It's Official: CFG Analysis Going on Hiatus

For the first couple of months after the Games, I kept thinking that I needed to get started on my Games recap and hopefully a few new analyses for the offseason.  I'd do it tomorrow, I thought, just after work and life slow down.  When would that happen?  Tomorrow turned into next week, next week turned into next month.  Sometime in November, I realized the slowdown wasn't coming any time soon.

I've been adding more and more to this site for the past three years, culminating with the 2nd annual Games Pick 'Em contest this year, which went as well as I could have hoped.  We had nearly 75 entries and I was able to keep the standings up to date throughout the up-and-down Games weekend.  But since that time, work has picked up and shows no signs of slowing.  On top of that, my wife and I are expecting our second child in April 2016.  There's just no way I can realistically keep the bar high for content on this site with my current schedule.  And if it's going to turn into a half-assed effort, I don't think it's worth it.  I'm proud of the level of quality and timeliness that I reached with the site in 2015, and I don't want to sacrifice that.

I don't know if the site is done forever.  I hope not, but I also realize it will be hard to get resurrect things after a long time off.  My goal is to keep somewhat up to date with aggregating data, which has always been the toughest part of this operation.  The web site itself will remain up, so hopefully those of you that are relatively new can still peruse old posts, many of which are still relevant today, in my opinion.

I'd like to thank everyone who has read, commented or contributed to this site over the past three years.  Almost all the feedback I received here was positive, or at least constructive.  I've only met a handful of you in person, but I feel like I had a small little community of folks that I "knew," albeit only through internet comments, podcast and tweets.  So if and when the day comes to get this thing started again, I hope you'll all be here to start reading again.

As always, good luck with your training!

So, I'm On Twitter Now...

Yeah, yeah, I know, I should have done this like 24 months ago... better late than never, right?  Follow me @CFGAnalysis to stay updated on what's going on in CFG Analysis world.

CFG Analysis Podcast - Pilot Episode

I'm trying something new here at CFG Analysis.  In addition to the articles I'm posting, I'm adding a podcast to complement what I do with my written work.  These podcasts are going to be much more informal than what I typically do on the blog, and eventually I hope to chat with some athletes, coaches and everyday CrossFitters.

Today's Pilot Episode is just me, discussing the background on this site, how it came to be and who exactly I am.

Stay tuned for our next podcast here in a couple of weeks, and bear with me as I get the hang of this podcast thing.

The Pilot Podcast and all future episodes can be found here: http://cfganalysis.libsyn.com  or below.  I'm currently working on getting it set up on iTunes.

Team Series Thoughts and Site Updates

The first edition of the CrossFit Games Team Series has come and gone, with Team Reebok East pulling off a somewhat surprising win.  One of the big questions coming into the Team Series was what the programming would look like, considering HQ had never put together anything like this before.  With scaled divisions being offered for the first time, how tough would the Rx division be?  Would things look like the Open, Regionals, Games or something entirely different?  With all 12 events in the books, let's take a look at how things shook out.

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As far as the weights used, the Team Series fell somewhere between the Open and the Regional level.  For men, the load-based emphasis on lifting (LBEL) came out to 0.56 for men and 0.39 for women.  The heaviest Open to date was 2011, which came in at 0.51/0.35 (men/women), but typically it has been somewhere around 0.45/0.30.  The 2014 Regionals were in the same ballpark as the Team Series, at 0.58/0.36, but the Regionals have averaged 0.69/0.44 since 2011.  This year's Regionals were particularly low because lifting made up such a small portion (37%).

Weighted movements made up 51% of the Team Series, which is just about the average across all HQ competitions since 2011.  When weights were used in metcons, the average load was 0.87/0.59, which equates to about a 115/80-lb. clean-and-jerk, a 210/140-lb. deadliest and a 90/60-lb. snatch.  These are by no means hefty weights, and in fact, they are quite close to the historical averages for the Open and well below the averages for the Regionals.  But what differentiated the Team Series was the addition of two max-strength events, something we've yet to see in the Open.  These are a big reason that the Team Series seemed to have a bit more emphasis on strength than the Open.

Types of Movements

With 12 events, we did see a pretty good variety of different movements tested, much more so than a typical Open.  In all, 17 movements were tested, including at least one movement from each of the seven subcategories I typically use ("Uncommon CrossFit Movements" were not used, which makes sense due to logistics).  The largest focus, not surprisingly, was on Olympic-Style Barbell Lifts, which comprised 44% of the points, including 14% on snatch and 12% on front squat.  The 44% actually ties for the most emphasis on any one of these subcategories in any HQ competition, tying the 2011 Open, when Oly lifts also made up that same portion.

Aside from the Olympic lifts, we did see that Basic Gymnastics (24%) were not used as much as in the Open (36% average), but more than Regionals (18%).  We also saw Powerlifting-Style Barbell Lifts make up 13%, which is higher than the historical average for the Open (6%), Regionals (10%) and the Games (3% since 2011).  That was due in large part to a 2-rep max bench press, which is actually the first time bench press has ever been used in an HQ competition.  No wonder Camille said the last time she maxed on bench press was "in a dream."

Time Domains

This one is hard to assess because the team setting often makes it difficult to compare the length of an event in this competition to, say, an event from the Open.  There is often plenty of built-in rest throughout some of these team chippers that a 20-minute team workout with four athletes working together might not feel any more grueling than an 8-10 minute Open workout.  All-in-all, the focus in the Team Series seemed to be more on power output over short time frames and being able recover quickly, rather than the ability to grind out long workouts and keep a steady pace.

Overall

The team series, to me, seemed like a nice blend of the inclusiveness of the Open with the heavier, more challenging movements of the Regionals.  Athletes who had the ability to go heavy or excel at some more challenging gymnastic movements were able to do so, but anyone who is capable of finishing all the Open events would be able to complete the Team Series workouts (provided they had capable teammates).  Although some of the events were a little bland (still can't believe they opened with that dull 14.1/11.1 remake), there were some pleasant surprises that kept things interesting (such as the burpee-box jump/squat clean ascending ladder).

Are there kinks to be worked out?  Certainly.  I also don't think the Team Series will ever be quite as popular as the Open.  I think the feel of the Team Series is necessarily going to be more low-key than the Open due to its position on the calendar.  But that doesn't mean there isn't a place for something like this.  Hopefully HQ will continue to refine what they have and make this an annual event worth looking forward to for the masses.



Site Updates

The Team Series was the first open HQ competition since 2009 that I haven't been a part of (I even competed back in the "Sectionals" back in 2010).  The Open will almost certainly be the second competition I sit out.  The day after last season's Open, I injured my back deadlifting, my second back injury in 6 months.  I have taken things very slow coming back from this one, and opted to skip the Team Series despite feeling 75-80% healthy.  However, in my recovery from the back injury, I looked into some lingering hip pain and found that I had a pretty significant hip impingement and labral tear (the impingement is genetic and was bound to flare up at some point). I will be having surgery to repair the tear and clean up the impingement soon, but that means a recovery time of 4-6 months.

I've also been studying for my latest (and hopefully last) actuarial exam, which I just took last week (results still pending).  All this combined with dealing with a one-year-old baby have made it challenging to make time for the web site.

I say this not because I plan to retire this site or give up on CrossFit.  Rather, I hope that you can continue to bear with me over the next few months if updates are not quite so frequent (though I don't plan to go dormant).  My hope is that in time, I can be back to CrossFitting and blogging on a much more consistent basis.

In the meantime, get your SWAG's ready - the Open is only 3 months away!

Quick Hits: Initial Games Reaction and Upcoming Schedule

Does anyone else go through a weird sense of withdrawal after the Games ends each year? After spending all spring analyzing the Open and Regionals, making predictions and finally attending the Games in person, it's bizarre to consider that we won't really start up another season for six more months. Sure, there will be follow-up videos posted on the Games site for the next few weeks, but eventually the coverage will dry up and we'll all be back in the grind of preparing for next season.

Hopefully, I can fill that void to a certain extent. My goal over the next few months is to break down the 2013 Games and Games season in depth, take a look back at the history and evolution of the Games from a statistical perspective, as well as delve into a few new topics related to training, programming and competition. First on the slate is a critical look at this year's Games, similar to what I did last year in my post "Were the Games Well-Programmed? (Part 1)." My goal is to put this together in the next week or two.

For today, I just wanted to get some quick reaction to the Games out there:

• The thing that stuck out to me attending the Games in person the past two years is how well-organized and professional the whole event is. Considering this thing is just four years removed from being held on a ranch, it's amazing to see how efficiently things run today. Virtually every event got off on time, the judging was solid, there were no equipment problems, and from what I could tell, the televised product looked good as well. The ESPN2 broadcast certainly seemed to go over well.
• It's also a blast being out there in person, and I'd recommend it to anyone who hasn't been. Sure, it can be a little draining to sit outside for 10-12 hours a day, but there is plenty to do outside of just watching the events, such as the vendor area, the workout demos, a wide food selection and of course some general people-watching. Many of the CrossFit "celebrities" we see on videos online all the time (plus more mainstream fitness celebrities like Bob Harper) are just hanging out in the crowd like everyone else.
• As for the competition itself, I think we crowned the two deserving champions. 
• Rich Froning proved again that he's simply the most well-rounded CrossFitter out there, and as usual, he seems to get better as the stage gets bigger. I'm starting to get the sense that he really looks at the big picture and maybe, just maybe, holds a little bit back early on to keep his body intact until the end. Remember, he didn't win any events until Sunday, where he won all three.
• Sam Briggs was also the most well-rounded athlete, but she did have a few holes exposed. The zig-zag sprint and the clean and jerk ladder both made her look vulnerable, but she was so solid on the metcons that it didn't matter. I think if Annie Thorisdottir can return at full strength next year, it will be a real battle between those two. Annie clearly has a big strength edge, but I don't think she is at quite the same level as far as conditioning.
• In my opinion, which I'll expand on in my next post, the test was probably the best all-around that we've had to date. It wasn't too grueling to the point where athletes were falling apart by the end of the weekend, but it was a legitimately challenging weekend. The events were nicely varied, and there were only one or two duds from a spectator perspective.
• Although things got shaken up at first, the cream really rose to the top by the end of the weekend, particularly for the men. 
• For the men, I had Froning at a 59% chance to win coming in, and all the men on the podium had at least a 34% chance of doing so according to my predictions. Of the top 10 finishers, 7 were in my top 10 coming in. Garrett Fisher (5th) was probably the biggest surprise on the men's side.
• For the women, I had Sam Briggs as the favorite at 32% coming in, and I had Lindsey Valenzuela with 15% chance of reaching the podium. Valerie Voboril was a bit more of a surprise, but I still had her with an 8% chance of reaching the podium. Of the top 10 finishers, 4 were in my top 10 and 9 were in the top 21. The only big surprises near the top, based on the Open and Regionals, was Anna Tunnicliffe. I was, however, surprised that Camille Leblanc-Bazinet (16th) and Elizabeth Akinwale (10th) didn't finish higher.

That's it for now. I'll be back in a week or two with a more in-depth breakdown of this year's Games. Until then, good luck with your training!

Quick Update - Predictions Coming Soon

Hello all. I just wanted to drop a quick post to say that it's been a busy week, but my predictions for the Games will be forthcoming soon, likely this weekend. I'll be estimating the likelihood of each individual athlete winning the whole thing, placing in the top 3 and placing in the money (top 10). The process is a bit more complex than last year, but I think it should be pretty neat.

I'm also curious to see what you guys are thinking about this year's Games. Seems pretty clear that Froning will be the favorite on the men's side, but the women's side is wide open. Feel free to post thoughts to comments here or on my next post, after I make my predictions.

The Games are coming up on us soon (potentially under 2 weeks, depending on when the competition actually starts), and I'm pumped to get out to L.A. to watch. In the meantime, good luck with your training!

Quick Hits: Regional Reaction and Upcoming Schedule

It's been quite a ride the last four weeks of regionals, and to be sure, there is plenty of analysis to be done before we get to the Games in a few weeks. But for now, I just want to get some general thoughts together about the Regionals and my experience watching the Central East. I'll also look briefly at how my projections turned out, as well as what I plan to post over the coming weeks.

Let's get started:

• Watching the Central East regionals this past weekend solidified in my mind that CrossFit as a sport has staying power. The stands were legitimately packed all weekend, and some of the roars from the crowd were unlike anything I've heard at a CrossFit event before. In particular, one moment that stands out was the end of men's event 6 with Rich Froning chasing down Dan Bailey on the lunges. When Dan put the bar down halfway through, the crowd just sensed that Rich had a shot, took their energy to another level, and of course, Rich delivered, gutting out the entire 90 feet to take the event. Few other sports let the spectators really see that type of will and determination to endure pain, and on a regular and repeated basis. It's one of the reasons I've always enjoyed watching track and field, but I think the variety of CrossFit pushes the athletes to places they have never been to before. I think any fan of sport can appreciate seeing that.
• There's no question that the Central East men's region was hands-down the most competitive region. What is up for debate is whether HQ should do anything to remedy the situation. I think inviting athletes solely based on a worldwide regional ranking is not a smart idea - not unless the Regionals are all held on the same weekend and under identical conditions. That means no more outdoor events, and it probably means we all get to watch less of the action. But perhaps some sort of last-chance qualifier might be worthwhile for those in the top 10 of their region? Seeing athletes like Nick Fory and Gerald Sasser miss out on the Games despite putting up scores that would win several other regions is frustrating (see http://crossfitregionalshowdown.com/leaderboard/men).
• After making some adjustments based on the actual results that came in for the overhead squat workout, I recalculated the average relative weight and the load-based emphasis on lifting (LBEL) for this year's regionals. For both men and women, the average relative weight was higher than both 2011 and 2012, but the LBEL was lower. The way I interpret that is that the minimum strength required to be competitive at regionals was very high this year (high relative weight), but for those that could handle the required weights, the competition generally favored the smaller athletes (low LBEL).
• I'd still like to see running more involved in the regional competition. I know there are logistical issues, but it seems silly that in selecting the fittest athletes in the world, no one is required to run more than 800 feet (and even that 800 feet of running, in event 7, is little more than a light jog to recover). How about at least some shuttle sprints? Or a longer run on Friday when fewer people are able to attend anyway?
• On the men's side, it's going to be almost impossible to pick against Rich Froning for the Games. The guy is an absolute machine with virtually no weaknesses. Unless every event is under 4:00 or over an hour, I don't see a lot of scenarios where he doesn't win.
• For women, things are wide open. If Annie comes back, she's got a great shot (after the inevitable backlash against HQ for inviting her). Either way, Sam Briggs and Camille Leblanc-Bazinet look awfully solid all-around, and some of the stronger athletes like Elizabeth Akinwale and Linsday Valenzuela have become more well-rounded in the past year. There are others in the mix as well (Talayna Fortunato, Amanda Goodman, Kara Webb, Rebecca Voigt, etc.).

As for my predictions last week, things turned out fairly well. I totally whiffed on two athletes who made the Games (Lindy Wall and Jordan Troyan). For Wall, at least I have an excuse: last year, she was Lindy Barber, so I did not account for the fact that she was 6th at regionals a year ago. Had I known that, she would have been given a 16% chance instead of the 6% I originally gave her (I didn't even list her among top contenders on the site). With Troyan, although he was 10th at Regionals last year, he didn't have a great Open performance this year (20th in his region), so I just didn't see that one coming.

If I give myself a pass on that, then I ended up with a mean square error of 0.044 across the final two weeks (I predicted a total of 8 regionals). This was significantly better than any of the "default" estimates I mentioned last week. The best of those estimates would have been giving my top 3 athletes in each region a 100% shot, which would have produced a MSE of 0.052. There's always room to improve this modeling, but I think it was a decent start in my first year attempting to predict the regionals.

OK, finally, here's a quick listing of topics I plan to touch on between now and the start of the Games:

• A look at all the events thus far to see which are most correlated with success across a wide variety of events (i.e. which events are "better"). I did a very similar analysis last year and did a shortened version of it after this year's open.
• Adjusted worldwide regional rankings to account for the advantage gained by competing in a later region (and possibly other factors). This will be very similar to my inaugural post on this site approximately a year ago.
• Games predictions. I'll definitely do some sort of stochastic prediction to give each athlete odds of winning the Games (and potentially the odds of finishing second, third, etc.). I may separately do a best estimate of who will finish in the top 5 or 10.
• Perhaps a scientific wild-ass guess (SWAG) about some of the events we could see at the Games. This seemed to be pretty popular during the Open, and of course it requires little-to-no hard work on my part.
• Maybe a bit more analysis on the Open now that I've got a more complete dataset (thanks again to Michael Girdley at girdley.com for hooking me up with that data). This could wait until after the Games, depending on time.

If you've got other ideas, by all means let me know. Looking forward to the Games in just six short weeks. I've got my gold ticket, and I hope you all do, too!

Quick Hits: Open Week 1 Initial Thoughts

This will just be a quick one, since we really don't have enough results in to draw a ton of conclusions, but I wanted to write up some thoughts on the first workout before I head out of town tomorrow morning. I've got a more detailed post planned looking at the number of points you'll likely need to score in order to make regionals. It's an interesting topic for sure, but for now, let's stick with Week 1.

So here we go, in no particular order:

• I really like the programming here, especially as it compares to last year. Not that HQ was influenced in any way by my blog, but I'd like to quote my last post regarding WOD design: "For instance, something like AMRAP 10 of 10 snatches (95/65), 10 burpees will punish the specialist more so than AMRAP 7 of burpees followed by AMRAP 10 of snatches." Lo and behold, HQ actually puts up a workout that does punish the specialist more by setting up the workout this way. A little eerie, no? 
• Thank you, HQ for implementing a tie-breaker. Although I'm sure there may be some bumps along the way with people inputting this incorrectly, the scoring is infinitely more fair to everyone involved. There is no more push to get that ONE REP that will make a 4,000-point difference. Also, the athletes who get that one or two snatches at the beginning of each new weight are now rewarded the way they should be, since all the athletes who tied just below them don't automatically get pushed up to the top end. 
• Time will tell, but my feeling is that this workout punishes the "burpee-specialist" more than the "snatch-specialist." Most people can grind through the first 100 reps, but what will really separate a large majority of people will be that 30 snatches at 135/75. I'd like to do the type of leveraging analysis I talked about in my last post, but the varying weights on the snatch makes it a bit more complicated. Maybe we can do something with the results to look into this once they're complete.
• As an athlete, I was surprised how much this workout hurt. I underestimated the "suck" factor of the burpees, and I'm not exactly sure why. Burpees are always terrible; I suppose that's the lesson here. For what it's worth, I got 154 reps (4 snatches at 165) and that will probably be my only attempt.
• I'd be curious how HQ chose the weights for this. My guess was that when they set it up last year (12.2), they tried to base the weights on specific percentiles of the 1RM's that were listed. They are certainly out of line with the typical women's scaling (more reading on women's scaling in a prior post for those interested). It looks like we're seeing that for the top women, these weights are much easier than for the top men, which is consistent with what we saw last year. I could see someone like an Annie Thorisdottir or Lindsay Valenzuela hitting 20+ snatches at 120.
• Now that the snatch and burpees have been combined, we're likely to see at least one more movement than we saw last year. My hope is that there are no single-modality workouts this year, because in my opinion, five workouts isn't enough to waste one of those on a single movement. Especially in light of how incredibly tight the competition is getting just to qualify for regionals, you need to test as many things as possible in order to select the best athletes.

As I noted above, my next post will look into how many points an athlete will likely need to reach regionals. Suffice it to say you don't need to be in the top 48 every week to finish there, but exactly how far you can fall in any given week is a tricky question to answer. Though it likely won't affect me,  a lot of athletes need to know what types of scores they can afford to post, and whether re-doing a workout (and wasting a training day) is a necessity.

Good luck to all the rest of week 1!

Upcoming Blog Schedule

Just wanted to give a quick update on my schedule for the next few months. Due to work and studying requirements over the next five weeks, I do not plan to post any new entries until the Open begins (for any other actuaries or actuarial students out there, I'll be taking the Interim Assessment starting in a few days). After that, I plan to post fairly regularly throughout the Open and continuing through the Games season. Ideally, I'd like to have at least one post per week throughout the Open as new workouts are released and new results roll in. Like many of you, I'll be competing as well, so it should be an exciting, busy and hopefully not too stressful time.

Until then, good luck to all with your training. And if Tony Budding is reading this, I think I speak for all (or at least most) of us when I say we better not see 7 minutes of burpees again this year...