S02E33 CROSSFIT OPEN 2022 EQUIPMENT & MOVEMENT BREAKDOWN
The equipment list for the CrossFit 2022 Open has been released. We break down everything you need to prepare - what's on the list and what's NOT on the list. What should you be preparing movement-wise? We also take some educated guesses about what kind of workouts we may face (are they still the work of @thedavecastro ?)
(and remember, sign up for the CrossFit Open! 22.1 starts February 24!)
You can find more information at our website, HerdFitUSA.com. Like and subscribe wherever you watch or listen to our podcast!
@crossfit @crossfitgames #crossfit #fitness #sports #exercise #health #movement #crossfitcoach #agoq #clean #fitness #ItAllStartsHere #CrossFitOpen #CrossFit #CrossFitCommunity @CrossFitAffiliates
S02E33 CF OPEN 2022 EQUIPMENT MOVEMENTS
[00:00:00] Sam Rhee: All right. Welcome back to another edition of the HerdFit podcast with coach Dave Syvertsen and I'm Sam Rhee and today we're going to be talking about equipment for the CrossFit open. So CrossFit just released their equipment list for the 2022 open, which is starting February 24th,
We've talked about it before, so I'm not going to go into it specifically, but as we know, there are multiple divisions within the CrossFit open. They include RX, which is the most challenging division, scaled for those who wish to go lighter or have lighter loading and then a foundations division for those who are relatively new to CrossFit.
And then there's also the age groups teens, 14 to 17, and then the master's divisions 35 plus. And they both actually have RX and scaled within them as well. And then finally the athletes that have some significant permanent impairments adaptive, which include upper lower extremity seated with hip function, neuromuscular and other divisions.
So today we're going to go through the equipment. We're going to talk about possible movements, speculate on what the workouts might be and and just cover everything that we think you could do with the equipment they've listed.
[00:01:10] David Syvertsen: And just what to mentally prepare. Once we get beyond the equipment, the potential movements that you'll see hopefully we'll cross everything.
And last year I would have not said wall walks would have been the open, so that's possible we'll miss something. Even further than that, we'll go into what to expect. With what kinds of workouts? How long, how many reps like that kind of stuff. We'll touch on that a little later as well.
[00:01:32] Sam Rhee: The first thing I wanted to cover with you was what isn't in the open. So let's get those things out of the way, the things that we wouldn't expect to see, because they didn't even mention them. Yeah.
[00:01:41] David Syvertsen: And this also goes to show how much the openness of. When I started, there was a workout, that's it RX or bust you do it, or you don't, you can, or you can't.
And up until this year, this is the first time they've ever sent out an equipment list for us to prepare for. And I think they're listening to affiliate owners, there's a lot of planning and logistics that we need to go through to make sure things operate smoothly and it's really hard to not know how to plan things without knowing what equipment we need,
how many of things we need, what kind of spacing do we need? And. I guess that this is one of their efforts to show that they are on the affiliate side to say Hey, we're going to do everything we can so that you can prepare yourself even just mentally know to know this is the equipment you definitely need in your gym for your classes during the open.
[00:02:33] Sam Rhee: And there may be, he had very accessible. Yeah. So they've simplified things tremendously. For the athletes that are still doing it in their garage or doing it on their own, I think they've made the equipment list relatively reasonable. Or at least more reasonable than it's been in past years.
Let's talk about what isn't in the open wall balls are not in the open. How do you feel
[00:02:53] David Syvertsen: about that? I'm fine with it. I think that's part of the thought process is a lot of people that do this in the garage don't have a 10 foot clearance for me and really you need something higher than 10 feet.
So a lot of garages don't have that. Whether it's a wobble line or wobble target is that why they're doing it? I don't know. Does that mean we're never going to see a wall ball in the open again, probably. What wall balls tests is lower body, upper body capacity and conditioning component for higher end athletes, for some people it's strength related, but really there are so many ways you can test conditioning and lower upper capacity that why not just take that out, so I think that's why, .
[00:03:27] Sam Rhee: I think of wall balls as a whole. Jack or upper light, every time I do all balls, it's just it just elevates the heart rate.
[00:03:33] David Syvertsen: And you can do that so
[00:03:34] Sam Rhee: many different ways. And it's full body. It's one of those thruster type movements. And so you're right. You can substitute other things. Yep. The next item that they definitely took out. Rower. How
[00:03:45] David Syvertsen: do you feel about the rower personally? I like rowing and we'll get into this. That'll probably show up, what's not showing up now will probably show up in the next stage.
So for me, I'll like, you know what? I probably would want it in the later stage when it's little bit more competitive, a little bit tougher the workouts. How do I feel about rowing, not being in the open? I don't know, to be honest, I like when rowing isn't. In an open workout, not for me personally, as an athlete, but for the gym,
it's one of the movements that I feel it's very safe to do when you're really tired. And I'm big on trying to teach athletes. A lot of this comes down to your willpower and your guts and you really, Kind of going dark during an open workout. And that's one of the few motions where I would, I could tell anyone to go as hard as you can, whether it's the end of a workout or it's an aggressive workout in and of itself.
I like the fact that you can do that in a row. There aren't many movement, maybe a burpee, that you could do that in an open workout, but, I wish it was in the open just because I think that. There's a lot to growing that can really enhance the test in so many different. I
[00:04:47] Sam Rhee: agree with you that if you are a good rower, and you're a good athlete and you're competitive.
You want to see it in the quarter finals, right? Not necessarily in the Oak. Right, right. I think ,the row. Is so challenging because you have to know yourself well for it, because to go 10% faster on that requires 50% more effort. Yeah. And you can blow yourself out on the rower and not gain a whole lot out of it.
That's a good point. It requires some mental calculation and skill involved. Yep. It's also one of the worst, as you said, in terms of going dark. I think some of the worst wads I've ever done in my entire life included that was the rower. What was that the one burpees over rower? Or was it a rower thruster?
[00:05:26] David Syvertsen: The worst open workout ever. Yeah. 27, 21 59 row Cal foresters at 95. 65. Yes. That was awesome. By far the worst. Yeah. So
[00:05:35] Sam Rhee: if you really want to hurt someone yeah. You make them go as hard as you can
[00:05:38] David Syvertsen: on a rower. Yeah. Yeah. And it's what I like what you said. It's true. That I'm so big on athletes, really taking ownership of.
What is your body capable of, but more importantly, what is it not capable of? And trying to avoid that stage early in a workout and rowing is there's so much information that you can get from looking at a monitor when you row like your strokes for a minute, your pace at the beginning, your pace at the end, what pace can you hold without it ruining the rest of.
And like you said, a four second difference on the monitor can ruin the workout. And I really think it takes a lot of concentration and, I'm big on just mentally challenging people in workouts as well. And I think that's a big part, what you can get out of rowing, so I'm trying to think, why would they take it out?
Maybe it's just because this year they have the open test set up and wrongs on it and that doesn't that wrong does not need to be in an open workout. Is it garage, gym friendly for people it's like, all right. Most people don't have a rower in their gym. Maybe. They are trying to open up the door for people to do these in, a regular gym, as long as they have someone that passed across at judges course, they're judging them.
It'll be fine. And they've never done that before last year. I think you said they had to do it at an affiliate. So maybe a lot of these fitness, nineteens planet fitness, a lot of them don't have a concept. I think again, maybe it's more trying to make it more accessible.
[00:06:53] Sam Rhee: It makes sense.
And then the next one is rings.
[00:06:57] David Syvertsen: Yeah. So yeah, when I saw that the original post on Instagram, they had Rangs and I said, oh man, there's gonna be ring muscle ups in the open, but no, that's for the adaptive division, there will be ranked. So for the other division, the open division scaled all that stuff, there will not be rang.
So there won't be ring rows for scale pull-ups. So you're probably looking at, if there is a pull up, you're looking at like a jumping pull-ups height. I think that rings when I started CrossFit and the open they would put rings at the end of open workouts. If you got there which was hard to get there, but if you got to get, you let those guys that have guys and girls that have them go do their thing, but if you don't have one.
It won't ruin the workout, meaning you're not just going to stay in there for nine minutes looking, trying to get your first run muscle. And we've seen that at bison before I've done it. Yeah. 2015, I think it was yup. They had the seven ring muscle-ups started off the workout and I think it was a 13 minute.
And we had probably a dozen people there open workout was trying to get their first ring muscle up. And, we laugh about it, but you don't want that. I love seeing people get their first myself. I love seeing people fail than succeed. That's a huge part of it, but for an open test, I get that they should probably be at the end of the workout.
And then you really start to pigeon hole yourself a little bit. Like you only, you don't get to be as creative with programming. If you feel like you have to do that. And again, Part of the reason, part of what you can do now with this 10%, the next stage, the quarterfinal stages put the rings in there.
Yeah. And because that's less, the next stage is less about inclusive. Programming. And it's more about, all right now, we're now at the sports
[00:08:23] Sam Rhee: stage, they're looking at the competitive athletes, or who are
[00:08:25] David Syvertsen: focused on competition. Yeah. One other thing. That's not the open, but we can now blend this into what's is there's no double dumbbell.
Two dumbbells. Yep. Yeah. So there will be a dumbbell in the open. Are they. We should be ready for that, but that means they were very adamant about it was one dumbbell. So there won't be double dumbbell foresters. Thank God. It won't be like the double dumbbell, double press step overs, any other motion that you do front squats, so that's a good sign.
And I'll tell you what I think that's another thing that they're trying to do to help affiliates in 2000. 17. They told us, Hey, got about a month before the open. Hey guys, there's going to be dumbbells in the open. And we had a few, but we did not have enough for a class. So we started freaking out and as did many other gyms, you go to rogue, fitness, sold out.
You go to Walmart, sold out. So we were literally contacting local high school gyms and using some of the contacts we had from bison. We were
[00:09:17] Sam Rhee: taping.
[00:09:19] David Syvertsen: Yeah, the dumbbells. And I know a lot of gyms that did the same thing and Hey credit to everyone that did that. And we had a lot of people come help us out with that.
I still remember our coaches showing up that night before at 9:30 PM using duct tape to tape plates, to dumbbells. And we used them two weeks in a row. Actually, the first week it was everyone got one dumbbell there's dumbbell snatch. And the next week we were like, all right, at least that's done. And then we have to do it again the next week, because we had to have two dumbbells whose double dumbbell lunges and double dumbbell cleans.
And that was a move. Like I'm not big on complaining. That kind of sucks, but we'll make it work. But a lot of gym owners were pissed. I'm part of that Facebook group of the CrossFit gym owners. They're just live it saying it's disrespectful. We put so much into the open, then you're going to drop this on us.
I think. A lot of gyms is you have a class of 10 to 15 people working out at once. A lot of gyms, don't have enough dumbbells for everyone to get a pair. So what do you do, do you just let people use letter? Do you use kettlebells and again, is it a huge deal if you change it up a little bit for the open?
No, but if you want to make this an inclusive event, you have to do your part. And I think that's what crosses. It's really hard. There's double
[00:10:29] Sam Rhee: dumbbell thrusters. Remember that with the toes to bar, that was an awful word. It's
[00:10:32] David Syvertsen: a tough that's a very tough move and that's a heavyweight, if anyone wants to draw a comparison, right?
Whatever weight is in one hand on a thruster, I equate this to that much weight being on that side of a barbell. So example, we use 50 pounds. Right for RX, For RX Melville, double dumbbell thrusters for men to me, that feels like a 135 pound thrust or with a barbell, meaning there's 50, 50 pounds here.
There's 50 pounds. And then we don't have a barbell to rest on our front rack. So you have to work harder to hold onto it. And that's a really tough movement for a lot of people. Like the women with the 30 fives, that would be like a about a 1 0 5, like 95 to 1 0 5 pound thruster. Like a lot of women can't do that, but they are X everything else.
So I think that was one of the more aggressive open workouts. I
[00:11:18] Sam Rhee: thought, especially if you have any shoulder asymmetry, strength wise, That weak side just gets exposed like nobody's business. Yup. The last thing before we move on to what it actually is in the open was they didn't mention space like space to walk a point, handstand walks walking, lunges.
They didn't mention that you need. Or an area. You can probably take those out of the picture
[00:11:40] David Syvertsen: too, right? Yep. Yeah, definitely take out handstand walks lunges. I always feel like you can do in place. No. So I wouldn't say that we're going to not have lunges, but not walking, but there will be no walking lunges and that's something we train all year.
And I'll be honest with you when I start putting handstand walks into workouts like this time of year, it is with that in mind that I know it won't be in the open, I that's actually going to change not this week, but net weeks. Open prep workout was going to have handstand walks at the end and not it's almost like pointless to say it's an open prep, work out.
If it's not going to be in there. For those that plan on making the next stage, or want to assume something like that will show up. But yeah, there will be no nothing, no Hanson walks in no walking lunges. All right.
[00:12:19] Sam Rhee: Let's start with what is in the open. Maybe we can also speculate on , if we're using Dave Castro's workouts for the open, he said there were a couple new elements.
Yup. Maybe you can speculate on what those might be. Yeah. The first is dumbbell some dumb bell, one dumbbell for the RX. It's one 50 pound dumbbells. Men 35 pound dumbbell for women scaled. It's 35 for men, 20 a pound for women. And then for the scaled age division athletes, it would be a 20 pound dumbbell for men, 10 pound dumbbell for women.
What do you think
[00:12:56] David Syvertsen: about a single dumbbell? . There's so many different things. You can do this do we need to go over every single movement? Probably not, but I'll say this, we've have seen the dumbbell snatch multiple times. I think three times in the open, we've seen the hang dumbbell, clean and jerk.
We've seen a step-up with. In that shipper, the 50, 50, 50 chipper. Those are movements that we've seen, but again, you can go, one-arm push press. You can go one arm thrusts, or you can go one arm, overhead squat, dumbbell, squats, snatch. There are so many different movements. One thing I think you can mentally prepare for as an athlete is know that if you have that really significant imbalance, that's going to get tested.
I would say I'm 75% sure on this, that if we're going to see, we will see a single dumbbell movement. It will be upper body related. You're not going to see a single dumbbell front squat. It'll be a thruster or an overhead clean and jerk. So your both arms will have to work at some point.
I don't think you'll see the step up. It's possible. That's why I leave myself an out there, like 75, 20 5%. It will be something that with one arm is going to eventually go above your head. And I don't think you'll see the dumbbell sash. They already repeated that we've already done it three times.
We've done the hand clean jerk. Just one time. We've never done a single arm dumbbell. So I think that's what we should prepare for something with that dumbbell. That's going to be going above your head. So that,
[00:14:12] Sam Rhee: that is what you speculate would be the new movement is something like a
[00:14:15] David Syvertsen: single arm. Yeah. A single arm thruster or the single arm devil's press, which what we practiced last week.
I think there's, I think it's a very good movement for a fitness test runs. There's a lot that goes on into it and there are little subtle ways to go a little bit faster, a little quicker, but it's really just comes down to capacity. Just being able to do big sets.
And I think that are, do them while
[00:14:32] Sam Rhee: you're tired. I agree. I think if there's going to be a new movement with a dumbbell devil's presses my,
[00:14:37] David Syvertsen: my guests. Okay. Yeah. A lot of times the new movement in the open has revolved around the. And just so just be prepared for that.
[00:14:44] Sam Rhee: And then the standard barbell and bumper plates are also part of the open as well.
[00:14:49] David Syvertsen: Yeah. So the question I get a lot on this is what is standard plates like? These are trying to guess, how much weight do you need? A standard set only brings you to. I mean in my eyes, you don't look at four, you don't get 4 25. She got one of everything. So that would, the max that would go up to is around two 50. But I think last year, they had that max lift and some people are going well above 300 pounds. Some of the guys are going well about 300 pounds. Does that mean that we won't see a max lift when they just say you need a standard set of plates and bars in my eyes?
Yes. I think we're not going to see a max lift. I think we might see an ascending weight workout where it starts off flight. Everyone can do it. And then at some point your strength kinda, you get to a barbell, you can't lift. So you, that respect of person found their max, but, or failed to go for a max. But last year we got an actual one rep max of that complex.
I think when they say you need a standard set of plates, I think that's something that would mean that we're not going to have a max lift. What do you think about that? It makes
[00:15:51] Sam Rhee: sense. If we're going along the theme of accessibility, then why would you have a max lift if you're trying to make it accessible for the general populace?
Right? If you want a max lift for the athletes who want to be competitive, throw that in quarter finals, it makes much more sense.
[00:16:09] David Syvertsen: Regard and you could still test strength very much with a standard set of plates.
[00:16:13] Sam Rhee: Absolutely. And you can just add more reps or make them do as many reps with a relatively heavy barbell.
Right?
[00:16:19] David Syvertsen: Exactly.
[00:16:20] Sam Rhee: And w tire them out beforehand and Jack up their heart rate as they normally do. And you could make a. For a guy, 185 pound barbell, feel like
[00:16:29] David Syvertsen: a 2 55 pound barbell, or just say the word smash, it's if you want it, if you want this year's comp this barbell complex to be, a snatch deadlift think about what we did last year.
I don't know if this could really make that much sense. You do a snatch, deadlift, a touch and go snatch a hang snatch, an overhead squat, right? Something like, you're not going to need more than, a standard set of plates for that.
[00:16:51] Sam Rhee: Do you remember if they've ever programmed a Sumo deadlift high pole?
Never. So do you think they
[00:16:55] David Syvertsen: could, they could. It is. That's something that's always crossed my mind. And because that's a very old school CrossFit Mo movement, it's been around a long time. They still program it. If you ever listen to some of these guys, that program cap, or just old school crossers in general, they program Summa Del five all the time.
And it is when it's done correctly and safely like anything, it's a quality move. And a lot of people in our gym hate it, but hate it. Yeah. It's awkward. I think part of the reason why people hate it here is we just don't do it often. So when it comes up, it just feels awkward. But I'll say it's a really tough movement to standardize.
In my eyes, it's simple. Get the bar to the ground, get the bar in line with your clavicle. That's your collarbone people. All right. It's not your rib cage. Okay. But when you do sumos, that's where the bar is supposed to reach your collarbone. When I watched the gym. I would say three out of 10 people get it up there every time.
Some of them just don't have that ability, like the mobility in their shoulder to open it up so they can only get to about their chest and they don't want to get hurt. So they bring it right back down. But then I'm in my head, I'm saying that's the same standard as squad. There's not an objective thing that gets touched it's there's like a pretend line that your hip needs to get below before you stand back up.
So from that regard, it's a similar complexity in terms of the standard is trying to get that barbell up to your collarbone. So do I think you could see it? Absolutely. What do you think?
[00:18:16] Sam Rhee: I hope not. I hate that feeling because I have my left shoulder mobility. Isn't great. And to be immediately rotated and yeah.
Paul. I know I'm supposed to use my glutes and hips to really drive the barbell up. Yup. But when you get tired, you just end up starting to pull with your arm and that's a recipe for
[00:18:36] David Syvertsen: injury. I think it doesn't look like a dangerous movement compared to a snatch put it banks people up the move,
[00:18:41] Sam Rhee: the shoulder.
The other thing is it's even worse for me if it's light, because then I feel like I can really use my shoulder. A heavy Sumo deadlift. Isn't so bad because I know I have to use my legs.
[00:18:51] David Syvertsen: So we'll see. Yup.
[00:18:52] Sam Rhee: Plyo box. 24, 20 inch box with at least a 15 by 15 inch tops.
[00:18:57] David Syvertsen: Yeah. Don't I didn't want to freak out about that 15 by 15, like a very, a standard box meets that requirement.
The reason they have, they say that there are some of these boxes that I only, I feel like I only see these, like at global gyms where they go up on a very significant. Slant from the ground and the surface in which your foot is actually touching on the box is very small. What that does is if you're going to be doing a jump over motion, burpee box, jump over lateral Bosch, jump over, or just a box jump over that person that has a really small box is traveling a much lesser distance than our standard box.
I remember at legends two years ago, we did a workout with ascending squat cleans and. and it was a box I've never seen before. It was an extra wide box. So you would basically jump onto the box and have to take two steps to walk to the other side. It was weird. And I, what I liked about it, it felt stable.
You never felt like you were going to trip. It was one of those black boxes and some of those black boxes, they feel unstable when you get on them. I think that's purpose of it was just wider so that you didn't feel like you were going to fall. But it slowed down the motion a lot. And I just remember thinking.
That man. That's why they say you need to have a certain width at the top of your box is you can't have this advantage that it's so small, that it's easy for you to get on and off.
[00:20:16] Sam Rhee: they have the standard movements. Obviously we're going to assume like a burpee box jump over box jumps, step ups, step overs.
Is there anything new that they could do with a box that we wouldn't anticipate?
[00:20:25] David Syvertsen: A dumbbell step up. But we've been working on right now it's Sunday, tomorrow's workout. We had the double dumbbell step over, which is gonna be terrible. I think you could see something like that.
Could they ever standardize something where it's gotta be a lateral box, jump over? Maybe like you have to jump sideways. That's like a little bit of a different test, a little bit more demanding on the hips, maybe something like that. It old school CrossFit that beginning at first you opens when you had box jumps, it was just a standard box jump, right?
You face the box, you jump off, you come off. It was a really tough standard to uphold. I don't think they've done normal boxes. And well, they did it about three, four years ago, but they gave a step-up option that pistol workout, but it's a really tough standard for people to watch. Like this, someone actually stand all the way up on the box.
Whereas if you did a jump over right or Barbie box, jump over, there is no standard to step on the box. You just had to get on your feet. And the box gets the other side. I like that better because it makes it easier to standard. So that's another thing. A lot of people also, I'm not big on rebounding on box jumps.
I used to, and I think it bangs up your cast and your Achilles pretty bad. And that used to be a pretty common injury and cross it is the Achilles. Yeah. And when you're doing a workout that as a hundred box jumps in it, and you're jumping on what rebounding is, as you jump onto the box. And then you jump off the box and the second your feet hit the ground, you jumped right back up, so it's almost like you're jumping on a trampoline, but you're not, you're jumping on hard rubber, and most people can't handle that joint wise. There's been a lot of people that have blown their Achilles out from that motion. That's something I hope that we don't see is just a normal box jump workout.
.
[00:21:56] Sam Rhee: That's something that basketball players get a lot. And one of the worst I ever saw was a YouTube video of LTE. Blowing out or Achilles.
[00:22:03] David Syvertsen: Yeah. Doing a rebound box. Julia Fisher. I remember watching it. I'm watching her blow at her Achilles. I've seen guys do it. I've been at accomplish some blood.
Blether Achilles doing it. Our the odds are so low that it would happen to you, but it's just, again, if you're trying to make fitness tests, that makes sense, because this is the first stage of competition, but also doing your best to protect the people that are doing it, the masses that are doing it, that doing the jump overs solves a big part of that issue.
[00:22:29] Sam Rhee: Pull up bars. It says, pull up bars that allow for all common hanging movements and kipping.
[00:22:36] David Syvertsen: So what does that mean? So obviously pull up those bar and the common question. Open gym Sunday, everyone working on muscle-ups right. Will it be muscle-ups in the open? I think there will be, but then that terminology that they put in that post all hanging and kipping motions that didn't say anything about overhead clearance and a lot of times.
When these online competitions or these online qualifiers, they will tell you, Hey, pull up bar that you have enough space to KIPP, but also enough overhead clearance to get onto the bar and do the top half of the muscle, the dip. It didn't note that. And it made me think it's very possible. There will be no muscle-ups in the open.
Yeah. Cause a
[00:23:17] Sam Rhee: lot of people, when you install it in your garage, like I have a pull-up bar in my garage. I am very short, so I barely can do a bar muscle up in there. But very few people have that clearance. And if they don't specify it, I almost feel they're not going to put
[00:23:31] David Syvertsen: bar muscle ups.
Yeah. I'm. I'm leaning towards you and think that you have a pretty high ceiling in your garage. A lot of garages don't have that, especially if , you know, your tradition. Garage gym set up the pull up bars near the wall. If the ceiling has a slant to it, you're still not getting to the apex of the roof right.
At the top of your pull-up bar. I think this will be the first, if they don't put Muslims in the open, this will be the first time maybe ever that they don't. And I think it makes sense. You don't need to put myself in the open, I think it's just, we're so used to it but I think we can definitely see.
Plenty of difficult open workouts with kipping and all that. And gymnastics capacity tests. That don't have muscle-ups sure Tosta
[00:24:10] Sam Rhee: bar will still kill you. A regular pull-ups chest to bar strict pull-ups are strict. Pull-ups
[00:24:14] David Syvertsen: going to be in the open. It's too hard to standardize my opinion. It's like strict press
you tell people not to move their heads when they're shook, press, it's a subtle, or they bounce it off their leg, their chest. I don't think you'll see it strict. Pull-ups no. One jump rope. Yeah. Pretty self-explanatory the question we get every year is will there ever be triple on?
There's a new man? I think we're good there guys. I don't think you'll see that in in the games or semifinals before. They are finding ways to make jump rope more difficult in sport setting the drag rope, the way to jump rope. But I think for the open, it's just always going to be double unders and trust me, I know some guys that and girls that are very good at double unders.
And everyone's got a threshold that you just can't get past. That one open workout from 2018 that had a movement, a hundred double unders movement, a hundred double and there's movement, a hundred double unders, like that was the flow for the entire workout. And even guys and girls that were very good at doing.
They hit a breaking point, and it's one of those movements where it can make anything more difficult just because the heart rate checks up so high, we have jump
[00:25:15] Sam Rhee: ropes in our gym, but this is probably the one piece of equipment I would tell athletes, go get your own jump rope. Yep. It makes such a big difference.
. Even if you have no interest in learning how to do a double under the fact that you have your own jump rope, that is customized to you, you can travel with it. It's. Even if you get one of the super fancy ones that's expensive, it's still only 30, 40 bucks.
[00:25:36] David Syvertsen: Just get it. Yeah. And what also, another thing for you to think about if you're someone that just comes to the gym and gets their jump rope we've probably have 50 of them here.
What if someone else gets it before you, that's another disadvantage, right? What if Sam and I both use that jump rope with a gold handle. And then he gets here before me on open day and he gets it like Dwight, I'm kind of thrown off now. I don't know what to use and that I agree with Sam, if there was one thing that I would tell people.
We usually don't want to spend the money or just don't want to deal with it. It's a jump rope wall
[00:26:05] Sam Rhee: space. It says open wall
[00:26:06] David Syvertsen: space. We're going upside down. I think everyone should plan on that. And you have three options here. Oh, let's probably four. All right. But it's probably going to be one of three. Option number one wall walks. I did not see that coming. I'll admit that last year. That totally caught me off guard. Nobody saw it coming. Yeah. We could definitely, and no, what I do think CrossFit traditionally likes to do things like this, like, all right, cool. We surprised everybody with wild walks last year.
Did you get any better out on this year? Probably not. I didn't practice them very often. No. So that's going to be something that they like to do. They're like, we threw this at you. It should now be part of your gyms programming every now and then. Let's see what you got, B as last year, I'll tell you what, that was probably the first serious wall walk, workout.
A lot of people did. I've run. We've done them in the past, but nothing like with increasing volume like that. And I think that's something cross it generally is, get tested. Cool. Let's get tested again. So it might not be the same workout. I hope it's not. I hope they don't do the same workout because now that you only have three workouts, I don't want to see repeats.
Don't they
[00:27:09] Sam Rhee: usually have a repeat though every year.
[00:27:11] David Syvertsen: Pretty sure they've done a repeat every single year, but that was when Castro is in business. So that's another kind of curve ball that we don't really know what to expect. Not that it matters that much, but who's programmed the open workouts, I think that's, if I had to guess, we're probably going to see wall walks again.
How would you feel about it?
[00:27:27] Sam Rhee: I hate them. Yeah, I can do them. I don't know if I would do better other than the fact that I would know how to pace it better this year. I could see it being a repeat. It was a double under wall walk workout, right?
[00:27:37] David Syvertsen: Yep. Yep. Ascending reps on
[00:27:39] Sam Rhee: both.
I was speculating. Actually one of the new movements might be a burpee to the lateral burpee touching the wall. Okay. So I saw that in a workout. I can't remember which qualifier workout or there was something
[00:27:50] David Syvertsen: that I saw that in. I think it was the online version of the games from two years ago. Yes. Yeah.
And when was it?
[00:27:59] Sam Rhee: They have to jump high. So they had to mark and then mark, some amount above their hand. And every time they did a burpee, they would have to jump and touch. Yeah. And that was very challenging for those athletes and it was very different than a burpee to target. Okay.
[00:28:12] David Syvertsen: That I didn't even think that's that's a good outside the box thought process right there.
We'll see. So you have the wall walk, you have the burpee to the target. And then the question is, will they throw handstand pushups back in? So yeah, you could see handsome pushups. Again, you could see the regular strict and Sam pushup, which bison has been working on for a long time now.
And on that is basically, there's no standard for where your feet need to get to in the line. You could see the kipping handstand pushup, which has been another sour point with a lot of affiliates because. To try to verbally talk you through this standard, it's kind of tough, but basically based on your size, your arm length, you have, there's going to be a line on the wall that everyone needs to get individually measured for.
And then you go upside down, you do your handstand pushup, and your feet need to get beyond that line. And there's been a lot of weird controversy behind the actual standard that kind of centers around a few, have some like shoulder tension. You have a, some lockout. You just can't get your feet up there or you'd have to, wait an extra three seconds at the top of every rep to try to just get your feet to that line.
And I'll tell you what, it's a pain in the ass to measure out every single person and you've got lines along your wall. I noticed this last year, That in the age on lawn qualifier, there was kipping, handstand push-ups and workout, and there was no line standard. They've just said, Hey, your hands have to be inside this box on the ground.
And you have to reach full lockout at the top. And they've
[00:29:33] Sam Rhee: used that standard for the games and for other competition. Yeah. So I think they're just simplifying and
[00:29:38] David Syvertsen: I think that's the way to do it. If they want to do handsome pushups, I hope that's what the standard is. Just, let us as owners and coaches, really try to enforce the elbow lockout, which, half the gyms don't have the gyms do.
Yeah, that's their problem. And then the last thing I'll say is you could throw a depths at hand sandwich. That's been the age online qualifier before it's not very inclusive, but it could be something where round one through three is regular handstand. Then rounds four through six is the deficit, that would be a little bit hard to set up.
So again, I don't think we'll see it, but just be prepared for it.
[00:30:08] Sam Rhee: I remember that in the Ajo Q and they threw some shoulder. Dumbbell work before that. And it just
[00:30:15] David Syvertsen: was fried your shoulder. Yeah. It's a very, it's a different demand.
[00:30:18] Sam Rhee: In terms of body weight movements, we probably will see burpees.
[00:30:22] David Syvertsen: Yep. Pistols. Definitely. I would love to see in the open pushups they've done hand release push-ups before. It's not even the elbows locking out. That's a pretty simple standard. And if you do Hamleys, you're not gonna have any of these, bro pushups where these guys go halfway down and yes, I'm saying guys not girls, whose guys are always the guilty culprits there.
I think it's more has to do with, it's hard to standardize someone's hips coming up as they do a pushup inch warming, right? Like inch warming. A lot of people do. I remember there was a time years ago. I took a video of everyone. I coached doing pushups, and I remember sending that to them just so they could see it.
Wasn't like a hot, you suck look at that. I was just wanting them to see how they were moving. And so many people were, wow, I did not know. I moved like that when I did pushups. I don't think we'll see pushups in the open air squats could cause the air squats jumping air squats, maybe just to enforce the fact that you are getting all the way up.
Another body weight movement. Step over. We were to talk about the box step over to the box. There's so many different versions of the burpee you can do, I guess you could consider all this gymnastic stuff, body weight as well. And remember guys, we've talked about this in the past, over half the movements traditionally in the opener.
You're not moving any exterior load, so this is something you should always keep. Yeah.
[00:31:30] Sam Rhee: Let's talk about that. You have some thoughts about what these open workouts would be like in terms of time domain and
[00:31:37] David Syvertsen: composition. Yep. Yeah. I've done a little case study on every single open workout.
And again, Dave Castro did program all of them, but I think they, they're gonna use his flow. A lot of the guys that are programming now are, Dave Castro disciples. And I think you'll probably see the similar feel. The average length of an open workout is 12 to 13 minutes. That's something that you should always keep in mind.
It gets a little subjective now that there's a lot of four time workouts, in the first few years of the open that everything was an Amorette so that you knew how long everyone's going to work for. Now, there's some workouts that, all right, it's going to take this person. That's a little bit faster, nine minutes, and that person got capped out at 18.
But just generally speaking, be prepared to work hard for 12 to 13. Another thing is the average volume of open workout. Again, little subjective use of Amwraps for time between 200 and 220 workout reps. You will probably see a workout that has a much lesser volume, but the movement's more difficult.
But then you might see a workout that has up to 300 reps and I always quantify a double unders as one rep for every four double unders. Oh. So just all if a hundred double unders I count that as 25 reps, just so you know, just for the sake of time and loading and how complex the movie.
So that's those are the two things, all right. 12 to 13 minutes, 200 to 220 reps. And that's something that can maybe help some, you guys prepare. How do you respond to that? Do you get through a hundred reps really well, and then you fall apart. All right. You gotta do a little bit better job pacing, can you get to 150 reps than fall apart?
That kind of thing. There's usually one heavy test. All right. And they're always lifting under duress and you usually don't have a lot of. There's a thought here that, know, I get the asked every year. A lot of people wish it's always the lifters that say this. They wish that there was heavier stuff.
And I'm like, Hey, you're probably going to get one shot to lift having the open. So just keep that in mind when you're working on stuff throughout the year, when you're trying to decide between this and that, just keep in mind that gets tested once an open and the max lift, I think has only happened three.
But there have been several other workouts where the weights go up as you get more fatigued and then you eventually get to a bar that you either can't lift or you just didn't have enough time to lift it.
[00:33:45] Sam Rhee: It seems like they always want you to lift tired or with your heart rate elevated. Like they won't let you lift just
[00:33:52] David Syvertsen: fresh.
Yeah. On the next stage has done it. Last year. One of the events was a four at max front squat. You have 20 minutes. I don't think you're going to see that in the open. It's just not, I don't know. It doesn't feel very cross-city right. When they tell you to go to Iraq and go live for 20 minutes. It would be cool if they said.
Three at max back squat, I have to say a prayer that don't get hurt, but it would be cool to lift that in that kind of environment and have it mean something but a big part across it's back to the original days across at OJI cross. It is if you're strong, cool. If you're not strong, but if you can't maintain strength, when you're tired, it's not very functional.
I think there's still like a tie to CrossFit, functional fitness, be fit in the gym so that you can be fit outside the gym. And I think that's a big part of why they do that. Yeah, I had that also max lifts have been occurred on under 10% of the, all the open tests. Just think about that.
Under 10% of all the open tests max lifts has been tested. There's more body weight than exterior load. So if you take every single movement in the open, there are more movements that don't require exterior load than there are movements that have an exterior load so keep that in mind, we talked about that.
What someone's training approach should be throughout the course of the year is if you can get better at moving your body, you will perform better than the, and by definition,
[00:35:04] Sam Rhee: that is what most people will qualify fitness as not being able to squat 800 pounds, but being able to move your body repetitively because every day that's what you're often doing.
And especially as you get older, you want to be able to maintain moving your body.
[00:35:20] David Syvertsen: , there's two more here. I'm just going to say capacity, right? Gymnastics capacity, aerobic capacity . If you had to come up with one foundation of what the open test, that's it right there is how well can you manage your heart rate and breathing while do while doing movements and gymnastics capacity is usually at some point where you can do stuff on broken or don't always obsess over unbroken is can you do a set of pull-ups those who are.
Burpees even pistols, right? Without it jacking, you're hurried up so much that you can't move on to another movement that is complimentary meaning different. So you should be able to do it muscle wise.
[00:35:57] Sam Rhee: It always seems that was one of Dave Castro. Things that would make him so great at this was he always paired things that really challenged you.
And they weren't complicated. It was just like you said, one, two or three movements tops, and they just wrecked you, even though it looked like it wouldn't wreck
[00:36:14] David Syvertsen: you. Couplets and triplets, right? A couplet is ORC out with two movements. A triplet is a movement with three movements.
That's over 80% of open. what that does, what Sam was just saying is that alone increases intensity is being able to try to be repetitive as you get more and more fatigued, our gym loves workouts that have five movements. Again, I get notes about it all the time. I love that workout.
You're just always doing something different. That's a mental stimulation. And you feel like full body, like your arms are tired, your legs are tired. Abs are tired right now. If you really want to find capacity with some. And that's what this is. That's what the worldwide rank is that's how you do it is you don't put a lot of different movements in wall balls and deadlifts, for example, 15 minutes of that, or nine minutes of that, even just going back and forth.
I think about Friday's workout feed. We just got done with that wall ball, single dumbbell, double press I watched it, I did it. I watched four or five classes do it. I did it myself. Everyone looked and felt probably the same after, around there too. But because you were only doing those two things and at a pretty intense rate, you eventually find your capacity.
You can't do the 10 wall walls in a row anymore, or you have to take an extra long rest or you start to really start laying on the ground on devil's press. That is what capacity is. That's where it gets tested, and it's a really interesting, simple way to test
[00:37:31] Sam Rhee: people. Yeah. And it's accessible because these are not workouts.
You're going to hurt yourself . But it's hard. Yeah. Same with a single dumbbell. You find at a point at which you can't do more or you think you can't do more, your
[00:37:47] David Syvertsen: rate slows down. Yeah. And that's
[00:37:49] Sam Rhee: where I think CrossFit. Magic is where is that capacity for you? How do you overcome what you think are your limits of capacity?
[00:37:58] David Syvertsen: We've both been there on the wall ball before, right? Like a wobble it's simple. I tell people all the time I've seen people get no wrapped on elbows. I've got no wrapped on balls. But I don't think I've ever really seen that much failure on a wall ball or failure on a devil's press or failure on a burpee.
So in my head, I talked to myself all the time, while I'm training, especially on a work, like a test type workout, I'm not going to fail this. Just keep going. Every time it got to like the like eight, nine, 10th round of that wall ball workout, I was like, dude, I am smoked right now, but I know I'm not going to fail this.
Your mind starts to take over. And that's really what these open workouts are like. It is worth trying to go into that place for these three weeks.
[00:38:34] Sam Rhee: I hope that we have picked some of the movement. Might be new in
[00:38:39] David Syvertsen: here. What about new elements?
What do you think? So I have two ideas. We're going to practice this at bison. This upcoming Friday is this is just a random guest, by the way, basically you have two workouts that he sends you and you get to choose which one you do first. But the cap is really tough. Meaning most people will not finish under the cap.
So you have to make a decision. On which one you should do first that, you can maximize the amount of reps that you're going to get in the time. But that both workouts have to have the same amount of reps in them. , 12 reps per round in the workout that we're coming up with.
And one of them's a little bit heavier. One of them's a little bit like. They both have burpees in it. One of them is a more complicated burpee. One. It's an easier kind of burpee and what it does. Castro introduce a concept, an element to the open two years ago, where he said, here's how many balls you have to do?
Here's how many Cal roll you have to do? Here's how many ring muscle-ups you have? Break it up, however you want see you later. That was one of my favorite open tests in that it made people put some thought into it because sometimes I think CrossFitters are very robotic. They're just so used to coming in.
What's the word? What's the M rep, how many reps? Okay, bye. It's no, you figure it out. You tell me what's your fastest way. I remember at talking to people, like, why'd you do that? And I really want it to hear feedback because you can start to realize, well, I really I'm good at wall balls when I'm tired and I can always, battle through a row, but my ring muscle ups, when I'm tired, I lose them.
So I want to bang out big sets there, or I want it to end on the row because I know I can just will myself through it, and I think that's a huge part of CrossFit and fitness and life in general is that you got to figure some stuff. And you can't always be told what to do. You have to figure some of this stuff out for you to reach your maximum potential.
You think about that kind of format
[00:40:24] Sam Rhee: I loved it. I felt like there was a lot of controversy with that format in the sense that people who were purists felt. A workout supposed to have a stimulus, right? This is not a workout with a specified stimulus. It's almost a athletes choose what your stimulus is based on your capability.
You can argue whether that's truly what good programming is or is not right. I will say that it does force you to think about programming. For yourself. Which I think everyone should. Yeah. And the thing that was great about it is that your strategy was totally different than my strategy.
I remember looking up 15 different strategies before doing that workout and trying to figure out which one worked best for me. And I don't know if I did. I think if I were to do that one again, I would actually choose a different strategy. And maybe if I were. Doing it now I have different capabilities, so I would choose it even a more different strategy.
So I think that was great. I think it was a little mind blowing for
[00:41:27] David Syvertsen: people. I don't know if they're going to throw that back in there again. So another thing that that, that format did with those movements is it gave a lot of people that don't have ring muscle ups. It was like, Hey, you could still go do it RX.
You just ignore the muscle ups. Go do a wall ball, real workout at the end, you get to play with the muscle up a little bit, so again, it's another way of saying. Hey, we have to get these muscle-ups. And because at the end of the day, there is a competition to some people we have to let them go play.
You have to, it can't just be about being inclusive. And so you have to try to find that middle line, and it's very difficult to do. It's difficult to do here with our gym at let alone 400,000 people around the world that have doing the workout. Another element could be, I don't know if this would work, but they just give you two different workouts and you pick one of them to do choose your own workout, right?
Or it could be. Let's say it could be like, let's just use the workout. Diane. All right. Della is 2159 delis enhancement pushups. They'll either let you do the 2159 or you do the F 45 45, do $45 45 handstand pushups. What do you think about that different tests? Unique. Yeah, that would definitely be a new element.
Yeah. And yeah that's, those are the only things I really came up with in terms of no new elements. Do you
[00:42:43] Sam Rhee: think they're going to do a double-wide again, like they did 21.3 and then 21.4, where you question a first part of the workout and then a second part of the workout with a second
[00:42:51] David Syvertsen: score.
Yeah. Just because I think, getting three scores. It's not a lot for a fitness test. I would always, that's what I liked about the open the past. Over the course of five weeks, you truly found out like the fittest in three, you really, you can get lucky or unlucky with like very lucky or very unlucky with three workouts.
But I think the more workouts you see the truth comes out. So I would like to see at least something with with that. And that could be another element, right? Is every time they've done a. And then, 21, 21, sorry, 21.3 and the 21.3 a it's always been a lift after what if they had you go through a workout?
And then they said, all right, max muscle ups in two minutes, max pull-ups in two minutes. Oh yeah. Instead of it only being a lift, right? Why can't it be something like a gymnastics capacity test while you're tired?
[00:43:44] Sam Rhee: Love that idea. And I feel like that would be something they might actually do.
[00:43:48] David Syvertsen: Cool. Yeah. Anything else on this?
[00:43:50] Sam Rhee: I feel we could really go so deep in terms of the programming. Yeah. But that would be
[00:43:55] David Syvertsen: another hour. Okay. For sure. I think what Sam and I, we haven't even talked about this. Yes. But I think we'll probably do something podcast related around each open workout.
We're not sure if it will be the Thursday night, like last year, or maybe we could do like a little recap on a Sunday. And just dive into the programming and then also what to expect, because once the open workout comes out, you can start narrowing down what will come up. We knew after two opens last week that we're definitely going to be on the rig on the third week.
We're definitely going to see something heavy. That's something that we can probably do for you guys. As the open progresses
