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Monday, March 18, 2013

Fun with SWAGs: What Will 13.3 Be?

Hello, all. First off, before I get into the fun part (making a semi-educated guess on the next workout), I'd like to briefly address the controversy surrounding some of the top scores on 13.2. For those not aware, the top men's score of 387 (Josh Golden) has been invalidated by HQ, thereby disqualifying him from competition. Additionally, there has been a major storm brewing regarding a score of 420 posted by Danielle Sidell, although there is no video evidence (yet) for that score. Here are a few quick comments regarding the situation:

  • First of all, I am glad HQ invalidated the Golden score. I feel terrible that he had to be eliminated entirely, as he clearly has excellent capacity, but their hands were tied on this one. The push presses in particularly were egregious (the first one was a snatch and then the rest never touched his chest), and on nearly every single box jump there was no control on the top of the box. Yes, his hips were open, but his center of gravity never made it anywhere near the box, so he was basically falling backward on every one.
  • Unfortunately, this obviously illustrates a big problem with the Open set-up: there could be thousands of these scores floating around that won't be caught. Now, there is even less incentive for anyone to post video. It's a shame, because there are some very legit performances out there (I watched Kristin Holte's video of 382 and Sam Briggs' video of 383 and they were on the money). In the end, the top athletes will be put through a legit test at regionals, and no one will sneak through to the Games on shady reps, but for those working to qualify for regionals, this could have a big impact.
  • That being said, I tend to have faith in most individuals. I truly believe the vast, vast majority of people are trying their best to hold themselves and others at their affiliates to standard. A workout like this really makes it tough because there is a limit to how fast you can do these movements legitimately, and for the top athletes, the only way to push beyond the top scores is to cut corners. There's simply no margin. I think most of us now agree that the design of the workout was not ideal for the high-level athletes.
  • I'm not sure there's a simple solution to this in the future, but I certainly hope HQ will consider some options to keep the regional-level competitors honest. I saw a suggestion to have random video submissions required for athletes that qualify for regionals. I think something along these lines would be a good start. Judging movement is going to be subjective to some extent - but we need to see that the athlete is not blatantly short-cutting movements before we allow them to take a spot away from someone else.
  • For the rest of us, I think it's easy to get bogged down by all the negativity, but by and large, the Open should be fun. Remember that this is a very new sport, and there are certain to be logistical issues like this in its infancy. Keep yourself honest, post your best score and by all means, call out the scores that are not legitimate - but keep it fun. And watch that video of Sam Briggs to remind yourself that greatness can be achieved on these workouts without cutting corners.
Now, onto the fun part. Let's put together a scientific wild-ass guess (SWAG) about 13.3!

"Science" first. Here are the movements that I believe are still on the table, with the number of times they have occurred in previous Opens in parentheses: thruster (2), pull-up (2), double-under (2), ring muscle-up (2), toes-to-bar (2), wall-ball (2), clean (1), overhead squat (1), push-up (1). To make things easier, let's again ignore movements that have never occurred in the Open (although bar muscle-ups, pistols and HSPU's, among others, certainly could show up). Now as far as time domain, I see this one being sub-10:00, since we've been medium-to-long on the first two. As light as the deadlifts were in 13.2, the average relative weight through 2 workouts is actually only slightly below average (0.93 compared to 0.96), but I still believe we'll see things get heavier in 13.3. Again, I still do not see HQ repeating 11.5/12.6, so let's throw thrusters or pull-ups into this one. And lastly, since we've already seen 5 movements in 2 workouts, compared to 2 at this point last year, let's assume this one will be a couplet and not a triplet (I still doubt we'll see a single-modality this year).

So, with that being said, here is the official CFG Analysis SWAG for 13.3:

AMRAP 7 of 10 overhead squats (115/75), 10 chest-to-bar pull-ups

/vomits in mouth

And, of course, we will see Kristan Clever win by a score of 201-196.

Enjoy the Open everyone!


1 comment:

  1. 13.3 Prediction
    Combo of 11.3,11.5/12.6:
    AMRAP in 7 min
    Ladder of
    1 sq clean thruster(165/115)
    3 C2B pull ups
    2 sq clean thruster(165/115)
    6 C2B pull ups
    3 sq clean thruster(165/115)
    9 C2B pull ups
    Etc...
    Love the blog.

    ReplyDelete