How serious should you take the CrossFit Games Open?

Every CrossFit Game season brings a ton of excitement and entertainment to CrossFit boxes all over the world. The Thursday nights of waiting anxiously to see what workout comes out that week. The endless scoreboard watching and constant pondering over whether or not you should redo the workout to produce a better score for yourself or your affiliate. CrossFit athletes all around the globe eat this up and I have to admit, I get caught up in the madness as well.

What I don't like about the Open is how deep the rabbit hole can go. It can be consuming to a serious level. For most athletes, and by most I mean pretty much everyone, it goes no further than 5 weeks of workouts. The problem is that 5 weeks seem to somehow out weigh the overall goals of being functionally fit across broad time and modal domains i.e. a well rounded athlete that trains for all possible wods and scenarios.

I see people every year focus on 1 workout for about 4 days. They crush themselves the day it comes out. Recover for 2 days and then crush themselves all over again for a better score. Sometimes it works out and other times the score is no better at all. But they still have to recover for a day or 2 and then the cycle begins again. So for 5 weeks they become specialists at 5 workouts. Their normal training regimen is interrupted and they, at best, stay stagnant. Sometimes they regress due to injury and over training.

So what's the point? Let's look at a bit of math for a second.....Roughly 275, 000 open participants. Lets say after individual men and women, teams, and masters, about 500 people actually make the games. That number is probably high but let's use that anyway. This gives each person about a 0.18% chance of actually making the games. But let's face it, if your last name is Froning, LeBlanc-Bazinet, Khalipa, or Thorisdottir, you have a significantly higher chance of making it than do the rest of us. This brings the average persons percentage down even more. I won't get in to that math because I don't have the brain cells or more importantly the time or care to figure it out.

Point being, have fun with the open. Go to your box's open workout and compete and cheer on your fellow box members but leave it all out there. Prove to yourself that you can complete some version of the workout that the pros are doing and give it hell! But, don't let it define you. Don't let it put your fitness and health in jeopardy because that's not what it's intended to do. Throw your hat in the ring, give it your all and walk away knowing you did just that. Live to train another day. Wod on!!!