The Viomati Coaching Call // CF OPEN 2024
Yesterday we had our first “Viomati Coaches Call”, with 11 fitness professionals from gym owners to group class coaches, personal trainers and remote coaches, we discussed the 2024 Crossfit OPEN.
The idea of these calls are to create a community of fitness professionals that want to connect and share knowledge with each other, so we can all elevate ourselves to become better crafts(wo)men and humans.
Probably the biggest point of discussion was the individual meaning we give to what the Crossfit open is, this by itself is an interesting topic to discuss about because it made clear that the communication from HQ to their community to what the open is, who it is aimed towards and what the goal of the open is has to be clarified again.
If you compare the points of view from a sport VS community perspective, very interesting discussions came up to how the 2024 workouts were programmed and approached in coaching.
For genpop, the biggest point of advice was “pacing, pacing and pacing”. It seemed like the workouts were designed to look very accessible and relatively easy to complete RX compared to previous years, yet when performed, muscle endurance and for some even strength endurance became a bottleneck.
Some coaches felt the test fell short for genpop to be able to compare their performances to previous years and have a clear understanding to what they should be improving on this year. Others argued that this should not matter as the bottom 75% percentile is not in the OPEN to test, but rather for the reason of bonding with the community.
From a sport perspective: For athletes, the tests clearly came short, not testing any real strength components. Obviously the open is a stepping stone to make it to quarter finals, where this and other aspects of fitness will surely be tested. Is it then correct to assume that the open now has the sole purpose of entertaining and bonding the community as there is such a big pool of athletes moving to the next stage? Meaning Quarter finals has now become the first real stage for competitors to focus on?
I believe personally that the workouts this year were fun, and might have been enough for the broad community to get an idea of what their fitness level is like.
For athletes the open is just a necessary first step to make it to the actual competition in Quarter finals. In a sport where the testing changes every year, there will always be room for improvements, and there will always be problems that are easy to judge and talk about but are beyond the scope of a small group of coaches on a call to solve.
However, i really believe that it is important to stay critical and keep having these discussions, if not to change the sport, than at least to grow as fitness professionals and humans by staying open to different points of view and share knowledge.
What are your insight on the Crossfit OPEN this year?
These discussions are open to join for any fitness professional and will be focused on topics far outside of the Crossfit realm, please reach out to me if you would like to be a part of the next conversation and/or if you have any specific topics you would like to see covered on the next one.
