5 Reasons to Participate in the CrossFit Open

The CrossFit Open is here! Every Friday for the next three weeks, we will do the Open workouts together. Maybe you're an Open veteran and know exactly what you hope to accomplish, awesome! On the other hand, maybe you’re new to the CrossFit community and unsure of what the Open means. That’s cool, too.

Regardless of how long you’ve been at CrossFit, participating in the Open is beneficial for a number of reasons. “But how,” you ask. Well, below are 5 good reasons to participate in the Open as well as a few tips for the first-timers among us.

Why You Should Participate in the CrossFit Open

Enjoy the Sanctify Community

The Open is a chance for our gym community to bond by way of a little suffering and a lot of accomplishment. We work out alongside one another, support and cheer for each other, and get to know one another better. Though the situation is quite different this year, throughout the weeks of the Open, our community makes an effort to socialize and mingle a little more. For new members, the Open is often when they begin to feel more integrated into the Sanctify community.

Develop a Training Focus

Like a runner trains for a race, the CrossFit Open gives you a focus in your training. If you’ve been doing CrossFit for some time, the Open is an opportunity to test your fitness and skills. Even if you are new to CrossFit, your performance can indicate where you are at a given point in time, and it becomes something against which you can compare your progress over time. Used as a focus for training, the Open can serve as a source of motivation throughout the year. These workouts are measurable and repeatable and likely will come up again in our programming. Use the Open to establish some personal benchmarks and to set a few training goals for the upcoming year.

Explore your Competitive Side

Within the context of our everyday training, having only a competition mindset can be detrimental to progress. However, on occasion, it can be productive to embrace our competitive side. Competition can reveal capabilities we didn’t know existed, and as a result, build confidence. A competitive atmosphere shakes us out of our comfort zone and gives us a reason to push harder. We are all competitive to a certain degree, and part of us craves the thrill of competition, even if we are only competing with our own past performances.

Build Mental Toughness

The Open workouts are never easy. They are intended to test you. Open workouts are meant to be completed at a high level of intensity and are apt to include heavy loads, high skill movements, and/or a high volume of reps. Sometimes a fast conditioning piece is followed by a one-rep-max strength effort. Or, higher skill lifts and gymnastic movements, such as snatches, double-unders, or muscle-ups, follow on the heels of a fatiguing set of strength focused movements. Mercifully, there is always a time cap to stem the suffering. Nevertheless, what at first seems manageable on paper, in reality can sneak up on you. You will have to draw on the mental toughness you’ve been cultivating throughout the year to push through to the end.

Gain an Appreciation for the Sport of CrossFit

The CrossFit Open has always been an essential component of the CrossFit Games. In previous years, it was how competitive athletes who aspired to make the Games qualified for Regionals, which was the last step in winning one of the 40 spots (for each gender) at the Games. For the tiny fraction of individuals capable of competing in the CrossFit Games (0.17 percent of Open participants make it to the Games), the stakes are very high.

During the Open, we do the same workouts as the elite athletes in the sport of CrossFit. This gives us unique insight into what it takes to perform at the elite level. When you consider how hard you struggle to complete each of the Open workouts, the fitness of elite CrossFit athletes is put in perspective. In short, our experience doing the Open workouts allows us to appreciate their efforts, and hopefully, they inspire us in our personal pursuit of fitness.

Josh doing a workout in the 2018 CrossFit Open.

How to Approach the CrossFit Open if You’re a First-timer

Embrace Scaling

Most of us, even the most experienced among us, need to scale workouts from time to time. And still, most of us could learn to scale our workouts better to avoid injury and support performance. Rationally we know this, and yet our tendency is to view scaling negatively. Scaling, we believe, implies not meeting a particular standard, or it suggests deficiency. On the contrary, scaling a workout to meet your ability and fitness level is essential to building lifelong fitness. It takes time--a lot of time--to develop the strength and skill to perform every CrossFit workout Rx, particularly Open workouts. Be willing to acknowledge when it makes sense to scale, practice humility, and do your best with what you have. No one else in the room cares, trust me!

Don’t Worry about Strategy

When you see a workout for the first time, it’s tempting to begin formulating a strategy. Undoubtedly, you will hear others discussing their strategies of when/where to break up reps and what movements are more or less efficient. Discussions around strategy can make it seem as if your performance hinges on small strategy choices. If this is your first Open, and you are not looking to make it to the next level of competition, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Beyond deciding when and what to scale and how to pace a workout, focusing on strategy is unnecessary and can create additional stress. If you have questions about how to approach a workout, ask a coach. Then, find a kind person in class to count your reps and judge your movements, and finally, give the workout your very best effort. That’s all that’s required.

Set a Goal for Each Workout

Have some idea of what you would like to accomplish in each workout. For example, if the workout is an AMRAP format, consider setting a goal around the number of rounds you would like to complete. If there is a time cap to the workout, perhaps you set as a goal a certain number of reps to complete within the timeframe. If the workout contains a skill you’ve been working on but are not yet proficient at, such as muscle ups, make it a goal to get as many reps as possible; even one rep might be a huge accomplishment. Whatever your circumstances, approach these workouts with an open mindset, and make each workout your own. At the end of the day, you are your only competition.

Use the Open to Set Goals for Next Year

Because the Open is an annual competition, participating is a great way to evaluate your progress from year to year. Next year, you can look back on your performance in this Open and assess how you’ve improved and where you still have work to do. Moreover, if you sign up for the Open through CrossFit, you can compare your performance to others in your division, age group, and area. For example, It’s interesting to know how other CrossFitters in Wisconsin are doing relative to you. Finally, when you compete again in the Open next year, you will have a clear goal: Improve your standing in your age group and division.

Oh hey, it’s me doing the a 2018 workout and looking appropriately miserable.