To Open or Not to Open
I’ve been doing Crossfit, doing the Crossfit, exercising quickly and savagely and annoying everyone I talk to, drinking the Koolaid, yada yada, for over 10 years now. Honestly, I have no idea if that amount of time sounds like a long time anymore or not! But I’ve been doing the fitness since the spring of 2013, and coaching the fitness since the fall of 2024. It’s quite a history, for me at least. I can remember the very first class I took that had an open WOD in it. Yowza. I was so young and naive, had never really had a real ass whoopin’, and man did it COME HARD. But I made it through the rolling on the floor in pain to know that I was hooked.
Crossfit HQ has taken the open and gone through quite the evolution. When I was first starting CF, the ‘games’ were nowhere near the level they are now. Nowadays, if your goal is to go to the games, you best be quittin’ that full-time job and hiring a full-time coach and kissing your social life goodbye. The intensity and skill level expected of you to survive the open and move onto the next level of competition is, for most of us, a major ‘not gonna happen.’ So why bother?
The beauty of CF, and what has kept me drinking this godforsaken glass of Koolaid for so long, is that it was designed perfectly for the average joe. It was literally made for you to find ways to challenge YOURSELF, not your neighbor, to see if you’ve made progress, how you can plan better for the next workout and (if you’re curious), see where you shake out in your particular age group. Man, I LOVE that. I also love standards, rules, regulations. All of it. It makes me so happy. It gives me such peace! Here is what is expected of you, and if you can’t do it, well. Now you know exactly what to work on for next season.
We spend day in and day out, week after week, year after year, working hard to lift more, run faster, get that strict pull up, muscle up, etc. and the open pushes you just a little bit past that edge, to failure, to help you get a clearer picture. It’s a beautiful thing. I haven’t missed a single open since 2014, and I’ll be damned if baby #3 keeps me out of this one.
Will I see you there?