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!!
Smashby's Training Blog 