Fun with SWAGs: What Will 14.3 Be? (And More)

Before we get SWAG-y, I'd like to get some quick thoughts out about 14.2 and also give you the results of an interesting little study I did last week.

Without further ado, a few thoughts on 14.2:

• Really cool to see a new WOD format for the Open.  We all know the Open has typically been filled with very basic, classic CrossFit WODs, so it was refreshing to see a workout like this come out. I think it took us all a couple of days to figure out the right strategy for this one.
• Personally, I would have liked to see the overhead squats either progress in weight or start a little bit higher. For the top-tier athletes, this was pretty much all about the chest-to-bar pull-ups. When Castro announced that the rounds would change in each 3:00 segment, I was really hoping to hear him say the weights would increase. But still... cool workout.
• Good to see that they set the breakpoints such that more athletes were able to get past the first round, unlike 13.5. Based on a really quick look, it looks like about 70% of the men reached the second round and about 30% of the women reached the second round.
• Looks like we saw quite a few people drop out in week 2. About 15% of the men and 15% of the women dropped out. That was a bigger percentage drop than we saw in any week last year, except for the women between 13.3 and 13.4 (19%). [UPDATE 4/12/2014 - This previously said the largest drop was between women's 13.2 and 13.3. That was a typo.] 

Also last week, I decided to try something new. I picked out two athletes who submitted scores by 9 a.m. on Friday morning, and each 12 hours after that, I tracked their progress on the leaderboard. My goal was to understand how the ranking of a particular score will evolve over the course of the weekend. Obviously an athlete's position would continue to get worse, but would his or her rank decrease (or increase) as a percentage of the field? If not, then an athlete could quickly get a sense of where his or her score might end up simply by checking out the percentile rank early on.

So let's see what happened. These athletes each were ranked in the 90th percentile at the start of the weekend, and I tracked the rank of the score, not necessarily the athlete. If the athlete retried the workout, their new score did not count towards this study.

Looking worldwide, we can see that in fact, the athlete's percentile stayed relatively stable. The men's percentile improved slightly, which I think is actually more typical. The women's score I picked was 87 (one rep away from finishing the 12's), and I suspect that a lot of women worked just hard enough to get that past hump on their second try.

Quickly, let's take a look at the progression in the region, which is generally more important for most of us.

Here we see that the athletes actually started at a lower (worse) percentile in the region. In the North American regions, this is probably common, since the only people performing the workouts that early on are generally strong athletes. In the rest of the world, those scores early on could come in normal Friday classes. But by 9 p.m. Friday, the athlete's percentile was pretty indicative of how things would finish up.

Anyway... on to the SWAG. Briefly, here is what we know:

• The movements left on the table (in order of how much emphasis has been placed on them in the past three years): burpee, thruster, jerk, toes-to-bar, box jump, muscle-up, wall ball, clean, deadlift, push-up.
• The LBEL so far is 0.38 for men and 0.27 for women. That's fairly close to the historical average for women (0.30), but below the historical average for men (0.46). So I think it's likely that things will get a bit heavier over the final three workouts than they have been to this point. That may or may not be true for 14.3 specifically, though.
• Neither workout so far has been particularly long. 14.1 was 10:00, and 14.2 had at most 9:00 of challenging work for any particular athlete, when you consider that the early rounds were nothing more than a warm-up for the top athletes.
• The first two workouts have been couplets. In 2011, there were three triplets, and in 2012 and 2013 there were two triplets each, so I think it's fair to assume we're getting a triplet soon. There were no single-modality workouts in 2013, and I doubt we'll see one this year.

With that as our framework, here we go with the SWAG for 14.3:

AMRAP 16 of 8 thrusters (115/75), 10 toes-to-bar, 12 bar-facing burpees

Again, you can pretty much take it to the bank that I will be way off. But it's not like you can do better. Of course, if you think you can, post SWAGs to comments. Enjoy 14.3 everyone!

Fun with SWAGs: What Will 14.2 Be?

One week in the books. I don't know about you, but I am once again shocked by the jump in competition from last year. I know personally I feel fitter than ever, but I find myself lower on the leaderboard than in past years (~780 in the Central East). It's tough seeing the top of the leaderboard get further and further away, but it's also reassuring that the sport is headed in the right direction. With 6,500+ men in the competition here in my region, only the absolute best of the best will even make it to Regionals. Marcus Hendren, top 10 in the Games the past two years, is currently outside the top 100 in his own region. This is where we are these days. For the rest of us, there's nothing to do but work hard to keep up.

Anyhow, let's move on. I may not qualify for Regionals, but I still have a chance to fulfill another lifelong dream: correctly predicting an Open workout the week beforehand. Last week, with basically nothing to go on, I wasn't particularly close, except for the 10-minute time domain. But I have a feeling is my week. NOW IS THE TIME.

OK, so let's get started. Let's assume that snatches and double-unders are off the table (even though half of the field probably used clean-and-jerks instead of snatches). Let's go ahead and assume they'll hold thrusters and pull-ups until the end again (although I really hope they don't). I also don't think they'll put cleans or jerks in this week, since they were an option in 14.1. That leaves us with the following movements on the table, in order of how much emphasis was put on them in the past: burpee, toes-to-bar, box jump, muscle-up, wall ball, deadlift, push-up, overhead squat.

Last week was a couplet with relatively light weights, so I'm going to assume this week will be a triplet with considerably heavier weights. As far as the time domain, it could really go either way, but let's go with... long?

Well, unfortunately I haven't really narrowed it down a whole lot. But that's never stopped me from going bold with a prediction before. Here goes:

AMRAP 15 of 10 bar-facing burpees, 10 overhead squats (115/75), 10 toes-to-bar

Zero percent chance that happens, of course. But let's see you try to do better. Post SWAGs to comments, and good luck on 14.2!

Quick Hits: Open 14.1 Initial Thoughts and Analysis

So, all of us misfired on our SWAGs this week, although give John Nail credit for almost calling a repeat of 11.1 before overthinking it and going in a different direction. KISS principle, John.

Anyway, with 14.1 being a repeat workout, many of us knew about what to expect from this one. I personally had done it 4 times before, so I knew what I was getting into. But as is often the case with CrossFit, you always find yourself learning something new. One thing I found was that I actually benefited from mixing in clean-and-jerks with the snatches. In the past, I think my pride had gotten the best of me and kept me from using the C&J, but I actually found them very helpful. Around the midpoint of the workout, I started using a clean-and-strict press for about 2/3 of my reps. I found the strict press to be nice because it took the stress totally off my legs for a brief moment. I ended up with a PR by 30 double-unders + 2 snatches (score of 302), but I think I'm going to give it one more shot tomorrow and mix in even more C&J's early on.

That being said, I personally would have preferred that the workout required the snatch. I think the option to use C&J's is basically a loophole that was exploited a lot more than perhaps HQ anticipated, much like the step-ups last year in 13.2. For many people, they won't even need to perform a single snatch during the Open, since it's unlikely (but possible) snatches will be programmed again.

I also spent a bit of time this afternoon reviewing video submissions to do a quick version of the leveraging analysis that I did for several Open workouts last year (as well as Jackie from Regionals). The concept here is to look at the average pace for each movement and the variability of the pace for each movement, which will then allow me to understand which movement is more leveraged. By leveraged, what I mean is a measure of how much an athlete's score will suffer if he/she struggles with a particular movement. See my post "How is Jackie Being Won?" from last May for more details.

Today's analysis is based on reviewing 10 male athletes who scored between 303 and 356. These are the type of athletes who will be fighting for those final regional spots. The analysis would certainly look different if we looked at a more average athlete or at a Games-level athlete. In particular, the average athlete may struggle more with double-unders, but this analysis assumes that the athlete is at least competent with double-unders.

Note that for the sake of time, I timed a couple of rounds for each athlete toward the middle of the workout. Their overall pace was probably slightly faster, but the overall message here is still valid, in my opinion.

Those final leverage figures mean the following:

• An athlete who is 1 standard deviation worse on the double-unders but 1 standard deviation better on the snatches actually finishes 1.9% better than an athlete who is average at both movements.
• An athlete who is 1 standard deviation worse on the snatches but 1 standard deviation better on the double-unders finishes 7.8% worse than an athlete who is average at both movements.

Basically, an athlete that struggles a bit with the double-unders can make up time on the snatches, whereas an athlete who is slower on the snatches will have a hard time making up enough ground on the double-unders. Interestingly, the coefficient of variation was almost identical for each movement (17% for double-under and 16% for snatches). However, the snatches took nearly twice as long on average, which is why we see that they were so much more valuable.

If there's anything to take away from this, it's that pushing the pace on the double-unders at the expense of snatches does you no good. Gather yourself during the double-unders, and be ready to roll on the snatches. (Easier said than done, of course.)

Well, that's it for today. Good luck for all those hitting this workout on Monday, and I'll see you back here Tuesday night for our SWAG for 14.2.

Fun with (S)WAGs: What Will 14.1 Be?

The 2014 Open season is finally here, folks. That means another chance to test your fitness against 70,000 men and 40,000 women (and counting). But perhaps more importantly, it means another chance to test your ability to make modestly substantiated, vaguely scientific predictions about what each Open workout will be!

Welcome to Fun with SWAGs, 2014 Edition (SWAG: Scientific Wild-Ass Guess).

Today's prediction for 14.1 will be less SWAG, more WAG, since every movement is still on the table and we can't really rule much of anything out. However, that doesn't mean we can't narrow things down at all.

First, let's limit the movements to those that have been programmed in the Open in the last three years. Considering no new movements were added to the Open programming in 2012 or 2013, I think it's a pretty fair assumption that no new ones will be added this year. In any case, it's good enough for a SWAG.

Next, consider that either burpees or snatches (or both) have come up in the first Open workout in each of the past three years. Not coincidentally, these are also the two most heavily-programmed movements across the three Opens. So let's assume at least one will come up in 14.1.

How about time domain? Well, broadly, we can assume it will be between 4 and 20 minutes (the min and max of all Open workouts historically). Beyond that, I'm not sure we can narrow it down a whole lot, since the first Open workout has been 10, 7 and 17 minutes in 2011, 2012 and 2013 respectively. But since we need to make a specific guess, I'll assume that they back off the 17 minutes from last year and put this one in the 10-12 minute range.

Now, let's start to put something together. I do not think they will repeat 13.1, since that was basically a combination of two prior Open workouts already (12.1 and 12.2). I think there will be a repeat workout this year, but I believe it will be 13.4 (cleans and jerks and toes to bar). That one doesn't satisfy my criteria of having burpees or snatches, so that leads me to believe 14.1 will be brand new. I'll also go ahead and assume it will not have both snatches and burpees this time, but I do believe it will be a couplet. I think the weight will be light-to-moderate, in order to attract as many entrants as possible in the final few days.

OK, with all that said, it's time to make a pick. My SWAG for 14.1 is:

AMRAP 10 of 20 burpees (bar-facing), 20 deadlifts (155/105)

Think you have a better idea? Post your SWAG to comments. Enjoy the Open everyone!

Height, Weight and Programming: Part 1

For a long time, I've stayed away from investigating which height, weight, age, BMI or other characteristics yield the best results in CrossFit. Part of the reason is that there have been several other blogs that have already put together some nice plots and analyses about these topics. The other reason is that I wasn't sure how much it helps the average CrossFitter to know these things. For instance, if you find that your height is not "ideal" for CrossFit, how does this help you? You can't change your height, and obviously I wouldn't encourage you to stop competing because your current height might put you at a disadvantage. Even with weight, I think it's generally not worth trying too hard to change your weight unless you are drastically over- or underweight. Just keep training, eat well, and I believe your body will work its way into the weight that works for you.

However, I started thinking that there is value in looking into these topics. CrossFit does not have weight or height classes, and so I think it's important for the sport as a whole that the programming be as unbiased as possible. It seems that this has been a constant challenge since the inception of the CrossFit Games, and likely something Dave Castro and the folks at HQ are considering as they put together the workouts for each competition. What I'm hoping to do here is look at the data and see how well that goal is being accomplished.

One thing to consider, however, is that for the sport to be as fair as possible to all sizes of individuals, it's not imperative that EVERY workout be unbiased. In fact, one of the thigns that makes the sport so fascinating to me is seeing the bigger athletes like Aja Barto or Chad Mackay tackle the supposed "little guy" workouts and seeing the Chris Speallers of the world being forced to push a 400-lb. sled. One of the ways I've attempted to quantify the bias of individual workouts, as well as entire competitions, is using the concepts of average relative loads and load-based emphasis on lifting (LBEL). See my post "What to Expect From the 2013 Open and Beyond" for a full explanation, but essentially the average relative load tells us how "heavy" the weights were across a workout or a competition, and the LBEL tells us how much emphasis there was on lifting, with heavier weights getting more value.

My theory has been that the higher the LBEL, the more the competition should favor a bigger athlete. I believe this true for an individual workout, but as we will see, these metrics aren't always that precise when we look at just one workout. One reason is that the metrics assume each movement in a workout is worth equal value. Broadly, this is true if we look at several workouts together, but certain movements aren't programmed so that each movement is truly valued equally. For instance, on 12.4/13.3, it's fair to assume the 150 wall balls were worth far more than the 90 double-unders, since the double-unders can be completed in 1-2 minutes for a competitive athlete, while the wall balls take 5-6 minutes for most top athletes. Additionally, the muscle-ups don't even come into play for roughly half the field.

Today, I'm going to look solely at the 2013 Open results and see what we can learn (data again provided by Michael Girdley at http://girdley.com). The first thing I've done is to look at the relationship between weight and performance on each 2013 Open event. However, in doing this, I tried to normalize for the BMI of the athletes at each weight level. The way I did this is by calculating the average finish for athletes in each bodyweight/BMI combination, then calculating a "weighted" average for each bodyweight class, with the "weights" for the weighted average based on the mix of BMI's across the entire field.

The reason is that the heavier athletes may include more athletes who are overweight and perhaps not in great shape. However, what I'm interested in is comparing athletes who have roughly the same general fitness level but differ in terms of weight (think Jason Khalipa vs. Chris Spealler). BMI is far from a great indicator of fitness for an individual person, but it's relatively unbiased, and it will help us level the playing field a bit. Ideally, something like body fat percentage of V02 max would be a good way to normalize, but we don't have access to that information yet.

Below are two graphs (one male, one female) showing the average ranking for athletes by weight on each of the 2013 Open events. Note that these are based only on athletes under 40 years old who finished all five events and had a height and weight within a reasonable range. I limited the field to this group of athletes and then re-ranked them on each event before performing this analysis.

The thing that stands out to me here is that all of the first four events followed a similar pattern for both men and women, while the fifth event followed a distinctly different pattern. The first four events had an ideal weight somewhere between 185-195 for men and 150-160 for women. The fifth event, however, heavily favored the smaller athletes. For the women in particular, the graph never "bottomed out," meaning that essentially the lighter the athlete, the better the finish (due to sample size, I really couldn't draw any reasonable conclusions about weights outside the range shown).

Does that make 13.5 a bad event? Not necessarily. But it does mean that the chest-to-bar pull-ups appear to have been more important than the thrusters, considering the event generally favored smaller athletes. If that was the intention, then there's no issue.

Now let's look at the same analysis for height.

Here we see a similar pattern. All the first four events had a similar "sweet spot," with the fifth event favoring a much smaller athlete.

However, what may surprise you (it surprised me) is that the ideal height for men and women is surprisingly close. For men, the ideal height for those first four events ranged from about 5-11 to 6-1, while for women it ranged from about 5-9 to 5-11. Looking only at the men's results, one might assume that the ideal CrossFit athlete is one who is average height; looking only at the women's results, one might assume that the ideal CrossFit athlete is one who is taller than average. However, it may actually be that CrossFit tends to favor athletes who are near 5-10, regardless of gender.

The chart below summarizes the findings by looking at the ideal height and weight for each event, and for the competition as a whole. The "ideal" here is not simply the one with the lowest rank, but rather a weighted average of the 3 heights/weights with the lowest ranks, with more weight given to the height/weight with the absolute best rank. This helps smooth out our results a bit.

What we do not see here is much correlation between LBEL and the ideal height or weight. The event that favored the smaller athletes was 13.5, which had an LBEL right in the middle of the pack, while 13.3, the lightest event, was ideal for larger athletes. But as mentioned above, for 13.3, the LBEL may be deceptively low due to the design of the workout.

So can we assume that LBEL tells us nothing about which athletes each events favor? I think more study is needed. For one thing, looking only at the ideal heights and weights do not account for how much the smaller or larger athletes are penalized. Also, the 2013 Open gave us pretty homogenous events: no one event was particularly heavy or particularly light. In the 2012 Open, on the other hand, we had an unweighted event (12.1) and a lifting-only event (12.2). Perhaps a future post can run this same type of analysis on the 2012 Open, although there has already been some work done on that http://xfit2011.blogspot.com/ and https://sites.google.com/site/cfopen2012analysis/home. Also, for me to do my normalization by BMI, the smaller sample size in 2012 could pose a problem, particularly for the women.

But as I mentioned earlier, I expect that LBEL is more informative when comparing entire competitions (for instance, regionals vs. Open) than when comparing individual events. One thing I plan to investigate in a future post is athletes of varying heights and weights fared at regionals, accounting for how well they performed in the Open. Given that the LBEL was much higher at the 2013 Regionals than at the 2013 Open, we would expect that for two athletes who performed equally well in the Open, the larger athlete would have an advantage at regionals. We shall see whether the data confirms this.

So what are the big takeaways today?

1. Overall, the 2013 CrossFit Open favored men around 5-11, 190 lbs and women around 5-10, 155 lbs. I think it is likely that these are roughly the ideal heights and weights for CrossFit in general. For women, this may come as a surprise that the ideal athlete is so tall.
2. The advantages toward any particular height or weight are minimal in total. Athletes at the ideal weight finished only about 4,000 spots ahead of athletes at the least ideal weight (out of 40,000). For women, the largest gap was about 2,000 spots (out of about 20,000). The same was true for height.
3. The first four events in the 2013 Open favored athletes around the overall ideal, while the fifth event favored much smaller athletes.
4. For individual events in the Open, a higher LBEL doesn't always mean the event favors larger athletes. However, it is still possible (and likely in my opinion) that that a higher LBEL across an entire competition means the competition favors larger athletes. More study is needed, and I'm hoping to dive into that after this year's Open.

Hopefully, today's post provides a good starting point for this discussion. But to be sure, there is still more work to be done.


In other news, the Open starts in 15 days, so get your SWAG's ready for event 14.1! From here until the end of the Open, that's going to be the focus of my posts on here. My goal is to get 2 posts regarding each event, but cut me some slack - I've got a 3-month-old baby and training of my own, but I'll be doing the best I can.

Until then, good luck with your training!

Are CrossFitters Specializing?

For the past seven years, the CrossFit Games have sought to find the fittest all-around athletes in the world. One common theme from CrossFit HQ is that the Games seek to "punish the specialist" and "reward the generalist." However, one can't help but notice the increased attention that certain aspects of fitness seem to garner in the CrossFit community compared to others. In CrossFit media, the emphasis on lifting, and Olympic lifting in particular, seems to be disproportionate to many other areas of fitness. When was the last time you saw a video or even a note on the Games site mentioning a Games athlete hitting a new PR in his 5K run? Yet it seems like it hasn't been 24 hours since we've seen a video posted of another athlete hitting a big snatch or clean and jerk.

OPT noted this phenomenon on his blog about a year ago:

"Media recently for the sport has put an emphasis on strength development in spite of promoting true “balance” in fitness and the general components of fitness.  A sport where now the elite can qualify for the American open weightlifting championships but cannot qualify for a state-level high school cross country meet."

Although I won't seek to prove it in today's analysis, I think there is little doubt that the big lifts tend to get a lot more attention than general metabolic conditioning in CrossFit media. However, the question I will attempt to answer is whether the sport itself has gotten out of balance.

From the programming perspective, I showed in my recent post "History Lesson: An Objective, Analytical Look at the Evolution of the CrossFit Games" that while the metcons have become heavier and heavier over time, the overall balance of lifting and conditioning has not changed drastically in the past 7 years. In addition, there is roughly the same amount of emphasis on Olympic lifting now as there has been throughout Games history. In fact, there has actually been a shift away from the powerlifting-style movements like the deadlift and back squat. Running is and has always been the most common movement at the CrossFit Games.

However, there is a legitimate question about the intense focus on Olympic lifting and the lack of focus on running at the Regional level. And there is also no doubt that the CrossFit athletes have been getting more and more proficient at the Olympic lifts, as evidenced by the rising numbers in the 1-rep max events at the Games each year.

So let's ignore the programming for now and focus on the actual strengths and weaknesses of the athletes in our community. Before I do this, I want to re-visit the comment from OPT above. I love OPT and have probably watched every CrossFit.com video of his over the past few years, but I think the commentary that "the elite can qualify for the American open weightlifting championships but cannot qualify for a state-level high school cross country meet" is a bit misleading on a couple of levels:

1. The American Open is not that competitive on a global scale. To qualify in the 85 kg weight class, you need a 266 KG total (http://0205632.netsolhost.com/2013NationalEventsQualifyingTotals.pdf). Yet at the 2012 Olympics, the 16th place finisher had a total of 315, or 18% higher. On the other hand, to qualify for the highest-level state cross country meet in Ohio (a competitive state where I used to cover sports), you need a time around 17:00. Considering these meets are run on rugged terrain rather than on a track, this time isn't that far behind the Olympic 5,000 meter times (13:52 was 15th place in the 2012 Olympic final). So I think it could be argued that qualifying for those two events are actually relatively comparable as far as difficulty.
2. There are weight classes in Olympic weightlifting, yet there are not in CrossFit or cross-country. The top CrossFitters are not even in the same stratosphere as the lifters in the 105KG+ weight class. On the flip side, among runners above 200 lbs., I have to believe someone like Garrett Fisher would be considered elite.

But let's look at the numbers throughout our community. To do this analysis, I used the 2013 Open data, which was generously pulled and cleaned for me by Michael Girdley (girdley.com). This dataset has all the numerical information provided by athletes who competed in the Open (it does not include answers to the questions about diet, how long you've done CrossFit, etc.). Based on this self-reported data, I believe we can understand how CrossFit athletes from top-to-bottom compare to the world's best in a variety of lifts, running events and metcons.

To perform this analysis, I first limited the data to athletes under 40 who completed all five events (approximately 39,000 men and 23,000 women). Then I re-ranked all the athletes based on their rank across all 5 Open events and grouped them into 20 buckets based on this rank. Within each bucket, I took the average for each of the self-reported scores (Fran, Helen, Grace, Filthy 50, FGB, 400 meter run, 5K run, clean and jerk, snatch, deadlift, back squat, max pull-ups). For the timed events, I converted these to a pace (rounds per second, for instance, or meters per second). Then, I pulled in world records for each and compared the CrossFit community against those world records.

The charts below shows how the community compares to the world records*. For the lifting events, these are the world records without regard to weight class, since CrossFit does not have weight classes. To reduce clutter, I have grouped all metcons together, all runs together and all lifts together (pull-ups stayed in their own category).

On both charts, we can see that the community is generally closest to the world record when it comes to running events and (not surprisingly) metcons. When compared to the world record in the lifts, it becomes obvious how far behind the CrossFit world still is. Proud of that 200-lb. snatch? Congratulations, you are slightly below half the world record. (Note: I am proud of my 200-lb. snatch, and it took me 5 years to finally get there).

But let's also look at the Games athletes in particular and see how they stack up. Here is a table showing each event and how the average Games athlete stacks up compared to the world record.

Not shockingly, the Games athletes are near the top to the world record in the metcons (since generally the world record comes from this field), but again, note that they are much closer to the world records in the 5K run and the 400 meter run than they are in the Olympic lifts. And look at that back squat - not even close! (and before you ask, this is comparing against the raw world record in the back squat, which appears to be 450 KG as best I could tell)

It is interesting to note that the elite CrossFit men are closer to the Olympic lifting world records than the elite women, yet they are further from the 5K run record. This could have something to do with the background that many of the athletes had prior to CrossFit, but that's purely a guess at this point.

Another way to look at this is to understand where the Games athletes excel furthest beyond the rest of the community, and in particular, where they excel furthest beyond the rest of the Regional field. For both men and women, here is a look at how the top 5% of Open finishers (roughly the Regional field) compared to the Games athletes.

Here I think we start to see something interesting. While the Games athletes do not appear to be any further from the world record in the 5K run than they are in the Olympic lifts, they aren't that much better than the rest of the regional field when it comes to the running events. They also aren't that much better when it comes to the powerlifting movements. I think you could attribute at least partially to programming at the Regionals: we simply aren't testing much for running or powerlifting, so the athletes making the Games aren't necessarily that much better than the rest of the field in those areas.

On the flip side, look where the Games athletes do exceed their peers by a greater amount: the Olympic lift, the short metcons and pull-ups. It seems that explosive power and conditioning (over a relatively short time frame) are what tend to separate the Games athletes from the rest of the Regional field.

One last way to look at this is to see the gap between the Regional athletes and the median Open athlete**, which is defined as the athletes finishing in 45th-55th percentile in the Open among people under 40 who completed all 5 events. These median Open athletes are still generally fit individuals, they just aren't quite at the Regional level.

This table looks a lot like the prior one, meaning that what separates the Regional athletes from the average Open athletes is a lot like what separates the Games athletes from the Regional athletes.

Based on the analysis here, I believe that CrossFit athletes in general aren't bad runners or particularly tremendous lifters. However, the elite CrossFit athletes are significantly better lifters than the rest of the community, and yet they are not drastically better runners than the rest of the community. From this perspective, we do see a little bit of the bias that OPT was writing about. But overall, I don't think the specialization issue is as much of a concern as some might think.

Update 12/20: [I'd like to note that I don't believe that achieving 70% of the world record in the snatch is exactly as challenging as achieving 70% of the world record pace in a 400 meter run. However, the fact that CrossFit Games athletes are so much closer to the world record in the running events than they are in the lifts indicates to me that these athletes should not be considered specialists in the Olympic lifts who simply neglect running. One way to quantify this, which I'm hoping to look into more, is to put things in terms of standard deviations. I have looked at this for the snatch, clean & jerk, 5K run and 400 meter run for men, however. Using the standard deviation based on the same sample of Open athletes under 40, the Games athletes are approximately 6.0 standard deviations below the world record in the lifts but only 4.3 standard deviations away in the 5K run and 2.0 standard deviations away in the 400 meter run. This isn't a perfect method either, but again, it supports the idea that Games athletes aren't totally specializing in the Olympic lifts while neglecting their running.

However, I do see the same pattern as in the main body of my post when comparing Games athletes to the rest of the CrossFit field. Games athletes are only about 1.1 standard deviations better than the median in the 400 meter run, 0.7 standard deviations better in the 5K run, but approximately 2.5 standard deviations better in the Olympic lifts. So it seems that the same conclusions generally hold when doing the analysis this way.]

Update 12/21: [As a follow-up to the previous update, I looked at where the average Games athlete would fall in the spectrum of all Open athletes in each of the self-reported metrics. This was more difficult than it might seem because of the tremendous selection bias in the data (only about 20% of the men's field reported a 400m time, for instance, but about 50% reported a deadlift max). I tried to account for this by creating a "weighted" distribution, where each 5% bucket was only worth the same number of total athletes, regardless of how many missing values they had. After doing this, I found that the average male Games athlete is in the top 2% in the clean and jerk and snatch, and they were at least the top 6% in all other lifts or metcons. However, for the 400 meter sprint, they were only in the top 15%, and in the 5K run, they were only in the top 25%.

Note that the selection bias still can't be totally accounted for. It's probably fair to assume that the non-responders in general had worse scores than those that did respond, so maybe the Games athletes are actually even better than they appear here. However, it is definitely striking that the Games athletes are not that far beyond their peers in the runs, particularly the 5K. Still, it doesn't necessarily say they are bad runners, as you could argue that CrossFitters in general are good runners and therefore the Games athletes are still pretty good. It is clear, however, that Games athletes are outdistancing their peers substantially in the Olympic lifts, even though they are generally still well short of elite status. 

I think a lot of this has to do with the background of many CrossFitters. Many, many people ran to stay in shape prior to finding CrossFit, but relatively few Olympic lifted. To really decide if you feel the sport of CrossFit has gotten too specialized, I think all of the preceding analysis has to be taken in together, including how far CrossFitters are from the world records as well as how the Games athletes compare to the rest of the field. I'm not sure there is really a clear-cut answer.]

Update 12/28: [Quick one here. I did the same analysis for the women that I did for the men on 12/21, and I found that the women's Games were slightly more dominant across the board. The average Games athlete would be in the top 3% for all lifts and metcons, the top 9% for the 5K run and the top 15% for the 400 meter sprint. Interesting that they were comparatively better than the men in the 5K, although actually about the same in the 400 meter sprint. I'm not sure I really have a good hypothesis for this at the moment.

Also, worth noting is that I looked into the response rates for each metric, and found that for women, the rate was between 7% and 12% for all runs and metcons, except Fran, which was 17%. The response rate was between 32% and 38% for all the lifts and 16% for max pull-ups.

For men, the rates were between 13-23% for all metcons, except Fran, which was 33%. The response rate was between 44% and 51% for all the lifts and 30% for max pull-ups.

This does indicate that there is a selection bias issue that has to be considered, but it's not as if it ONLY applies to the runs. Basically all the metcons and the runs had very low response rates, but the lifts had much higher response rates.]

*Here are the world records I used in this analysis, based on a combination of web research and self-reported PRs from the database: 
Fran - 2:00 (men), 2:07 (women)
Helen - 6:13, 7:20
Grace - 1:14, 1:17
Filthy 50 - 14:05, 16:13
FGB - 520, 460
400 meters - :44, :50
5,000 meters - 12:37, 14:11
Clean & Jerk - 263 KG, 190 KG
Snatch - 214 KG, 151 KG
Deadlift - 461 KG, 264 KG
Back squat (raw) - 450 KG, 280 KG
Max pull-ups - 106, 80

**There is a significant amount of selection bias in these self-reported numbers, which is why I used the bucketing approach to account for it. In general, the people reporting their numbers for each lift/run/metcon are better at those lifts/runs/metcons than those who leave them blank. Also, for many of the metcons, less experienced athletes may not even have a PR. As an example of this bias, if you take a straight average of the clean and jerk across all women under 40 finishing all 5 events, it's about 134 pounds. But if you group the field by the 5% buckets as I have, take the average in each bucket, then average across all buckets, you get an average of 126 pounds, which I believe is more representative of the "true" average.

What to Expect from the 2014 Open

As of the date of this post, we have about 5 months remaining until the 2014 CrossFit Games Open begins, give or take a week or two. Planning to compete this time around? If so, you'll probably be well-served to have some idea of what to expect when March rolls around.

While we can't know for certain what Dave Castro and HQ have in store this year, we have plenty of data from the past three years that can inform us about what the Open is likely to look like. How you go about training for those events is another topic altogether (one I touched on briefly last year in my post "Does Our Training Look Like What We're Training For? Should It?"), but in any event, it's better off not to go in blind. We know CrossFit is all about preparing for the unknown, but here's a hint: if you actually want to do well in the Open, I'd worry more about getting your burpees and snatches in order  and less about those pesky ring handstand push-ups.

In many ways, today's post will be an update to last year's post "What to Expect from the 2013 Open and Beyond." However, I plan to expand on certain topics a bit more and really focus the discussion on the Open. We'll cover the Regionals and Games another day (you can read my most recent post for plenty of discussion of the Games programming). For those just getting into CrossFit after seeing the Games on TV, here's a quick and VERY important note: the Open workouts will not look much like what you saw on TV. But even the athletes who made it that far had to master this stuff first.

OK, with that out of the way, let's get started. The easiest way I see to do this is to answer the questions that any athlete should have as he or she prepares for the Open.


What movements will I need to do?

Good question. While the Games have used a total of 51 different movements in the past, the Open is testing a much smaller skill set. There have only been a total of 14 movements used in the Open in the past three years, and 10 of those have been used every year since the Open started in 2011. Below is a breakdown of the movements that have been used in the Open in the past, and thus the movements you can expect this year. The table shows the percentage of the total point value that each movement was worth each year, along with an estimate of how much they'll be worth this year. The projection for this year takes all three years into account but gives more weight to the more recent years.

Right there at the top, the top five lifts (snatch, burpee, thruster, pull-up and jerk) account for over 50% of the points. Get really good at those movements, make sure you don't suck at toes-to-bar, box jumps, double-unders, wall balls or muscle-ups, and you should do well in the Open.

Now, you'll notice I have a "Subcategory" listed for each lift (I know a wall ball isn't actually KB or DB, but I put it in there because it's a lift that doesn't use a barbell). I find that looking at things based on the subcategory can be useful, because it gives us an idea of the type of movements that will be used. For instance, cleans haven't actually been used that much in the Open the past two years, but I wouldn't recommend skipping them in training - the movement pattern is similar to that of a snatch, which is highly valued. Below is a table similar to the one above, but looking at subcategories instead of specific movements.

Clearly, the focus is on two things: Olympic-style lifts and basic bodyweight gymnastics. This is partly due to equipment restrictions in the Open, but partly due to the fact that HQ seems to really value those two types of movements when making the first cut of athletes. This distribution changes quite a bit when we move into the Regionals and Games, but for now, we're focused on the Open.


How heavy will the lifts be?

I came up with the concept of average relative weights last year as a way to understand this topic a bit better. You can read the full write-up on how I've done this in last year's post "What to Expect from the 2013 Open and Beyond," but here's the concept: depending on the movement, a certain weight may be heavy, medium or light, so I have normalized the weights prescribed on each workout so that we can get a fairer indication of how "heavy" the lift was. After looking at the normalized loads that were prescribed in the past three years, I applied the average relative weight we've seen to the various lifts to show the average expected weights in this year's Open.

Now, while the above graph is useful, there are a couple other factors to consider:

• These are only averages. The "heaviest" load required in the Open was a 165-lb. clean and jerk (squat clean and jerk technically), which is roughly equivalent to a 130-lb. snatch, a 290-lb. deadlift or a 145-lb. overhead squat. I personally doubt we'll see that type of loading required in the future.
• HQ has twice programmed workouts where the weight starts light (to allow everyone to participate) but gets progressively heavier. For those looking to make the Regionals, you'll likely need to be able to move weights that are about 75% heavier than the loads shown above (for instance, 165-lb. snatch for men).
• For some reason, HQ hasn't gone heavy on the movements you'd expect, like deadlift. I'm guessing this could be a way to allow more people to compete who may only have access to a limited amount of weight. So honestly, I'd be a little surprised if we see a 225-lb. deadlift in the competition, although it would seem like a reasonable weight to me.

The chart below illustrates the distribution of weights that have been required in the past (so, ignoring the 135-, 165- and 210-lb. snatches that could be performed in 12.2 and 13.1). Above each bar on the chart, I've given some examples of the type of movement/loading combinations that would fall into that range (sorry for the crappy resolution on this one, Excel for Mac is pretty awful about text boxes on charts).

What types of WODs will be programmed? Will there be any fun chippers like "Filthy Fifty?"

To answer the second question first, no, there probably will not be any fun chippers. HQ has made it clear that they believe couplets and triplets are the bread-and-butter, so get any thoughts of a "Filthy Fifty" out of your head now. Also, they probably won't program "Murph" (at least, I certainly hope not).

In the past three years, we've seen 16 workouts:

• All have included either one, two or three movements
• All were metcons (no max-effort lifts)
• All were between 4 and 20 minutes

The chart below shows the duration, number of movements and load-based emphasis on lifting (LBEL) for each workout in the past three years*. The LBEL is a metric that tells us not only how heavy the loads were, but what percentage of the workout was based on lifting. So if the workout had 135-lb. cleans and burpees, the average relative weight is 1.00 but the LBEL is 1.00x50% = 0.50.

You'll notice that as the workouts get longer, the weights tend to decrease and the number of movements tends to increase. This is in line with what we typically see in CrossFit programming. Programming 7 minutes of burpees (Open 12.1) is torturous, but not unreasonable; programming 20 minutes of burpees is stupid (and dangerous, quite frankly).

OK, well, you did all this research, why can't you just tell us what the workouts will be?

Because I'm not Dave Castro, and ultimately, what happened in the past doesn't necessarily impact what will be coming in the future. There's nothing stopping HQ from saying "screw it, we're going to start requiring weighted pistols in the Open."

That being said, the Open has tended to be pretty predictable. After I published last year's version of this post, in which I emphasized how much value was placed on burpees and snatches, guess what showed up in the first workout last year? 17 minutes of burpees and snatches. My guess is that HQ's not really trying to trick us in the Open. They save that stuff for the Games.

So do with this information what you will. I'm not telling you how to train, I'm just telling you what you should be training for.

On a personal note, this may be my last post for a couple months, potentially until the Open starts. My wife and I are expecting our first child in the next few weeks, so I'm not exactly sure where blogging about CrossFit will fit into the schedule in those first couple months. We shall see. In any event, good luck with your training!

*Note that for this chart, I considered Open 11.1 a single-modality despite technically being a clean and jerk. Also, in calculating the LBEL for the snatch workouts with varying weights, I took the average weight lifted for someone who reached regionals. This reflects the fact that, while only 75 lbs. is required, for a regional-level athlete, they'll be moving somewhere around 130 lbs. on average throughout the workout.