Pre-Order your Friday Night Lights 15.4 dinner HERE!
3 rounds for time of:
Run 800 meters
275-lb. deadlifts, 7 reps
10 burpee pull-ups
53-lb. single arm kettlebell thrusters, 14 reps (7 each arm)
20 box jumps, 24-inch box
First Muscle-up?
Last week Dave Castro, director of the CrossFit Games, shocked the CrossFit Open community by announcing that workout 15.3 would not only include muscle-ups, but that it would START with muscle-ups. This was different from past years where there were muscle-ups each year, but the high skill movement came after a number of other movements, meaning everyone could play in the RX division to some extent.
This announcement did not go over well with many CrossFit Open participants, but the affect it had on athletes at Roots was nothing short of AWESOME.
A number of Roots athletes got their first muscle-up in the hours and days after Castro announced the workout.
Part of the initial genius of CrossFit founder Greg Glassman was his thought about how to develop the CrossFit community. He did this largely by introducing, incrementally, more challenging movements, loading, and workouts on the mainsite. If you look back at the mainsite from 8 years ago, you will see quickly this difference. As the community has grown and developed into more accomplished athletes, it’s largely because of the consistent and steady nudge from the mainsite workouts. The mainsite challenges us never to settle with our level of fitness.
That steady nudge trickles down through all ability levels. It means that folks who scale a workout receive the same benefits as their workouts also become more challenging.
In the case of 15.3, I know the effect will be the same. Not only did many athletes around the world get their first muscle-up that week, but it set a course for thousands more who did not succeed. They will spend the next year working to get a msucle-up. And for that reason, the entire fitness level of the CrossFit community will increase.
Did you get your first muscle-up during 15.3? Post to comments.
I believe that last year’s workout that this one copied also included muscle ups as the first movement. As a result, for 2 years in a row I have been knocked out of the games in the 2nd and 3rd workouts respectively as a result of my shoulders. Great motivation for most, but a disappointment for me that I could not get at least one point and continue on.
This is the first year that muscle-ups have ever come up first in a WOD. I would imagine that the addition of the scaled division is why HQ felt fine with doing this. There were no muscle-ups in the scaled option so athletes could still compete and continue in the Open.
Did you do the scaled option Bones?
I got 3 muscle ups, my first, that felt somewhat easy in the 14 minutes of trying. In 3 years of crossfit I have been intentionally avoiding MU workouts. Glad I was forced to try them and now I feel I can improve massively on them.
Sorry, I was thinking of 15.2 and 14.2 – overhead squats. Can’t do more than 15#, so no scaled option existed for me either year and my open ended after one workout. Nevertheless, for those who were originally doing the RX, this ended it.
Go Roots! SO fun to see so many people get their first MU. Being a part of it by yelling and screaming will always be a great memory of 2015’s open.
I was definitely bummed to see 15.3 structured the way it was, because my goal was to do all the workouts Rx this year. But, there it was, muscle ups in the leadoff spot. OK, fine. I gave it my best shot, but no MU for me. Came back Friday evening and gave the scaled workout my best, and actually am in a higher position in the standings than I had been at the end of week two! So I got the best of both worlds: I pushed on the muscle ups, and found I’m closer to getting one than I thought, and later was actually competitive in the scaled division. That feels pretty good, and I can promise you this: I’m not waiting around for the 2016 Games to get my first muscle up. It’s going to happen, probably in the back corner of the gym during some random open shop session, a few months from now.