It wasn’t that long ago that weekend fitness competitions were few and far between. In 2011 when I launched the Firebreather Throwdown in Cincinnati, there were almost no other competitions in the area. As a result, we had some major names compete with us in our humble gym in Loveland, Ohio, including Kate Rawlings, who was a national-level CrossFit Games athlete in 2010. Since that time, competitions have literally exploded. Every weekend some throwdown goes down with a cool name like “Fall Crush” and “BLOOD ON THE BAR! 2013.” These events have morphed from what used to be one-day, three-workout competitions into three-day festivals with major sponsors and multi-tiered, qualifier-laden beat downs with major prize money.
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2011 CrossFit Games Kicked AssEven The Softball Throw. Posted on August 12, 2011 Author Ben. I got sick with the flu early last year and was laid out for a couple of days. Up until that point I was doing crossfit only casually, just enough to supplement my other athletic endeavors. Crossfit Softball Throw Fail. If you like this video, please subscribe&share. More videos are coming soon. I upload a new video every day.
And in some cases, shit is getting out of control. And, to a certain extent, this includes the CrossFit Games themselves. (From softball throws to what is becoming nearly a week-long competition of CNS-shattering, hand-shredding craziness, it seems as though the games have become less a test of fitness and more a test of survival skills. But that’s an article for another day.) In an attempt, I believe, to make an event memorable, to stand out from the crowd, or to become “that competition” that everyone wants to be a part of, throwdown organizers are coming up with some crazy, chaotic shit. In addition, many of these weekend events have become serious beat downs.
Imagine if you will that every time someone sits down to put together the programming for their event they have to come up with something new, something never done before, something where everyone will say, “Wow man, remember that friggin’ 165lb. thruster-cow milking WOD from the Northeast Smackdown of 2014? That was EPIC!”
No one wants to program this:
Now, what a fantastic test of fitness that might be. 'Fran' would be a test of the short time domain quick-burst classic CrossFit workout, workout number two is a classic test of strength, and workout three a test of aerobic endurance. But, no. How boring might that be, a 3K row. No one wants to watch that. No one wants to do that. But, if you’re looking to podium the fittest in your particular demographic area, it might be a solid clump of tests.
Instead, we are in this phase where we have to top. We have to top last years’ events and we have to top the box around the corner or the one on Facebook that everyone is talking about. So instead of programming 'Fran,' now we have to do 'Fran + Grace,' or 'Heavy Fran,' or 'Fran' while someone is pelting you in the face with a soccer ball. The workouts get more creative (read: crazy and chaotic), the competitions get longer, the volume goes up, and the workouts get longer and more extreme. Soon you’re ending up trashed after a weekend competition, having to take a week off to recover and then another week of light work and Z1 stuff.
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The result? Well, for one, some of these competitions have become notorious for serving up such bizarre workouts that the images have been immortalized on every CrossFit satire blog like Irongarm.
Some of the Tom Foolery that has been seen includes:
Remember, we’re testing fitness here. How fit am I as compared to how fit are you at a set of given tasks. There are a lot of ways we can test that fitness without winding up in a fail compilation video.
Aside from the novelty WODS, some competitions have just become body-trashing beat downs. I participated in a competition last year that was plannedas a two-day event but was cut down to one. The box owner didn’t want to let go of any of the WODs, so we did seven workouts in one day.
Sometimes, you have brand-new box owners who want in on the fun. People who got their CrossFit L1 certification a year ago, opened a box last month, and now are putting together the “Halloween Fear Fest 2013!” They know little about programming a workout, let alone a two-day competition that tests multiple energy systems. They just want to be awesome. Man-makers with a flaming dumbbell. Burpees while a middle-school student jumps on your back with wearing cleats. Where do we go from here? 20 wallballs to a fifteen-foot target, three-man deadlifts, dodge ball with a shot-put? Seriously. After the neck-ring debacle, I had thought I had seen it all, but perhaps not.
Want to bulletproof your competition? Consider these ideas:
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Competitors, you need to be willing to say no. If the event organizer begins whiteboarding the third workout and starts writing, “Teammate one will stand on two boxes with a set of Rogue rings suspended from their necks,” be willing to walk away. As long as the competitors keep accepting the shenanigans, event organizers will keep dreaming up new ones. Be willing to step back and say, “Sorry, that is dangerous, foolish, and no, I won’t do it.” Vote with your feet.
Photo 1 by English: Lance Cpl. Derrick K. Irions [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
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