CrossFit Open WOD 17.1 Strategy

There seems to be a common theme over the years of “go hard & fast” when athletes complete their CrossFit Open workouts.  We get it, it’s exciting to compete against everyone else, but it’s also difficult, especially in long workouts, to get the best score you can without any real strategy.  This is very evident when people redo workouts and get drastically better results.  This year we are here to give you strategies & tips for each Open WOD to hopefully help you get the best score you can.

The 2017 Open brings something we have never seen before, dumbbells.  That’s right, the first workout has dumbbell snatches, and lots of them.  It pairs the dumbbell snatches with burpee box jump-overs.  See below for the complete 17.1 WOD.

For time (20 minute time cap):
10 dumbbell snatches
15 burpee box jump-overs
20 dumbbell snatches
15 burpee box jump-overs
30 dumbbell snatches
15 burpee box jump-overs
40 dumbbell snatches
15 burpee box jump-overs
50 dumbbell snatches
15 burpee box jump-overs

This is going to be a long workout.  For some of the best in the biz, we saw scores in the 10 minute range for the women and 12 minute range for the men.  For the rest of us mortals, expect to go much closer to the time cap or hit the time cap.  With a workout this long, the biggest challenge is going to be starting out too fast and burning out.  Pick a pace that you can stick with for at least the first half of the workout and then re-evaluate at the 10 minute mark.  If you still feel fresh, pick it up a little.  If you feel like you are about to keel over, slow down a bit, but don’t stop moving.  The key to this is that you keep moving the whole time.

There are a lot of reps in this workout, which means that you will want to be as efficient as possible.  An inefficient movement that is performed over 200 times will result in a lot of wasted energy.  On the snatches, make sure that you use your hips for every rep.  At the beginning it might feel like you don’t need to do this, but by the end of the workout it will pay in dividends.  Focus on good reps and keep the dumbbell as close to your body as possible.  Place the dumbbell where you want it for the next rep.  On the burpee box jump-overs, don’t waste energy standing up on the box.  Use as little energy as possible to get over the box.  You can recover by slowing slightly on the burpees.

Again, pace, pace, pace and keep moving.  Good luck out there, enjoy the pain, and stay in it until you are done!