The story begins at the 2009 CrossFit Games. Event 6 rolls around and athletes must complete 3 rounds for time of 30 wall-ball shots (20/14 lb.), 30 squat snatches (75/45 lb.)… A tough workout, but one that many athletes at Roots could take down without a problem. The kicker? There was a single height target for both men and women and it was a bit over 10 ft.

In that workout, there were a lot of missed wall-ball shots and Nicole made the call that in the game of the unknown and unknowable, it is better to be over-prepared than under-prepared. Enter the 10-ft. target for everyone at CrossFit Roots.

So what has changed? Data.

In 2009, Drew and Shayna had yet to build SugarWOD and data was not available the way it is now. Looking back at the nine times we have done Karen since 2014 along with many more wall-ball workouts, we can see that the times between women and men are tighter with the 9-ft. target and wider with the 10-ft. target. We use a 2/3 multiplier on prescribed barbell loading in order to keep male and female athletes in the same time domain during workouts. We decided our wall-ball standard should be no different and shooting 14 lb. to 9 ft. and 20 lb. to 10 ft. achieves this.

Going forward, we will continue to use the 9-ft. target as the standard for women.