2016 CrossFit Games Open Recap

We have had some time to process and digest the Open season, since its close. I wanted to point out a few highlights for NoCoast as Regionals and the Games get closer. First, I still get questions about what all this is, so I'll quickly reiterate:

The Open is an invitation to anyone, anywhere, to compete with everyone else in the world. It's the first stage of qualifying for the Games. But, for most people it's a chance to compete in their affiliate with their fellow gym members. There are 5 workouts over 5 weeks. This year, the workouts were announced on Thursday night, NoCoast programmed them on Friday, and everyone was required to have their scores submitted by Monday night the following week. Scores were then tabulated against not only your gym, but your region, and the entire world.

From here...

Top 20 men, and women, and top 15 teams from our region (South West) qualify for the South Regional in Dallas. There are 17 regions in the world. They will all feed into one of 8 regional competitions across the world. The South Region includes the South West, Latin American, and South Central regions. These regional competitions take place over one of three weekends in May. The South Region competition will take place May 13-15.

From Regionals...

The top 5 men, women, and teams of each region will advance to the CrossFit Games in LA.

Here is an infographic about how special a Regional qualifier really is, based on last year's stats. These athletes are the top 1% in the world. It's a huge accomplishment to be in the ranks with athletes of this

caliber.

So how did you stack up? How did NoCoast stack up? NoCoast had 52 registered athletes. There was a pool of 324,307 registered participants worldwide. These numbers below are represented from the South West region, with 7140 females, and 8337 males.

Top Overall Performers (Rank in the South West Region)

Men

1. Dan Finck-33, best finish 16.2 (25th)

2. Matt Johnson-100, best finish 16.1 (36th)

3. Brian Lee-452, best finish 16.2 (163rd)

Women

1. Karen Ramirez-321, best finish-16.4 (28th)

2. Sam Griffith-336, best finish 16.4 (35th)

3. Lee Tapia-584, best finish 16.3 (447th)

Team

41st in Region

Anyone could contribute to the team score, so it's important to highlight everyone who did, as it may not have been one of the athletes listed above every week.

Andy Call: 16.1

Grant Jansen: 16.4

Sara Hugo: 16.1, 16.3, 16.4

Masters Shout Outs

Masters compete on a worldwide level-the top 200 move on to the CrossFit Games Masters Qualifier. The top 20 from there advance to the Games. We had a couple impressive performances from our Master's.

Coleigh Patrick (45-49)-20th in Region, 278th worldwide

Karen Ramirez (40-44)-22nd in Region, 275th worldwide

This year's Open brought two movements we've never seen before: the overhead walking lunge in 16.1, and the bar muscle up in 16.3. I was blown away by how you all stepped up to the plate! I know of at least 10 athletes who got their first bar muscle up, and I'm sure there were more!

In 16.1, we saw athletes get their first chest to bar pull ups, and more athletes getting several more than they thought they could.

In 16.4, we had a few people get their first handstand push up!

Every week, I saw athletes start the workout Rx'd thinking they'd have to back off, and then end up exceeding their expectations by a long shot. In these cases, most athletes went on to finish the workout Rx'd.

Here's what you had to say about your experience:

"The Open taught me about the larger Crossfit community (I watched the 16.4 announcement) and allowed me to enjoy watching my classmates go for it (Mark and Stephanie)."-Dom

"The Open taught me it can be fun to push hard and how much it helps to have people standing by to cheer you on.I did all the works to the best of my ability and had fun doing so." -Jamie

"The Open taught me that I am stronger than I ever thought. I also learned to push myself in ways I never thought were possible. During the Open I accomplished my first bar muscle up! I also did 4 out of 5 work outs prescribed, which was a major accomplishment for me both mentally and physically." -Kasey

"The Open taught me that having a supportive community is really important. Having people there to encourage you to just keep going helped me to finish a couple of the workouts much faster then I would have alone. Also I learned that mental strength is just as important as physical strength. My biggest accomplishment was getting through 16.4 and getting a HSPU. That is the first time I have been able to do them with out an extra mat under my head. This was my first experience with the open and it was pretty amazing and exciting to see everyone accomplish goals and firsts. The week where so many people got their first bar muscle up was pretty awesome." -Stephanie

"Just doing all 5 workouts was an accomplishment in and of itself for me. I was pretty sick the last two weeks of the Open, and I really didn’t want to do 16.5. The fact that I made to the gym that morning and suffered through the workout to post a score – I was proud of myself for that alone." -Erika

"Further alignment between mind and body (ie: lowering my mind's expectations for my old-man body capacity. Aging is a tough transition as the mind still thinks it's there and the body doesn't cooperate). The need for more consistent/frequent training to achieve my expectations; much more emphasis needed on recovery." -Colby

"The Open taught me…patience. I accomplished a mental breakthrough…I don’t have to go hard when my body is not healthy." -Aaron

"The Open taught me that I am capable. Capable of not only CrossFit, but having fun, freaking out, overcoming nerves and making new benchmarks (bar muscle ups)." -Nicole D.

It's not over yet! Invitations to Regionals went out to athletes last week. Some of those athletes will reject the invitation so they can compete with their team. We will see another shift in the leaderboard for individual invitations. Coach Dan falls in that bubble of possibility. So stay tuned! You can read more about this whole process here.

CONGRATULATIONS AND WELL DONE TO ALL WHO PARTICIPATED!