5 Rounds for time:
20 Front rack lunge steps, 95#(65#)
15 Hang power clean, 95#(65#)
10 Bar facing burpees
Rest 1 minute
*Score is total time, including rest.
Post times to comments and BTWB
Who’s got two thumbs and is ready to crush the Open?!?! I hope it’s all of you. Every week we’ve been posting about the Open, trying to get you ready for what those 5 weeks will be like. But there’s a piece we have yet to really discuss, during the Open we will be required to judge each other during the workouts. That’s right folks, you will be counting the reps and possibly taking some away, to make our scores official. I think this is the hardest part of the Open for some people, for several reasons. First we don’t like to give our friends “no reps”. They look like they are working so hard and plus, it’s close enough, let’s count it. Unfortunately that’s just not something we can think about during the Open. The Open is the test of the hard work put in throughout the year, and in the test “close enough” is not good enough. Don’t think of it as failing an athlete during their test either. You are holding them to the standard they worked at for an entire year, and this could be the feedback for them on how they handle their training in the next year. Second, we are not sure what an athlete is doing that deserves a “no rep”, we are not comfortable knowing movement standards and/ or seeing when those standards are not met. That’s when taking the judge’s course comes in to play.
JUDGMENT DAY
By Brittney Saline
How to manage judging during the Open.
“No rep!”
In less than a month, CrossFit athletes everywhere will echo the two most famous words of CrossFit Games judge Adrian “Boz” Bozman.
We test our fitness in the gym every day, but once a year we keep score on a worldwide whiteboard. The best advance to Regionals and eventually the CrossFit Games, but for most of us, the Open is our Games: a chance to measure our growth, see where we stack up and note what needs improvement.
But how do affiliate owners turn accountants and nurses into Bozmanites fit to scrutinize the squat?
It’s not that athletes don’t try hard in regular classes—CrossFit is not known for attracting people who give less than 100 percent—but rather that having every rep judged can alert athletes to issues they didn’t know were there. For example, Update Show host Pat Sherwood needed a check-up himself back in 2013.
“I think sometimes people don’t know necessarily that they are cheating range of motion,” said Erica Folk, owner of CrossFit Warrior RX in Crystal City, Missouri.
Of course, good coaches point out movement faults every day in class, but they usually work in a group setting and don’t see every rep. But the constant eyes of a judge and five consecutive no-reps will definitely make you get below parallel during Karen.
“You get a little soft with people sometimes during classes,” said Todd Seabaugh, owner of CrossFit St. Louis in Missouri. “You say, ‘Get deeper, get deeper,’ but you don’t really no-rep them in a class. But (being judged in the Open) causes them to think a little more about full range of motion in regular class, and so you see everybody step up their game in classes as well.”
It’s a lesson that benefits both the judge and the judged, said Motier Haskins, an athlete who trains at CrossFit Beyond in Albany, New York. He’s done the Open for the past three years and has been a judge for the previous two.
“I have learned a lot from being a judge,” he said. “I have had to remind and no-rep someone on movement standards, and within those moments I realize that I, myself, do the same thing.”
So how do you train a judge?
Dan Murdock, of Process CrossFit in Oneonta, New York, encourages all his athletes—whether they plan on judging or not—to take the online CrossFit Judges Course. Process is the only CrossFit affiliate in a 60-mile radius, so Murdock said the course helps his members realize they are part of something bigger and gives context to the Open.
“I like to let (members) know that our programming is part of the whole CrossFit picture, the bigger picture,” he said. “It kind of reinforces what they’ve learned, and they understand the standard is across all CrossFit. It’s not just me being a prick.”
The course can also help athletes connect the dots between their movements and a coach’s directives, said Sean Mast, owner of Average Joe’s CrossFit in Navarre, Florida.
“Because then when we cue them on specific faults, they are better able to understand what we’re cueing them for or faulting them for,” he said.
CrossFit St. Louis has sent a team to the North Central and Central Regionals every year since 2014, and for Seabaugh, the Judges Course is the best way to make sure the right athletes make the cut.
“We want to make sure that the judging is pretty pure, because you don’t want somebody in the gym who really doesn’t deserve to make the team … disappoint when they get to Regionals,” he said.
If you are participating in the Open, you will be judged. And you will more than likely be asked to judge someone else. Do you want to make sure you are comfortable making the game day call? Do you want to feel comfortable knowing the person judging you is making the right game day call? Then everyone needs to take the judge’s course. It has several pieces to it and it can be saved along the way, so take 10 minutes a day for the next 5 days and work through it. Or sit for an hour and take it in one shot, but please take it. When you are done, please print your certificate of completion and bring it to me, Courtney. Plus, completing the judge’s course gets your Open Team Cup team 2 points!!
Click here for the judge’s course.
