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Welcome to yet another year of the open. As expected Dave Castro (Director of the CrossFit games) came up with yet another grueling, long, and painful workout.

This year the first Open workout is:

AMRAP 20

• 8 Toes to Bar
• 10 Dumbbell Clean and Jerk
• 14/12 Calorie row

First of all, feel confident going into this workout, as we have worked with the dumbbells, along with toes to bar and rowing in our OPCF workouts.  There is no secret to the strategy of this workout. The biggest thing to think about is setting a good pace and sticking to it. 20 minutes is a long time to keep your motor running and the only way you will get your best score is to pace it.

Start with a good warmup:

Look to prime your body for the movements and get your heart rate up.  Make sure to play around with the dumbbells and see if you can find an efficient movement pattern for the hang clean & jerks.  With both movements, you’ll want to use your lower body to generate power.  Hit some hollow holds/superman holds to prepare especially for toes to bar.  Some quick rowing intervals at your expected workout pace is a good idea as well.  This workout will be very taxing on your grips.

Strategy Considerations:

20 mins will require a steady pace.  Try to relax and settle in for the first 5 minutes or so, avoid going out too fast – then settle in to a consistent pace, staying in motion.

Consider breaking up the toes to bar into small sets, just like in past Open workouts.  Remember that 7+ rounds of this workout will require 56+ total toes to bar.  How do I know how to set a good pace?  Great question.  The best place to start is by thinking about how you deal with these movements in similar workouts.  Luckily we just did a max effort set of toes to bar.  We can use this to set a start range of reps for each set of the toes to bar.  For everyone but games and regional athletes I would recommend breaking your sets, even on the first set, you will thank us later.  If you are very proficient at toes to bar, i.e. can do 25+ in a max rep set, I would recommend breaking these into 2 sets of 4 or a set of 5 and then a set of 3. You may feel like this is overkill on your first set, but breaking up even the first set will help you out not only mentally, but physically, in the future rounds.  This doesn’t mean you should take a big break between sets.  All you need to do is jump off the  bar, shake out your shoulders, then jump back on.  For those of us that don’t quite have 20 unbroken toes to bar, break the reps up even more. 4 sets of 2 or 3-2-2-1 is a good rep scheme. No matter what you choose, you want to pick something that will allow you to take small breaks and not get too fatigued on the toes to bar.

Now that we have the toes to bar figured out, on to the dumbbell clean and jerk.  For most of us, this is not a movement that we are super comfortable with.  For this reason, I would highly recommend coming in and doing some reps of the clean and jerk, even if the weight is less than what you plan to do for the workout.  What we are looking for is to feel as comfortable with the movement as possible without getting fatigued before the actual workout. Once you have a feel for the single arm hang clean and jerk, you will be able to get a feel for how you should pace.  Since you have to do 5 reps on each side, try doing all 5 before putting the dumbbell down.  If you think your grip can’t handle that,  break it up into 2 sets.  Again, try not to take big breaks when switching.  The biggest tip that I can give for this movement is to use your hook grip. It may feel a little odd on a dumbbell,  but it is doable and will absolutely save your grip in this grinder. If you have never used the hook grip with dumbbell, add this to your list of things to go over before the workout starts.   Another tip would be to utilize a push jerk motion, as opposed to a push press, which will help save your shoulder endurance.

The final movement in each round is the rower.  The row is something you will need to simply grind out, but not overdo. Hopefully, as you have been doing the recent OPCF workouts, you know what a comfortable pace is for you to be able to easily maintain a consistent pace and also be able to jump off the rower and jump right into the next movement.  It’s not going to do any good to have a super fast row and then stand there waiting to catch your breath before the next set of toes to bar. If you don’t know what a good rowing workout pace is, I would recommend jumping on a rower before the workout and going all out for 5-10 strokes.  As you are doing this, look at your calorie per hour. A good pace that I try to stick to is 50-60% of this max number. This will probably feel slow, especially the first few rounds, but you should feel as fresh as possible when you jump off the rower. Remember the difference between a 900 cal/hr pace and a 1200 cal/hr pace for 14 calories is 14 seconds. This may sound like a long time, but your slow walk over and break before the toes to bar can easily be over 14 seconds.  Relax your grip on the rower, especially moving back to the catch/flywheel.  Once again, the power on the rower comes from the legs and hips.

Even though you have come up with an awesome game plan for this workout, things always change when you get into it. You might find that you need to break up the toes to bar in smaller sets, that’s ok. Just try and keep moving. The enemy for this workout is going to be standing still and not doing anything.  Transitions will be important: 10 rounds = 30 transitions.  A few wasted seconds here and there will multiply quickly into significant lost time.   Avoid this at all costs. Remember to push yourself, as you probably aren’t going to want to do it again.

Don’t forget a short cool down after the workout, especially for the forearms!

Most of all, have fun, support each other and celebrate your fitness!

Here is week two of the 14 tips to get your best score in the open.  Hopefully you have been thinking about the first 5 and trying to incorporate them into your workouts.

Remember The 40% Rule

I think I first heard about this from an article about Rich Froning.  Apply it to gymnastics – especially Toes-to-Bar.  If your max consecutive TTB is 20, then you really should not be attempting more than 40% of this number, or 8 in this example, at a time.  This works very well, in my experience with many, many Open workouts.  I err to smaller sets as opposed to larger ones, especially at the beginning of an Open workout, for optimum results.

Warm-ups Really Matter

Get that heart rate up to where it will likely be in the workout.  No need to go crazy with this – just do something (I prefer the Assault Bike for a few 20 second sprints), then rest 5 minutes or so before starting the workout.  Remember Open workout 17.5?  Ten rounds of 9 thrusters and 30 double-unders.  If you didn’t warm up properly then this workout got real ugly in a hurry.  Watch experienced rowers before they tackle a 2K test – they are deliberate, spending some time at their desired 2K pace in warmups well before the test begins.

Speaking of the rower, use sprint starts when appropriate on the rower – those of you who are familiar with this know the benefit.  If you want to learn more, talk to one of the OPCF coaches, otherwise we’ll explore this in more detail, along with some other rowing tips, in a future article.

Run Through the Finish Line, Instead of To It.

One of my personal weaknesses.  Don’t slow down in the last 10 seconds, or stop with 3 seconds to go even at the end of a long workout.  Sprint through the line and get that last rep.

Expect and Accept No-Reps

I just accept that my these will happen at some point despite my best efforts, like a missed free throw in basketball.  No need to get angry with my judge, it’s my fault for losing focus.  It’s part of the game, so just let them roll off your back and move on.

Never, Ever Fail a Muscle Up (or Handstand Pushup)

Those of you that have ring or bar muscle ups know that the energy expended on a miss is huge, and will likely impact other elements in a WOD.  It is much more efficient to be conservative with these, so break them down to smaller sets, and move on.

Use Chalk Wisely, or Not at All

This one comes from CrossFit Invictus.  If you must use chalk, keep it at an easy to reach location, like a J-hook, top of a box, or in your pocket.  Not on the floor or in a bucket which just wastes time and energy.

Use Those Green 10# Plates

The 2 green 10-pounders don’t bounce off the floor at a crazy angle.  Super important when you have a lot of barbell reps with 65 or 75 pounds.

Have a Spare Rope Ready for Double-Under Workouts

For competitive workouts, just have a spare nearby in case your rope breaks mid-workout.  At the CrossFit Games they actually provided a spare on the ground next to every competitor station.

Triple-Tie Your Shoes

I still do this before every workout, every time.  The one time I forget this will most certainly result in a double-under disaster.

Hopefully these tips help you prepare for the fun Open season that is upon us.  Good luck and enjoy!

With the 2018 Reebok CrossFit Games Open upon us, we thought it would be good to give you some pointers to help you get the best score that you can.  Who better to give those tips than our very own 2x CrossFit Games competitor, Coach Perry.

Here’s a few thoughts that might help you get your best result – and don’t worry, none of these tips require more volume or intensity in your current training.

Strive for Zero Transitions 

A sure-fire way to improve your score.  You can strategize how to attack a set of wall balls or toes-to-bar, but how about actively planning for the transitions between those movements?  Reviewing video is really eye-opening.  It is truly stunning how much time is wasted by being lazy on a movement transition.  Many of my Open workout re-dos feature reducing transition times more than attacking the actual work differently.

A great example of how transitions really matter: 2016 Master’s Qualifier Event 3:

AMRAP 15:

55 Double-Unders

15 Chest-to-Bar Pull-Ups

5  Hang Power Cleans 155#

At roughly 6 rounds of work, this workout contained 15 different transitions between movements.  Being a bit slow (say 2 seconds wasted) per transition results in about 30 seconds of idle time.  Think of how many reps, especially of DU’s, could be gained in that time.  The plan was to stay consistent with purposeful, tight transitions, between the 3 movements.  That WOD turned out to be my best Qualifier result for that particular year, even though I did all (90) C2Bs and the Hang Power Cleans as singles.

Carefully think through the equipment set-up.  For three different movements, you should form the smallest “triangle” possible, minimizing walking around time.  Just getting started on the next movement will give you a mental boost as well, even if you need to break up the work.

Fast Singles Are Your Friend

The example of that 2016 Masters Qualifier workout brings up another important tip – “Fast Singles are Your Friend”.  This works especially well for longer time domains.  Workouts with big chunks of bar movements like C2B, pull-ups, toes-to-bar, and even muscle ups come to mind here.  You know at some point you just are not going to be able to string together even small sets of reps – that’s ok, just go to fast singles.  Staying in motion = knocking out reps.

This tip has saved me over the years in many workouts.  If I can keep moving (and NOT stand around looking at the bar), things will work out just fine.  So the next time you are faced with a set of 50 toes-to-bar or 30 chest to bars, break up those reps into small sets early, and anticipate knocking out the last dozen or so reps as fast singles.

Small Sets and Helpful Mind Tricks

To this day I perform wall balls counting in my mind up to 5.  So 25 wall balls is 1,2,3,4,5, five times, even though I’m not stopping the work.  I’m tricking myself into doing “mini sets” of 5 wall balls, which just sounds easy.  Try this next time you have wall balls in a WOD.

In this same category is taking advantage of the Concept 2 Rower’s countdown capability for meters, when possible.  It sure is nice seeing that work melt away to zero.  Just ask one of the coaches how to set up this screen on the rower to try it for yourself.

Pace Yourself, Grasshopper

It goes without saying that you should try to avoid the typical mistake of starting a workout on fire, usually with a big first set of reps, only to inevitably crash and burn later.  This is easy to do as adrenaline is always high for an Open workout, and you probably watched a Games Athlete already crank out an amazing score on the live-cast.

So it takes some discipline and a little preplanning to get of to a smart, reasonable first few minutes of work.  I promise you will finish stronger and end up with a better score if you are careful with the start.  By the way, after countless competitive workouts, including in training, I still manage to fall victim to this “rookie” mistake!

Video training sessions and competitive WODs

Arguably the most important tip, since it applies to any training session, not just an Open WOD.  Range of motion, transition times, body language, it’s all there for you to evaluate.  All serious athletes across a wide range of sports make use of video analysis, and CrossFit is no different.

As you go and attack your next workout, keep these tips in mind and try to put some of them to use.

Each month Overland Park CrossFit recognizes a member who exemplifies our values and motivates others in the gym to push themselves with encouraging words.  November’s Athlete of the Month is Jake Taylor.  Jake was chosen because of how hard he works in the gym.  His consistency and positive attitude are inspiring to other athletes.   Learn more below about Jake!

1. What were your thoughts after your first CrossFit workout?

  Each month Overland Park CrossFit recognizes a member who exemplifies our values and motivates others in the gym to push themselves with encouraging words.  October’s Athlete of the Month is Lisa Suderman.  Lisa was chosen because she is an amazing representative of a CrossFit woman.  She strong and confident yet humble in her success.  Lisa is definitely an inspiration to others at OPCF.   Learn more below about Lisa!

1. 1. What were your thoughts after your first CrossFit workout?

One of the biggest goals for Overland Park CrossFit is to improve people’s everyday quality of life by teaching them to move better and have fun doing it.  For us, instructing proper technique and form to each member of the Overland Park CrossFit family is the first step to getting there.  Last week, we discussed the importance of flexibility in improving movement, today we’re going to tell you how to own your mobility.

If you took last week’s advice, you’re on the right track.  You’ve been doing your foam rolling, corrective stretching, and bookending your workouts with proper warmups and cooldowns.  You can finally break parallel in that squat or can get overhead without excessively arching your back.  Awesome, that’s half the battle and you are on your way!  But keep in mind, new range of motion is weak range of motion.  Right now you’re borrowing that flexibility.  Now it’s time to own it!

Being gumby doesn’t do you much good unless you are stable in the positions you can get into.  You need to be able to control your own body weight and external weight too — after all, that’s what we do in life.  Hauling moving boxes into a truck, bending down to pick something up, climbing up on your roof to fix your dish.  You move in a lot of different ways, and you need to know how to move safely in these positions and make sure you have the proper stability doing it.

Let’s establish one thing: Posture = Form.  Everyone knows that proper form is important in working out, but fewer people understand that proper form is important at all times of the day.  Start thinking about posture as proper form for all your non-working-out time.  Just like proper form in a pushup, proper posture ensures that muscles of the body are optimally aligned and that appropriate stress is distributed among all the joints in your body, reducing the risk of injury.  The problem is that most of us have poor posture and our body is really good at adapting to the way we abuse it.  If you have spent the last 10 years hunched over at a desk with your shoulders rolled forward, your body basically says, “okay, this is what we’re doing, I better get really good at being hunched over!”  The muscles of your body then form along these lines and it becomes a never ending cycle.  And that’s what we’re here to do with you, let’s break that cycle and get you living better.

That low back pain?  The ankle tweak?  Some kind of tendonitis?  There’s a decent chance it’s related to your posture.  When we ask you keep your chest up, push your butt back, and feel tension in your hamstrings to set up for a deadlift, we are asking you to establish your beginning posture for the lift.  This keeps you moving safely and effectively during your workouts.  But if you have good posture for one hour a day while we’re watching you and then sit slouched with your shoulders rolled forward at a desk the rest of the day, you’re reinforcing poor form the other 23 hours of the day and setting yourself up for potential injuries.  Learn to be your own coach when you’re not with us.  Put a sticky note at your computer to says “sit up straight, shoulders back and down!”  Just like nutrition or hitting your workouts, this is about building healthy habits for life, and you need to be constantly reinforcing this in your everyday life.

So how do you go about correcting your postural flaws that you’ve been building up for the last 10+ years?  You learn the proper exercises you need to correct it and work at it!  We have many coaches that can provide exercises to correct your postural imbalances.  Just ask.  To borrow an old quote, we want to teach you how to fish!  After all, what we aim to do is not only your workouts but also your everyday quality of life outside the gym!

In a recent article, we outlined how modern society encourages a sedentary lifestyle.  It also promotes postural imbalances , such as sitting hunched over at a desk all day, cramming uncomfortably on an airplane, or repetitive movements in a work setting.  These postural imbalances restrict proper joint function and put you at greater risk for injury.  So what’s the solution?  Work on your flexibility from several different angles.

I always hear people say, “But I’m just not flexible.”  For the most part, this is simply untrue.  Some people do have certain genetic restrictions to their flexibility, but people who say this often haven’t even tried.  It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy:  “I’m just not flexible, so I might as well not stretch.  See, I’m still not flexible!”  I wonder why…

Do you want to get faster, stronger, fitter, and improve everyday movements?  Then you need to start working on your flexibility every day.  Do you have trouble squatting below parallel?  Can you not get your back into neutral setting up for a deadlift?  Are you having issues getting your shoulder into a safe and stable position in overhead movements?  Then guess what, you are cheating yourself out of your fitness potential.

Position is power, folks.  At Overland Park CrossFit, we teach everyone how to move better.  The foundation of moving better is the ability to get your body into proper, safe, and stable positions.  If you can’t get into those positions, you can’t move as fast, lift as much, be as powerful, and become as fit as you should be.  You also put yourself at greater risk for injury because your body will seek the path of least resistance when performing an exercise, so if you set up wrong, muscles that should be working won’t fire properly and you will compensate with secondary muscles to complete the movement.

Okay, so now that you know why you need to work on your flexibility, let’s talk about an action plan.  First, some groundwork:  Flexibility is the ability to move a joint through a complete range of motion (ROM).  The ROM of a joint is limited by how much you can elongate the muscles surrounding it.  If you have aching knees, a stiff shoulder, or tight ankles, then you need to start hammering the muscles surrounding those problem areas.  So, let’s talk about four major forms of mobility work:

STATIC (CORRECTIVE) STRETCHING
These are stretches that passively take a muscle to the point of tension and are held for at least 30 seconds.  Something like a seated hamstring stretch or child’s pose are examples of static stretching.  The idea is that your body senses a muscle is being stretched (lengthened) which creates tension in the muscle. When held for long enough, your body’s instinct to contract the muscle is overridden by a Golgi tendon organ, triggering a response for your body to relax the muscle, and allowing for greater length to the muscle being stretched.  This is how static stretching works, and if performed consistently over enough time, your muscles will continue to lengthen to a point where they allow for greater joint ROM.  These stretches should be done after a workout (when muscles are shortened due to exercise) and during non-training times.  Static stretching can pre-fatigue your muscles, so it can affect your performance before a CrossFit workout.  Consider this type of stretching your post-WOD work and your daily homework!

ACTIVE-ISOLATED STRETCHING
These stretches use prime mover and secondary mover muscle groups to dynamically bring a joint through a ROM.  These stretches relax overactive and tight muscles and allow them to elongate.  They do not pre-fatigue the muscles as muscle as much as static stretching and are often performed aerobically during warmup.  An example of this would be a standing abductor stretch where you start in a wide stance and slowly move into a side lunge until a stretch in the groin area is felt.  You hold that for 1-2 seconds and then shift to the other side and repeat 5-10 times.  These can be done both before and after exercise and as part of your daily homework.

DYNAMIC STRETCHING
These stretches call for force production of a muscle and use the body’s momentum to take it through a full ROM.  An example of this would be leg swings.  These are great for warmups before a CrossFit workout because they increase your heart rate and get your central nervous system ready for exercise.  Some people may have trouble performing dynamic stretches through a complete ROM because they have muscle restriction or imbalances.  If you are one of these people, it’s super important that you do your corrective stretching and active-isolated stretching as homework and post-workout to improve this.  Dynamic stretching has an added bonus in that it also improves balance and coordination.

SELF-MYOFASCIAL RELEASE (SMR)
Do you wish you could get massages all the time without spending the money?  Well, SMR is just that:  A self massage.  This technique works on the fibrous tissue that surrounds and separates muscle.  Using a foam roller, lacrosse ball, or length of PVC to apply pressure to knots in your muscle, the muscle fibers begin to smooth out from a bundle into a straight alignment with the direction of the muscle.  Like static stretching, the pressure stimulates the Golgi tendon organ to relax the underlying musculature.  The foam roller and lacrosse ball should become your best friend.  Use it all the time:  Before workouts, after workouts, while watching tv, talking on the phone, reading a book — whenever.  Basically, sleep with it, your significant other will understand… ok, maybe not, but they should!  SMR can also be performed before stretching to maximize the muscle-lengthening benefits of corrective, active-isolated, and dynamic flexibility.

And no excuses about not having enough time — you can do this during TV commercial breaks or when talking on the phone with your friends.  If you have 10-15 minutes to spare, that is plenty of time to get a good mobility session in.  Isn’t that a tradeoff worth improving your recovery, joint health, and performance?

So get out of that hunched position staring at this article on your computer screen, break out your foam roller and mobility mat, and get stretching!  It is key to your long-term health, fitness performance, and improvement inside and outside of the gym.  Next time we’ll go over mobility’s best friend, stability.  (Spoiler Alert: You need both!)