The CrossFit Games!

Why you should care (or at least know) about the CrossFit Games.

By Alycia, CrossFit Aspire

 

Starting today a few hundred of the top CrossFit men, women, affiliate teams and Master’s competitors will compete to see who is the fittest man and women in CrossFit. This group was chosen from over 50,000 CrossFit athletes who registered online to compete in the Spring 2012 Open (and the 100’s of thousands of other unregistered CrossFit athletes). These are the BEST of the BEST. Only 3 men and 3 women were chosen from the Northeast (NJ up to Maine).

 

THIS IS YOU

On a daily or weekly basis, you come into our gym and you do the same types workouts that these athletes did to get them to the games. Just like professional athletes, they are training many more hours per week than the average CrossFit gym goer, but the concepts behind the workout (hard, fast, heavy workouts) is the same.

As a non-athlete, I never really understood why people sat at home watching sports. Until the 2011 CrossFit Games when I holed myself up in my house for an entire weekend and sat infront of our tiny computer screen and watched the entirety of the live coverage and recap shows. I turned into a hermit. Obsessively watching exercise. That other people were doing. Why did it matter so much to me? Because I watched these people compete, recognized the movements that they were doing, saw the look on their faces, and thought “Hey, I was there once. I remember what the 50th wall ball in a row feels like, or how heavy the barbell feels after 40 thrusters, or how hard my lungs had to work to do unbroken burpees. I’ve been there and I can relate. Every time an athlete put the bar down, or tore a callus, or had the look of sheer agony on their face, I could relate. When they won a workout and a big smile spread across their face, I could relate. And when they did the very best that they could possibly do on that one day, I could relate.

The point here is that these people are larger-than-life versions of you. They are doing things that you might once have saw on TV years ago and scoffed at – “I could never do that”. Except now you do. Every week. You are a CrossFit athlete, and your fellow athletes are competing in the competition of their lives. Don’t you want to cheer them on?

Newbies: THIS WILL MAKE YOU BETTER

For casual fans, watching a season of football will not make them better players. Practicing will make them better players. But after just one or two seasons of watching, they come to understand the nuance of the game, the hidden rules, and the ways that players maximize efficiency and power on the field. They become armchair referees and coaches. Their knowledge of stats, plays, rules and winning tactics increases.
By watching the Games and recap shows, you can stand to learn a LOT about the top athletes, how they train, and how they formulated a strategy and paced the workouts to maximize their chances of coming in first. They don’t just get out into the arena and ‘go as fast as they can’. They have a strategy. And by watching them compete, you can learn a lot about what makes a strong CrossFit competitor, both mentally and physically.

Now, being armed with that knowledge won’t be enough to get you to the CrossFit Games 2013, but over time, you might have the opportunity to take things to the next level by starting to care a little more about the weight that’s on your bar, your conditioning improvements, and by pushing yourself to work even harder during every workout.  After seeing these top athletes yell in pain, fall down with weakness, and get back up to finish the workout…all while tossing weights around that you can’t even deadlift yet, you might just re-think the meaning of ‘going heavy’ or ‘pushing through’ or ‘finishing strong’ in your own workouts.
After a few months of working on your skills, becoming stronger, and pushing yourself harder in class, you might enter a local CrossFit competition. You might win that competition. And it begins…

 

Our best athletes: THIS IS WILL PUT THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE

Big fish always have fun in little ponds. Part of the reason that some of you are here is because the movements and workouts in CrossFit came naturally to you. The concept of doing hard work is engrained in your being, and this was ‘no big deal’. Yeah, it was hard, but after a few weeks or months, you caught on and now you routinely finish in the top 20% of the athletes at our gym in any given workout.
First of all, Congratulations! You are a great athlete and you set a good example for the others. Now, for the hard truth – you are weaker and slower than every single person competing in the Games this year, and than most people who competed in the Regional competitions before the Games. Every person you will watch has better technique on their Olympic lifts. They can burpee circles around you. They can climb a rope two times in the time it takes you to put chalk on your hands.

The Games competitors are amazing, semi-superhuman athletes. And as a Type-A overachiever, you will look at their performance with a mix of envy, passion, determination, excitement, rage and motivation as you imagine yourself working out side by side with them. You will return to our gym with a growing fire inside of you that will continue to grow as you get stronger, faster, and better. You will no longer be satisfied with being on the leaderboard, or getting the fastest time in the gym. What about the fastest time in the world? After watching the Games, the impossible seems possible, and you realize that your best maybe wasn’t your best after all. It was just the best in our gym.

 

The Info:

The CrossFit Games Website has all athlete stats, videos, Regional recaps, and updated news regarding the workouts and the leaderboard. Start browsing now to get familiar with the faces of the CrossFit Games 2012!

CrossFit Games Recap Shows will help you stay on top of the standings all weekend!

Here is the full ESPN3 CrossFit Games schedule (Note: All times are Eastern.)

Friday, July 13: 5:15 - 11:15 p.m., ET
Saturday, July 14: 1:30 - 5 p.m. and 8:30 - 11:30 p.m., ET
Sunday, July 15: 1:30-7:30 p.m., ET

The Games will also stream live on Spectator Stream.

Click here for more details: http://games.crossfit.com/article/espn3-schedule-crossfit-games-released