Now that the Open is advancing significantly fewer athletes to the next stage of the CrossFit Games—online semi-finals—will we see athletes shifting their training to become more specialised?

Looking at the numbers, only a very small number of athletes will make it into the top 1% of the Open. This means even the best of the best cannot afford a poor performance in any of the three weeks of competition.

Given the constraints of needing to complete Open workouts in an affiliate —most likely able to be done in regular classes—we can make some educated guesses about how these workouts will be programmed. With three workouts, and potentially up to four scored events if there’s a two-part workout, the variety of movements will be limited. This means the weighting of any single movement could become disproportionately important—especially if one of the events involves a max lift. It’s likely we’ll see workouts designed with progressive skill levels, such as moving from pull-ups to chest-to-bar pull-ups, and then to bar muscle-ups.

These factors point towards a particular style of CrossFit workout that athletes may need to focus on in their training. For example, those who struggle with movements like burpees, wall balls, or rowing will likely need to dedicate significant time to improving in these areas.

But is it worth making such changes to your training? Considering the Games season is still evolving and will likely continue to undergo smaller changes and iterations in the coming years, it’s possible that next season could demand a different skill set.

In this week’s episode, we continue our discussion about competition and the changes to the season. We take a closer look at how these changes might impact athletes’ preparation and the decisions they’ll need to make about their training.

Listen to find out more about how these changes could impact athletes’ preparation, whether the Open now comes down to the luck of the draw, how to allocate training time for different competition styles, and the shift towards local events.

Listen Here:

Show Notes:

  • [1:00] The structure of the new CrossFit Games season
  • [2:20] Taking the top 1% from the Open
  • [4:20] What does removing the Open do for athletes?
  • [5:45] How many athletes will qualify for semi-finals?
  • [6:30] Mistakes, penalties, and judging live or via video
  • [10:20] Should people specialise just for the Open?
  • [12:30] Will things change again?
  • [13:30] Prioritising and allocating training time for different styles of competition
  • [15:00] Is the Open now all about the luck of the draw?
  • [18:30] The shift to local events
  • [21:00] Archetypes of athletes making it through the Open