Fun With SWAGs: What Will 13.5 Be?

Welcome back. We're closing in on the end of the third CrossFit Games Open, and I think for the most part, it's been an enjoyable year for me. Without question, HQ has to address the judging issues that have surfaced this year (most notably in 13.2 but also in 13.4 with a big flap over Jason Khalipa's toes-to-bar), but overall I think we've seen an improvement from last year's Open. Participation is way up, the Games site has been running much more smoothly, and in my opinion, the programming has been better.

Let's talk a bit more about the programming. As I've said in the past, I don't think you can afford to program single-modality events in a competition with five events. You're just introducing too much variance into the equation and potentially letting some specialists into the Regionals ahead of more well-rounded competitors. Couplets and triplets simply tell us more about each athlete, and we need to gain a lot of information about these athletes in order to trim the field from 5,000+ down in some cases to only 48. To this point, HQ has not used any single-modality events, and it shows when you look at the standings. The 48th place competitor in the Central East currently has 273 points through 4 events, which is less than the 48th place competitor in that region had through just 3 events last year with half as many athletes. What does this mean? It means that a) my projections for the necessary points to qualify for regionals were way too high; and b) the cream is rising to the top faster. The best athletes are doing relatively well on every event.

Has the programming been perfect? No, I don't think it has. To be sure, 13.2 was a judging disaster, and in my opinion, weighted too heavily toward the box jumps. I liked 13.4, but I think it would have been a more balanced workout with the toes-to-bar first. I also don't think they've gone heavy enough to this point, meaning you may see the standings shake up quite a bit at the regionals when things inevitably jump up in weight.

That being said, I think it's been an improvement over last year. And hindsight is 20/20 on some of this stuff; I'm not claiming that I could have programmed five workouts that would, at the end of the day, been preferable.

Alright, enough chit-chat. Let's get down to the business at hand: making a (not really that wild) guess at 13.5. Anyone who's been paying attention knows two movements that are still on the table: thrusters and pull-ups. I'd be stunned if both these movements don't make an appearance in 13.5, so in my mind, the big questions are:

1) Will they include overhead squats?
2) Will the pull-ups be chest-to-bar?
3) How heavy will they go on the thrusters?
4) What will the time domain be?
5) What will the rep scheme be?

Let's tackle these one at a time. I think it's a toss-up whether overhead squats get used. I think one of the major disappointments last year in the Open was the lack of overhead squats, which is just about the quintessential CrossFit movement. I'd personally be disappointed if they left them out again, but they may not want to mess with the "Fran" concept (thrusters and pull-ups) for the final workout. But since I have to pick one way or the other, I say they include overhead squats.

Next, I think the pull-ups will be chest-to-bar. I was surprised when they did this in 2011, because there are a lot of otherwise fit women who can't do these. But from a judging perspective, they are simply much easier to handle than chin-to-bar. Advantage: chest-to-bar.

Third, I think the weight on the thrusters is an interesting question. Overall, the average relative weight is still lower (0.86 men, 0.56 women) than 2011 (0.93, 0.63) or 2012 (0.99, 0.61). The load-based emphasis on lifting (LBEL) is 0.43/0.28, compared with 0.52/0.35 in 2011 and 0.43/0.27 in 2012. Thrusters at 100/65 lbs. comes in at 0.91/0.59, which would bring the average relative weight up slightly this year but still keep us lower than average. At the end of the day, though, I think HQ really likes the 100/65 lb. weight too much to switch.

My guess on the time domain is that it's between 7-12 minutes. The average time this year has been 11:30, slightly over the two-year average of 11:00. I doubt they go long this time. Let's go with 8:00, because that puts us precisely at the 54 total minutes from 2012.

Finally, the rep scheme. After 13.4, I think we can bury the ascending ladder scheme for this one. Beyond that, let's face it: this is a wild guess. So with all this in mind, here's my scientific wild-ass guess for 13.5:

In 8 minutes, complete 40 overhead squats (100/65), followed by as many rounds as possible of 10 pull-ups (chest-to-bar), 10 thrusters (100/65)

Again, feel free to throw your guess into the mix in the comments. We were awfully close last week, and I think someone might be able to nail it this time around. Good luck to everyone on 13.5!

Quick Hits: Open Week 4 Initial Thoughts

Despite our best efforts, neither I nor any of the commenters nailed 13.4 exactly with our predictions, but we were awfully close. As I (and probably many of you) expected, things got heavier and shorter this week. Personally, I expected them to go even heavier, but then again, it's the Open and surely HQ is trying to keep things inclusive.

So without further ado, let's move on to my thoughts on 13.4 (and a little analysis):

• I think you'll see a lot of folks try this one twice. I know I plan to retry it. With only 7 minutes to work with and an unusual rep scheme, I think strategy can play a big role. Anyone who watched the Chris Spealler-Graham Holmberg demo on Wednesday saw that Graham went way too hard out of the gates and paid for it. However, I felt like I let myself go too far the other way: pacing too much early on simply doesn't leave you enough time to make up ground late. I got a score of 85 but I'm going to give it another go tomorrow.
• Strategy aside, I think for the elite athletes, this workout comes down to who has the biggest engine. The clean & jerks aren't heavy enough that there's really a risk of failing a rep, but they're heavy enough that going unbroken isn't feasible after the early rounds. The key is who can pick the bar up a split-second faster each rep in those rounds of 15 and 18.
• I'm surprised HQ decided to stick the clean and jerk first on this workout, if for no other reason than it does eliminate from the competition any athletes who can't clean and jerk 135/95 pounds. It's not an excessive load, but at the same time, sticking the toes-to-bar first would allow almost everyone to continue on. But I'd also like to expand on the design of this work out more:

Although we saw Graham struggle on the toes-to-bar, I believe that the design of the workout puts more emphasis on the clean and jerk. Similarly to what I did with 13.2, I watched videos of three athletes completing the workout with similar scores* and timed each of their rounds. Using this data, I got some rough averages for the speed of both the clean and jerk and toes-to-bar. These averages allowed me to do the leveraging analysis I discussed in my post "Why It (Usually) Pays To Be Well-Rounded."

Below is a chart showing the expected score of an athlete with the average rates of speed, then also two other scenarios: one with the clean and jerk speed decreased by 20% and the toes-to-bar speed increased by 20%, and another the toes-to-bar speed decreased by 20% and the clean and jerk speed increased by 20%.

So what this is saying is that if you're slower on the clean and jerks, it's very difficult to make up for it on the toes-to-bar. However, the opposite is not true. Going 20% slower on the toes-to-bar and 20% faster on the clean and jerks actually produces a higher score than being average on both of them. Part of this is due to the fact that a 135-lb. clean and jerk is simply harder than a toes-to-bar, yet both are valued the same. But another factor is that the clean and jerk comes up first, which means that most athletes will end up doing more clean and jerks than toes-to-bar when it's all said and done (all three of these athletes did). Let's look at the same leveraging analysis, but assuming the reps scheme was reversed (toes-to-bar, then clean and jerk).

You can see that the clean and jerks are still emphasized more so than the toes-to-bar, but they are much more even than with the original rep scheme. This isn't to say that the original rep scheme is bad, it's just saying that clean and jerks are clearly valued more than toes-to-bar. But perhaps that was HQ's intention.

One last set of graphs, just because I thought it was interesting. Here are the speeds for the three athletes on each movement as they progressed through the workout. Notice how much the clean and jerk speed degrades after the first 20 reps, yet the toes-to-bar stay much flatter. Even Graham didn't drop off by as much on his toes-to-bar as he did on the clean and jerks.

That's it for now. Good luck to all for the rest of week 4 and I'll see you Monday night for our last SWAG of the season.


*Due to time constraints, I'm just focusing on this workout from the perspective of high-level athletes (this is not me). The three athletes I used were Holmberg, Spealler and Travis Stoetzel (he had the highest score with a video submission at the time I wrote this). They averaged a score of 106. For athletes shooting for a score of 75, we should use different average speeds to break this down, which would produce a different result. However, I believe you'd find that the emphasis is even more on the clean and jerk for an athlete shooting for a lower score.

Fun With SWAGs: What Will 13.4 Be?

Welcome to week 4 of the 2013 Open. After a disappointing showing with my scientific wild-ass guess (SWAG) last week, I'm dialed in and ready to roll for week 4. But first, I wanted to address a question from the comments about my post on points needed to regionals. I think it's a topic that actually feeds nicely into the prediction for this week.

Reader Brian Gresham pointed out that we're seeing pretty low point totals for the top 48 athletes in most regions compared to what I had been projecting. For instance, the 48th place male in the Central East region has 211 points, which is still about 400 points shy of my 'mid' prediction through 5 weeks. What are some possible reasons for this? Well, first, I think the fact that we only have two years of data makes it tough to be accurate, especially when most regions are substantially bigger than the biggest region in 2012 or 2011. Secondly, I think I'll probably re-visit this model next year and consider fitting a square-root (or some over concave down curve), because the slope probably flattens out as the regions get bigger and bigger. Third, let's keep in mind that we've only had three weeks, and these point totals could jump up a lot in the final two weeks. Still, if I'm a betting man, I'm betting my models over-predicted.

But that being said, a big reason for this is the programming this year. The three workouts have all been relatively similar, especially compared to the first three workouts last year. Remember, if you programmed Fran for 5 straight workouts, you'd probably be looking at a very low point total to finish 48th because the results would be really similar every week. Here's what we've seen through 3 weeks in 2011, 2012 and 2013:


2011: Time domains of 10, 15, 5. A couplet, triplet and single modality (if you count C&J as one movement). One very heavy workout that really mixed up the standings, plus one workout that relied heavily on double-unders, which always can shake things up.

2012: Time domains of 7, 10, 18. Two single-modalities and a triplet. One workout completely favoring smaller athletes and one athlete completely favoring heavier athletes. This definitely leads to big variation in points week-to-week.

2013: Time domains of 17, 10, 12. Two triplets and a couplets. The burpees on 13.1 seemed to hold back some of the pure strength folks (even Olympic games weightlifter Chad Vaughn barely cracked 150). No extremely heavy workouts, no extremely light workouts (though 13.2 was all about conditioning).

Clearly through 3 events, 2013 has had the most homogenous programming. In fact, through 3 events last year, the 48th place male in the Central East actually had 308 points despite a field that was half the size of this year's field. I don't think the programming has been bad, and in fact, I've argued in the past that testing single modalities in the Open isn't a great idea for exactly the reason that they can allow athletes who aren't as well-rounded to shake things up too much. There are only 5 workouts, so we want ones that tell us a lot about the athletes.

Now, what does that mean for 13.4? Well, looking at that comparison of 2011-2013, we can see what's missing from this year's programming: short and heavy. The average time has been 13:00, compared to the 2-year average of 11:00. The load-based emphasis on lifting (LBEL) through 3 events this year is about .41 for men and .25 for women, which is below the 2-year averages of .48 and .31. The average relative weight also is low at .81 and .50, compared to 2-year averages of .96 and .62. Not that HQ is necessarily thinking in terms of these exact numbers, but I think it's a reasonable assumption that by the end of week 5, we'll end up with similar numbers to the past two years.

Let's also consider what movements are still on the table, with the number of times they've appeared in past Opens in parentheses: pull-up (2), thruster (2), toes-to-bar (2), clean (1), overhead squat (1), push-up (1). For the sake of judging, I'm going to pray they don't put in push-ups. So that leaves the other 5 movements. I also highly doubt we'll see 11.6/12.5 repeated again, since they just repeated 12.4. So, with all that in mind, here's what I got for 13.4:

AMRAP 6 of 3 squat clean thrusters (155/100), 9 pull-ups (chest-to-bar) - squat clean & jerks are allowed

Feel free to throw in your best SWAG in the comments. I promise a serious high-five if and when we meet if you get it right. Good luck to everyone on 13.4!

Quick Hits: Open Week 3 Initial Thoughts

After hinting early on that there might be a repeat workout again this year, HQ delivered this week by repeating 12.4 as 13.3. I thought they might have considered 13.1 to be a "repeat," since it was just a mash-up of 12.1 and 12.2, but obviously they wanted to go with an exact duplicate this week. My thoughts:

• I wasn't too upset that they picked this one to repeat. It's a workout where you can certainly make big strides over last year by fixing one or two weaknesses. For me, I was able to go much more smoothly on the wall balls and double-unders and save a lot more energy for muscle-ups. I scored 253 compared with 246 and 243 on two attempts last year. Part of that was strategy, no doubt, but I'd like to think that some improved fitness contributed as well.
• After the judging fiascos from 13.2*, I'm glad HQ decided to go with a workout that was lot more easier to judge. Sure, depth is always tough to judge on squats, but for the top dogs, we're talking about muscle-ups making the big difference, and those are hard to cheat. I'm glad we saw Kristan Clever called out on the big kips a few times during the demo. I have nothing against Clever, but it's nice to see the judges willing to call out the sport's top athletes. We need things like this.
• You could certainly argue that there is no need for the restriction on the height of the feet on muscle-ups, but in my opinion it's a good rule. The muscle-up is meant to be an upper body movement, and this keeps it that way. If you want to have uprises in the competition, fine, but they can be a separate movement, just as the snatch and clean and jerk are two different movements despite starting and ending in the same spot. Everything in CrossFit doesn't always have to be purely about functionality. Otherwise we'd have no need for the rules regarding squat depth, because life rarely demands you bend your knees to an arbitrary angle. 
• Continuing on this train of thought (sorry, rambling a bit here), let's treat this sport as what it is: a sport. It's an attempt to find the fittest athletes in the world, but at the end of the day, we're finding the best CrossFitter. They can be called the "fittest man/woman on Earth," but let's not get carried away in trying to prove this in any sort of absolute terms. It's a fantastic sport, but it's not a science experiment.
• OK, back to 13.3. I had forgotten how critical the accuracy component can be in the wall ball. For me, and many long-time CrossFitters, hitting the wall ball target consistently has become second nature. But for many new athletes, or those who have recently moved up to a heavier ball, achieving an accurate toss can prove difficult. Over the course of 150 wall balls, a lack of accuracy really adds up, not only in terms of missed reps but reps that are more difficult than they need to be because the ball didn't rebound back smoothly.
• That being said, I'd love to see HQ throw in wall balls at a different height at the Regional or Games level. These top athletes have no trouble hitting the 10'/9' target, so why not test their accuracy on an different height? Multiple heights in the same workout? Perhaps ball tosses over an object, as opposed to at an object? And let's face it, watching even the best athletes in the world do regular old wall balls just isn't that exciting.

Well, that's it for now. I'll be back on Monday night to try and redeem myself after my last scientific wild-ass guess (SWAG) was basically a big swing and a miss on 13.3. Let's see if we can't get a bit closer this week. And feel free to chime in with your prediction. If you get it right, I'll reward you with a high five if we ever meet.

*For those not aware, Josh Golden was disqualified after posting a score of 387 (tied for tops in the world). Although the workout was validated at an affiliate, a video surfaced showing this performance with a substantial number of reps not up to standard. HQ decided to disqualify him based on this video, and of course the internet then exploded. Also, earlier today, Danielle Sidell's score of 420 (which was tops in the world by nearly 40 reps) was removed due to box jumps that were not up to standard. No video has been released publicly, but I have to believe that if HQ was willing to invalidate a score that no one else will ever see, it must have been obviously sub-standard. So in summary, the top men's score in the world and the top women's score in the world were both invalidated. That's generally not a good thing.

 

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!

Quick Hits: Week 2 Initial Thoughts

Well, I didn't exactly hit 13.2 spot-on with my scientific wild-ass guess, but we're in the same ballpark. I haven't tried this one yet, but from watching a few videos, doing a bit of statistical work and talking with friends, here are my thoughts on 13.2:

• This one looks to be all about conditioning and efficiency. Almost all the top athletes are going unbroken on everything (even a lot of athletes scoring under 300 are still going unbroken). This is probably the first workout I can remember in the Open where that's happening.
• I don't hate the concept of a lighter workout like this, but personally, I with they would have used a slightly higher loading and/or more reps per movement to force most athletes to break more. I'm not sure I believe an athlete is significantly fitter than another just because they can cycle each box jump 0.1 seconds faster. We've already seen that Annie Thorisdottir's seemingly untouchable score has been beaten by quite a few athletes, but I'm not sure if I believe that means much other than these athletes set their weights and boxes up closer together and cycled box jumps a hair faster. They're all amazing scores, I'm just not sure the separation at the top means a whole lot.
• The deadlift load in particular seems a little out of whack. Based on the work I did in looking at relative weights a while ago, the deadlift is a .48 relative weight for men and a .31 relative weight for women. These are both the lightest of any barbell lift in the Open, Regionals or Games dating to 2011, by quite a wide margin (next lightest was the 155/100 deadlift in 11.2, which was 0.65/0.42).
• As a corollary to the last point, I think we're learning that HQ isn't going to program a workout in the Open that requires two bars. I think they kind of got stuck going so light on the deadlift because they wanted to keep the push press at a moderate weight.

There is also one larger point I'd like to expand on. The consensus among people I've talked to is that this one comes down to the box jumps. Is there math to back that up? Yep. I looked at how much each was leveraged (see my post "WOD Design and Why It (Usually) Pays to be Well-Rounded" for explanation). First, here are the results for an elite athlete:

I got the minutes per station assumptions from watching and timing the performances of Annie Thorisdottir, Lindsay Valenzuela and Kristin Holte (currently 5th place in the world on this one, and she had a video available). I timed a few rounds of each athlete from the beginning and end of the workout, then averaged them to get a decent starting point. To calculate the time at each station, I started the clock for each movement when the prior movement finished, so any rest time gets added to the movement you are about to start (resting after box jumps counts toward the push press, for example).

The scores are listed in terms of rounds completed, and 12.19 (the baseline) is about 338 reps. Again, you can read my earlier post for a full description of exactly how this calculation works, but what the leverage factors are saying is that an athlete who is slower on box jump will be punished most here (the highest leverage). In fact, this is saying an athlete who is 20% slower on push press but 10% faster on deadlift and box jumps will actually do better than the baseline athlete.

Is this still true for athletes going considerably slower? I think so. Here are some results that are based on a couple of male athletes I watched who each got about 7.5 rounds.

Again, the box jump is the key. If you convert these minutes per station to a reps per minute, you'll see that each movement can be done at a similar speed, given this rep scheme. That means the box jump station is simply going to take longer, and therefore more ground can be gained there.

I should add a caveat that due to time constraints, I am basing my assumptions on watching a limited number of athletes. But I feel confident that the underlying point (that the box jumps are most critical) would hold even if we had a more robust sample to generate these assumptions. 

So what we have is a cardio-intensive workout that puts a significant emphasis on box jumps for most athletes. Whether that is a good or bad thing depends, to some extent, on whether this was what HQ intended to test.

Fun with SWAGs: What Will 13.2 Be?

Ok, it's time to cut the crap and make some bold predictions. And since we don't have enough data to support any sort of reasonable estimate, we'll go with the next-best thing: a scientific wild-ass guess (SWAG). Margin of error: a freaking ton. Reward if I nail it: bragging rights for a year and the possibility that people may consider me a wizard. Let's go for it!

Ok, first for the "science."  We can rule out snatch and burpees since they appeared in 13.1 and we haven't seen a movement appear in back to back WODs before. Let's assume the movements will be one(s) that have appeared in the Open before, which limits us to basically 12 movements (see my post "What to expect from the 2013 Open and beyond" for this list). Based on the fact that 13.1 was relatively long (3rd longest of 12 Open WODs), my assumption is that 13.2 will be much shorter. 13.1 had some heavy and light loading, plus some body weight movement, so I can't really infer much about the loading for 13.2. We had a couplet to start, so I'm going to rule out a couplet in 13.2 (probably not justified, but just go with it). I'm doubting a single modality because I doubt HQ wants to put that much stock in any of the other movements remaining. Also, I don't think they'll repeat 11.6/12.5 again, so I say they throw in thrusters or pull ups here.

So, with that as our background, let's make something up. Here goes:

AMRAP 8 of 25 double-unders, 10 deadlifts (225/135), 10 chest-to-bar pull-ups

So there you have it. Get to work on your double-unders, deads and pull-ups. You can take that to the bank!

Oh, and Annie beats Lindsey by a score of 402-388. Guaranteed.