I want to take a minute to talk those of you who may be upset about the pull-up requirements of 15.2
The CrossFit Open is many things to many people. For those of us who don’t plan on going to regionals the primarily purpose of the Open is to measure our fitness in its current state as a community.
No matter how much we love or hate pull-ups, they are a very practical and realistic measure of someone’s true functional fitness and strength, his or her ability to move their own body weight. Not many exercises measure this more efficiently than a good old-fashioned chin-up or pull-up. At high schools and universities, pull-ups were always part of the fitness tests. They are also often used as a prerequisite to qualify an applicant for jobs in fire departments, police forces and many government branches, such as the United States Secret Service. It goes without saying that every branch of the military has always been high on chin/pull-ups. The United States Marines have pull-up stations at state fairs and shopping malls all over America for special events. All anyone has to do is 20 pull-ups to win a Marine Corps T-shirt. Needless to say, the Marines don’t give away very a lot of T-shirts.
Pull-ups aren’t easy, but they are attainable with hard work and time. But when used in the Open they will play an important role in determining our overall measurable fitness as it is right now. Also, remember it’s only one piece in a five week puzzle.
We will all likely run into our weaknesses during the Open and I wouldn’t want anyone to be discouraged by that. Quite the contrary… it is an opportunity to improve and you should be encouraged to work on it and improve it!
This way, next year when together we do the Open again, we can all look forward to improving our measured fitness over the last time.
Good Luck, Let’s do this!
“Find your weaknesses, make friends with them, then beat them to death.” – Chris Spealler
