Category: crossfit

Recently I had the pleasure of interviewing Elly Kabboord, one-sixth of the CrossFit Mayhem team that won the 2015 CrossFit Games Affiliate Cup competition. (You may recognize Mayhem as the team that Rich Froning Jr. is a part of). Elly is a former member of CrossFit Firebase, my gym, and I was able to sneak in an interview while she was on vacation in Florida.

I took the opportunity to find out what it was like training with Rich and what the experience was like competing, and winning, the Games. To give a little background on Elly, she is a former varsity athlete at the University of Florida in track and cross country, has been a CrossFit athlete for over 4 years, and has competed at Regionals several times.

Interview after the jump.

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I recently had a lively discussion centered around an article on Breaking Muscle, by Patrick McCarty. The article was Failure to Innovate: Will Your CrossFit Gym Thrive or Survive?

Mr. McCarty, who is 3-time Games competitor, affiliate owner, and owner of his own web development business, wrote on a topic that is at the forefront of every affiliate owner’s minds. Box owners face the reality that new boxes are springing up every day, and many of them are right down the road. If you own a gym and haven’t read his article, I encourage you to click the link above and read it right now…

From my affiliate owner friends, I often hear that 1 or 2 news boxes have opened up in jogging distance from [insert box name here], the market is saturated, and it’s getting tougher and tougher to attract and retain members.

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Dear CrossFit,

I didn’t sign up for the Open. I’ve signed up for the Open every year except this one. I’m experiencing Open Fatigue and a lot of my CrossFitter friends are afflicted with the same condition.

Open Fatigue is when you get tired from the five week journey of doing the Open. It’s tough to peak for a 5 week stretch and it interrupts my year-long training plan. Basically, I have to plan around the Open. There are other factors too, such as the online social media blitz, which can be exhausting, and the fact that my scores are out there for the world to see.

With that being said, I do the Open workouts still and I’m happy to compare notes with my pals. I don’t have an interest in seeing my name on the leaderboard. Besides my circle of friends and training partners, I don’t have a reason to share my results with other people. A lot of my friends at other gyms are experiencing the same condition. Open Fatigue is a real thing.

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Wodapalooza (WZA) is one of those super intense, sensory overload events that takes me days to process and write about. This year’s WZA was no different…besides Kokoro 25, it was the coolest, most far out, most exhaustive athletic experience I’ve gone through, a step beyond the already exceptional experiences of Wodapalooza I and II. It was by far the most challenging and rewarding CrossFit competition I’ve done.

I’m gonna write two posts, this one with a review of WZA in general and then a post on my personal performance later in the week.

Click WZA1 and WZA2 if you’re interested in my reviews of Wodapalooza from previous years.

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There were a bunch of announcements for the 2013 CrossFit Games on Monday night, including the surprise announcement of a half marathon row on the Concept2. The row is two scored events, with 100 points available for the top 2000 meter split and another 100 for the 21,097 finish. I think this is a great event, not because I’m a rower, but because it signals that endurance events are here to stay in CrossFit. Last year we had the Camp Pendleton triathlon and the year before was the long Beach Murph. If you’re not mixing in long distance stuff into your training, you’re doing yourself a disservice.

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Wodapalooza is on it’s way to becoming the Ultra Music Fest of CrossFit competitions, a multi-day carnival of fitness and CrossFitting. At some point in the future, if Guido and company choose to go in this direction, I can see them turning it into the biggest CrossFit-ness event in the world, perhaps second only to the CrossFit Games. By no coincidence, Wodapalooza takes place on the same hallowed grounds as Ultra at Bayfront Park. With 3 days of events, over 500 competitors, and thousands of spectators, they’re already one of the biggest CF events.

I had the good fortune to be able to compete, my second year in a row. It was one of my most challenging and rewarding athletic experiences. Full review below.

Competition

This year featured a whopping 549 competitors across 10 divisions (male and female Scaled, Rx, Elite, Masters, Team), up in a big way from the 116 individuals and 10 teams from last year. Just to throw a few stats out to illustrate the growth, and by extension how popular CrossFit has gotten, there were 74 Rx men and 36 Rx women in 2013, compared to 37 and 11 from last year. On the team side, there were 65 total teams compared to 10 last year (!!). With that many competitors, Wodapalooza II may have been the largest CrossFit competition in the world–I’m defining competition where all the athletes are in one place, thus eliminating the CrossFit Open. Oh yeah, by my count, the CrossFit Games had 508 competitors in 2012.

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