Oh, The Elusive Muscle Up!
Last Thursday my heart sank when I watched the live stream of the CrossFit Games Open announcement of workout 15.3. The first movement of the triplet was muscle-ups. I was definitely not alone in the “well, I’m doing this week’s workout scaled” club. I’d hoped to be able to do the entire open Rx but this marked a change in plans.
According to CrossFit.com’s leaderboard analysis 85% of women did 15.3 scaled.
This is a huge increase over the number of scaled female athletes from 15.1 (46% scaled) and 15.2 (40% scaled). For 15.1 and 15.2 approximately 17% of Men scaled and that percentage jumped to 35% for 15.3. This shift from Rx to scaled can likely be attributed to most athlete’s lack of muscle ups.
CrossFit Is About Hard Work.
I allowed myself one evening to wallow in my CrossFit lack-of-muscle-up sorrows before I got made a new goal. If I wasn’t going to do Rx I was going to give scaled my all. CrossFit is hard work and 14 minutes of wall balls and single unders is no joke.
#FirstMuscleUp
The best part of this past week of the open was seeing so many first muscle-ups. I watched the Facebook pages of our clients fill with video after video of athletes getting their first muscle up followed by happy dances.
Here’s a great video from RhinoFit Software client CrossFit Repo. This one ends with tears of happiness. So awesome.
Our clients at CrossFit China Lake have a great album of photos from 15.3 that you can take a look at here.
Pushing Boundaries
What has the “great muscle up controversy” of 2015 done for your gym? At many of the RhinoFit affiliates we’ve seen it bring athletes closer together, celebrating small victories and the communities that make this sport so special. We’ve also seen it help people realize that they’re more powerful than they think.
Predictions For 15.4
To continue with the spirit of this series of blog posts I have to weigh in on my predictions for 15.4. Dave Castro’s Instagram teaser mentioned barbells. But he tricked us last week with his instagram shot of “pistols”. My prediction for this week’s Open Workout doesn’t involve barbells. My guess is burpee box hops and rowing. Let’s see how my prediction fares this week!
I’ll leave you with my favorite muscle up picture of the week:
What’s your prediction for 15.3? Let us know in the comments!
Erin and the RhinoFit team.
