We are heading into the middle of what has been a really fun (for me at least) Open thus far. That’s right, hump week of the Open!
15.2 Round Up:
As you may have noticed from my 15.2 Prediction blog, I was pretty much on the money with suggesting that if we were going to see a repeat of a past Open WOD, it was going to be 14.2 and it was going to be in the 2nd week. Combine this with my prediction of having a triplet in 15.1 and I am pretty happy with my speculating thus far.
As of right now, 15.2 has been a nightmare for me. My MCL strain is keeping me pretty cautious on what would normally be a very easy overhead squat. I only managed 119 Reps on my first attempt, although I am much stronger and had been swapping out pull ups for Chest to Bars regularly during the last year, I am still behind my 14.2 score of 125 Reps.
This is not a conditioning issue, this is all about mobility and most importantly, grip strength. I feel that if my knee was 100%, the mitigating factor would still be grip strength as this one is a burner on the forearms. We are leaving for vacation in a day so I may have one more crack at it before the deadline but not too concerned as I would rather be getting back to 100% than risk further injury for a WOD that doesn’t really matter for this amateur exerciser.
One note on this WOD and what seems to be a prevailing theme of this years Open is the strategy of using single reps to complete the prescribed work. While I still feel that this goes against the intentions of Crossfit HQ, it seems those who are weak in gymnastics and clearly did not get measurably better (aren’t you supposed to identify your weaknesses and work on them?) are using this strategy to inflate their own scores. I say inflate because if this were a one day, one attempt competition, there would be no chance for strategy like this. The demands placed on the athlete would ensure that those who trained accordingly are the most successful. Its also kind of sad that amateur athletes have to find strategy to increase their mid tier rankings. Here is the big caveat though as I am only using my personal opinion, the individual who competes the way I just outlined will have their own benchmarks and goals so perhaps by not testing their gymnastics but using the WODs to test other parameters or other objectives.
15.3 Prediction:
I will be out of the country for the announcement of the next Open WOD so this next prediction may be my weakest to date. The closer to the date I wait, the more sure I am of the prediction. Because I am rushing this prediction, I am going out on a limb, going to have fun with this one.
Here it is…..
Double Unders
Power Cleans
Box Jumps
I think that there will be some sort of “Buy In” and then an AMRAP. It has never been done before but it would be interesting to see a buy-in of 200 DU before you get a chance to hit a 20/10 complex of Boxjumps and Power Cleans in the remainder of the time.
Best of luck to all who are in the midst of the 2015 Crossfit Open and remember to have fun! Also, thank you to the over 5000k readers who have stopped by, we are on pace to crush last years numbers.
****15.2 Update****
After much thought about how to tackle my redo I hit it just in time before vacation. I was envious of all the big scores being thrown up on the leaderboard and only decided my strategy 5 min leading up to the attempt. It is apparent that a lot of athletes are using the low bar, single rep scheme to hit some very high reps. I think this is great if you need a big score. It was the method I was going to use so that I could feel good about myself in relation to some of my fellow competitors but in the end, I chose differently. I am in a position where my score doesn’t mean anything to anyone but me. It does not count toward any team scores. So my decision was to hit the WOD head on like I did last year. I felt the best way to see if I got better at 14.2 was to perform 15.2 the same way, no inflate the score strategy (which again is totally fine. It just doesn’t prove to me I got better at gymnastics). In the end I scored 131. I am not thrilled but I am content with the growth I showed. My knee did not come into play as much as I thought, sure it was sore, but it wasn’t a detriment. Very excited to see the next three tests upcoming.
FitForFire 