3 of the 2021 CrossFit Games Open, and we’ve got a repeat workout. Since I already wrote a blog post and recorded a video for this back in 2017, I’m not going to reinvent the wheel. Four years later, my advice is basically exactly the same:
Don’t crash and burn on the burpees and realize that this workout really starts after the round of 30 Snatches. If you’re engine is there, THAT’S when you’ll get your chance to shine.
Here’s a few extra tips on what to do in order to increase your likelihood of doing better on this workout:
Thoroughly warm up your lower back, and keep your chest up throughout the Snatches. It’s going to be easy to drop your chest and use your back on them, resist the urge. Hinge at the hips, load those hammies, and the squeeze your glutes to stand! Capitalize on the efficiency of that movement!
Improve DB transition from one hand to the other. The less you need to think about that movement, the more you’ll be able to stay in control.
Practice timing of steps/jumps for Burpee Box Jump-Overs. If you’re trying to conserve energy, consider stepping back and stepping up. Learn how to approach the box to be in a safe position to jump onto the box.
Don’t rush. On either movement. If you’re in too much of a rush to lockout your arm or stand all the way up, your Snatches won’t count. If you flop down onto the ground out of position, you’ll need to re-do the burpee.Be deliberate throughout the workout and waste NO reps.
LIFT YOUR KNEES. As fatigue sets in, many athletes will get lazy and not prioritize getting their entire foot onto the box. Honestly, I feel like not missing a single Box Jump-Over is the biggest win of all in this one! It’s not fun to bust your leg open and it doesn’t feel cool to have a scar on your shin for the rest of your life. Trust me, I’m speaking from experience!
Was this post helpful for you? Let me know, please!
I don’t know about you, but no one I’m friends with predicted this as the first workout of the new competition year. Wall Walks and Double-Unders are the two movements in the Rx’d division, modified Wall Walks and Single-Unders comprise the Scaled version, the Foundations division includes Bear Crawls and Jumping Jacks, and finally the No Equipment version is made up of Wall Walks and Lateral Jumps.
For this strategy post, I won’t be breaking down each workout division as I have in the past. Instead, I’ll be covering a few main themes I think will be appropriate for nearly all versions of the workout.
The three topics I cover in my video are: (1) Scaled or Rx’d? Which should you choose and why? (2) Pacing? How should you approach the two movements? and (3) Technique – What are a few things to think about to make the movements as efficient as possible.
This is only the first week of the Open and I am always interested in your feedback for how to make these videos more helpful for YOU. Did you like this? Tell me! Would you prefer that I dive more deeply into any other aspect of the workout? Let me know!
I hope you find my advice over the next three weeks to be helpful!
As always…. Good Luck, Have Fun, I Believe In You!
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