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So You Want to Compete in the CrossFit Games: Part 1

So You Want to Compete in the CrossFit Games: Part 1

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This is part one of the series “So You Want to Compete in the CrossFit Games“ and today we will be going over whether or not you are good enough to compete in the CrossFit Games. If you are just starting crossfit you have to know you probably have awhile before you will be good enough to compete. However, a lot of guys who are top crossfit games competitors were only doing crossfit for a few months before they went to the games. Rich Froning said he was only doing CrossFit for like 6 months before he placed 2nd in the 2010 CrossFit Games. Granted most people are pretty fit before they start crossfit. Some people would just say compete in the Open, but I say do your research first. Find out how good you are and tweak your training accordingly. It only happens once a year.

Am I Good Enough to Compete in the CrossFit Games?

Mikko Salo, 2009 CrossFit Games Champion, said that he didn’t really know that he was that competitive until he started to compare his times to some of the top crossfitters. Only then did he decided to compete. The first thing you should do to find out is benchmark yourself.

Benchmark in the following order:

  1. Local Box
  2. CrossFit.com
  3. Athlete Profiles
  4. Workload
-If you are not one of the best, or THE best, at your local box (depending on the box) then I wouldn’t make any travel plans to the home depot center in California just yet. 

–CrossFit.Com has a lot of good ways to find out how you stack up. 
  • Day to day you can do the workout of the day and look at the comments and see where you stack up
  • You can do some of the “girl” and “hero” workouts and use the search function on crossfit.com and see what some times were for the more grueling wods
  • CrossFit did not use to do this, but a lot of times now they will put up a WOD and they will also put up what one or five of the top crossfitters got on that workout. If you are beating their times, start making your travel plans.
–Athlete Profiles: Now that people get sponsored for crossfit it is public information to see just how fit they are. These profiles and more can be found at roguefitness.com

CrossFit GamesCrossFit Games
If you can hold a candle to these WOD times and barbell stats you are doing pretty well, but there is still one last benchmark…
–Workload:
One thing you have to keep in mind is how much work can you do in a day and how many days can you do it in a row. I am sure a lot of guys can pump out a low 2 minute fran, but that does not make you a crossfit games competitor. If after a 2:15 Fran you are on the ground for 30 minutes and then out of commission for the rest of the day you just don’t have the conditioning for it. We will talk more about how much you actually have to take in Part 3 of this series, but you need to be able to CRUSH multiple WODs a day and then wake up and do it again the next day with little variance in performance.

So how are you stacking up as a CrossFit Games competitor??

Next we will talk about how to compete in the games!