In this past year we’ve seen quite the shake-up in the competitive CrossFit world. With everything changing and very little direction given to us by CrossFit HQ, we opted to sit out the Open this past winter, as it seemed like the right time to take a break from it to see where things would go. Over the last 9 months more and more developments have happened on the competitive side of the CrossFit scene and there is a much clearer direction and layout of how everything is going to run now.

Over the last 9 years of business we saw our Open participation start with some 10 members the first year, peak to around 150 in 2013/2014 and trickle down to around 50 in 2018. This has happened for a number of reasons, a large reason was from us as gym owners, putting less and less emphasis on it as we continued to hear year after year people not liking the pressure, not wanting to have to come workout Friday night, etc. etc. The break from the Open this past Winter allowed us to re-evaluate where we want to put our energy as business owners and also where we feel we can get the most people involved.

So, we will be bringing the Open back but in a very different format in hopes of getting back to our old attendance numbers and focusing more on the community and fun aspect of the Open and not the actual competition of the Open. While we will always want to be involved and support those who are truly interested in competing we also have wanted to create a dynamic where both the super competitive, and those looking just to have fun and hang out with their friends feel comfortable.

For 2019 we will be playing host to the Open workouts Saturday morning with the goal of getting as many people involved as possible in an intramural team format. What this technically means is that you won’t actually be participating in the Open, you’ll be doing the workout, but unless you choose to sign-up for the Open you technically won’t be competing in the Open. We will add a small competitive flair to the event in that we will have two teams competing against each other, but other than that the emphasis will be just on having fun and working out with your friends. We are truly trying to make this into a large community event and hope that lots of you choose to participate.

Details of what, how, when, etc.

• Saturday Mornings (8:00 AM Class will still be on, and then at 9:00 AM we’ll get the ball rolling) on the following dates…10/12, 10/19, 10/26, 11/2, 11/9
• Teams will be drafted the first week, Saturday, October 12th at 9:00 AM. This will be your team for the 5 weeks of the Open.
• Athletes will judge each other in a number of heats based on how many people sign-up (if you’d like to help in just a judging fashion let us know, but really if you’re going to help judge, there is no reason you can’t also do a 10-20 minute workout). Judging is ultimately just to keep people accountable, allow the athletes to just focus on the workout, and so you can establish a score for your team.
• We will follow the age and scaling standards that are provided for the Open, i.e. Rx’d and Scaled, and we’ll also add a Super Scaled category for athletes who have mobility and range of motion issues. In addition, often the older age group categories have the workout scaled, however it is still the Rx’d workout for their age group, so if you’re in this boat we will score you as performing the workout Rx’d not Scaled.
• Each week you’ll be able to move back and forth as needed between a prescription of the workout, either Rx’d, Scaled, or Super Scaled. Your score will be ranked within your team based on that. All Rx’d scores will be first, scaled second, and super scaled third. Again you’ll be able to flip flop between divisions each week. For example maybe you don’t have the mobility to do a proper Overhead Squat, so you sub to a Front Squat, this would be deemed “Super Scaled”, you’ll be ranked accordingly, and the other 4 weeks you could be doing all of the workouts Rx’d.
• What if I can’t make every Saturday? That’s fine, while the goal is to get everyone possible to participate on Saturday, if you can’t make it, you can grab a friend and have them Judge you anytime in the back room on Friday or Monday, or hit it at Open Gym on Sunday.
• To cover the cost of shirts and to make you all get a little skin in the game there will be a cost of $25. This will include a T-Shirt specific to the event as long as you sign-up by Sunday night, October 6th. We want the shirts to be here for the first week’s event, so if you sign-up after the 6th you’ll miss out on the shirt.
• We are working each week to have a sponsor of that week to come in and hang-out, give out some product, and add a little extra flair to the event, and the plan will be do a Potluck Lunch the 5th week to celebrate the end of the event.
• Note that we will not be doing the Open workout in any of our classes. In the past having the Open as our Friday class workout has always made programming difficult and often leaves athletes with repetitive movements since we don’t know until Thursday night, so if you want to do the Open workout it’s Saturday morning.

We truly hope to make this a fun event. While there will always be the nerves and anxiety (I know I get that before every workout so not much changes), this will be a great opportunity to maybe give yourself that extra little push and possibly Open your eyes a little to what your full potential is all while hanging out with a bunch of awesome like minded people. Given we will have 3 avenues of how the workout is performed there is no reason any and everyone can’t participate, you can’t Snatch, no worries, can’t do a Pull-up or Push, not a problem, we will provide scaling options for everyone as needed.

You can sign-up for the 1st Annual CVCF Team Intramural Open at the link HERE (Please fill-out the submission form that you get re-directed to after signing-up so you can select your shirt size)…If you don’t want to deal with the actual sign-up process, send us an e-mail that you want to sign-up and your shirt size and we’ll take care of the rest.

We hope to see the registrations pouring in and look forward to hosting an awesome event and community gathering with you all.

Jade, Dani, and the rest of the CVCF Staff