CrossFit Open 2014 is here!

The CrossFit Open 2014 season is here!  This Thursday evening (the 27th) at 7:00pm, Open workout 14.1 will be announced.  Here’s what you need to know if you are a registered athlete:

–Testing will happen on Friday (all classes) and Saturday mornings.  This is your shot to do the best you can do–good luck!  Sign up as usual on WODhopper and expect class times to run over;  since I have no way of knowing what the workouts are or how long they will take (or how many heats we will be able to run based on how many judges we have), just expect things to run over a bit.

–Understand the movements standards and appropriate ranges of motion BEFORE you even set foot in the box.  They will be gone over again, but it’s best to have a really solid hold on what’s required for you to achieve the movement standard and get credit for your hard work.  You WILL be judged, and I absolutely WILL NOT allow shit reps at CFD.  If you don’t know what a good range of motion ‘feels’ like, get with a coach ASAP to go over some basic movement standards on some things you feel you may have an issue with.

–If you haven’t signed up and want to, GET ON IT!  If you have signed up and aren’t on the CFD team roster, GET ON IT!

–If you think you need to get video of your workouts, that is YOUR responsibility.  Make sure you fully understand how to appropriately video your session so that your hard work counts.  If you fail to understand what CFHQ is looking for in your video (clock out of frame, don’t state name and region, etc…) and you submit a crappy video that either doesn’t count or gets points/reps docked, I won’t feel sorry for you!  That would be like working your ass off on a huge paper in college and forgetting to put your name on it–pay attention to detail and get credit for your work!!!

And now a quick coaching note:  if you are relatively new to CrossFit, this is your first Open, or you otherwise don’t necessarily have any goals set to become a competitive athlete in the sport of CrossFit, please just stay safe and have fun with it!  The Open can be a fun experience to see how you measure up against the world and have a good time.  Taking it too seriously and getting too worked up over workouts is going to do you more harm than good.  Many of us are still very new to the sport and have a lot of development yet in order to progress as an athlete.  You’ve got to build the foundations of the pyramid before you can hope to get to the peak, and violating that order will result in injury or lack of progress.  Do what you can do and use it all as a benchmark when we inevitably re-test some of these workouts in the future!