The Open is Over
“Ok, just do ten.”
“Seven is good.”
“Come on, pick up the bar. You’re an athlete!”
“You are definitely NOT an athlete.”
“Butt down, chest up.” (Misses clean.)
“Motherf***in butt!”
“Oh my god, it’s the first thirty seconds and I can’t breathe.”
“Oh my god, I’m not even half way.”
“S*** I only have a minute left!”
“Did somebody move my tape line up? I seriously cannot reach any more.”
“Take three breaths and grab the bar. 1, 2, 3… 4…5….”
These were some of the thoughts going on in the minds of our athletes competing in the Open this year. The Open has potential to be an emotional roller coaster, but here are some reasons why we love it:
The build-up is fun to be a part of. People hang around the gym on Thursday nights to guess the workout, watch the announcement and start strategizing. Update shows are fun to watch. It’s incredible to check out the leaderboard and see what the superhuman athletes did.
The energy in the gym is only this intense once a year. Even though we get to do these workouts at our home box, it is still a competition. Intensity in competition is hard to match in our everyday workouts. Everyone gives 100% efforts. Our friends are there, two feet away, cheering us on and encouraging us to keep moving. One member mentioned it was the first time he has seen the “big dogs” work out at this intensity. The efforts that are apparent in these moments are motivating and drive others to work harder.
People surprise themselves all. the. time. The success stories are some of my favorite things to hear. Athletes get their first chest-to-bar pull ups, toes-to-bar, clean & jerk PRs, muscle ups, the list goes on. This is a time when people persevere. I LOVE seeing people persevere through difficult situations. It is such a phenomenal characteristic to have and it is magnified in times like the Open. Jo Marley has done probably hundreds of muscle up progressions and her first muscle ups (yes, plural) happened in 15.3. Nak couldn’t feel his feet at one point during 15.5 but he got up and finished. Matt Booth did workouts approximately fourteen times until he was sure that was his best effort. In the face of dry-heaving, everyone finished the final workout.
Now, the Open has come to a close. We are back to our normal schedules. Thursdays will no longer be active recovery days. We will stop programming burpees and thrusters in excess. Saturday workouts will be back to normal (I personally missed the Saturday advanced WOD the most.) We now know (or maybe we already knew and have been ignoring it) some blaring weaknesses that were exposed during the Open. We have new goals. We now get to improve. Now is the growing phase. We learned some things about ourselves and now we get to make plans to attack our weaknesses and see how much our hard work will pay off next year.
Congratulations to everyone who participated in the 2015 Reebok CrossFit Open. We sincerely thank you for being part of our lives at CrossFit Albuquerque.
