CROSSFIT OPEN WORKOUT 18.5 RECAP: SWITCH UP THE WAY YOU TRAIN
CrossFit Open Workout 18.5 Recap: Switch Up The Way You Train
The finale of the 2018 CrossFit Open was, in all reality, a bit boring. The community decided the workout and ultimately they choose a repeat of 11.6. Very few of those participating in the CrossFit Open today have been around long enough to have attempted this workout when it was first introduced. As a result, many of them won’t be able to create any direction in purpose in their training that a Open Workout repeat usually allows. Without direct and purpose their can be no real athletic progression.
CrossFit Open 18.5 (or 11.6) is your typical CrossFit couplet involving two movements. In this case, the chest to bar pull-up and the thruster. Though the workout appears on its surface to be quite simple, it’s actually a brutal workout to the uninitiated. It’s the combination of two simple movements with a short time cap that makes it both simple and deadly.
Ideal scores for males were 150+ and above reps while the competitive scores for females were 160 and up. This score could have been achieved by careful pacing and strategic partitioning of repetitions, but only to a certain degree. As always, your placement in the leaderboard is determined by your adherence to sound training principles rather than you dedication to ‘CrossFit’ methodology.
If you didn’t perform as well as you’d hoped, it might be because you lack confidence and skill in either the chest to bar pull-ups or the thruster. But the key to fixing these two movements is not by drowning yourself in more CrossFit workouts involving these two movements. Ironically, doing more ‘CrossFit’ will actually make you worse, not better at events like 18.5.
Instead you should practice both of these movements in a non-fatigue setting, without the running clock which accommodates most CrossFit workouts. Removing the ‘for-time’ component actually allows you to focus more on becoming more efficient with the movement, which will inevitably lead to increased athletic performance.
Once you have built the volume of these two movements in a slow and controlled fashion, then you can start to add intensity back into the movements in fatigue based settings. Ideally, one should be cycling between the two to develop as a CrossFit athlete efficiently. Utilizing slow and controlled sessions in order to develop motor pattern and skill with the intensity based settings of a ‘CrossFit’.
Only after a protracted effort in these two styles of training can one hope to secure a top score. Unfortunately, figuring out the specifics of what you need to work on can be challenging. It’s difficult to coach yourself. Request a consult with our professional coaches to learn about what you need to work on for the next CrossFit Open.