The benefits of participating in the Open

I’m now in my 11th year of doing Crossfit and it’s amazing to see how it’s progressed from over a decade ago. Each year the Open qualifying would come around and everyone would be excited to test their level of fitness over five different workouts and compare themselves to other individuals in their region and all over the world. The workouts were always designed in such a way that would expose and identify any weaknesses that were present.

As the years went by, I became a little disillusioned by the fact that the standards had become so high. I didn’t see the point in entering the open anymore because I was just going to place nowhere in the rankings anyway. For a lot of people that I knew, acknowledging the fact that they were never going to reach the upper echelons of competitive fitness was tough and many quit doing Crossfit altogether.

Luckily for me, my mindset has changed quite a lot since then, I’ve accepted that I’m not going to be the be a competitive crossfitter, I don’t even want to be a competitive crossfit athlete, I just want to train hard and be the best version of myself and that still keeps me coming to the gym every day.

If someone asks me, what are the benefits of entering the open then I’ll reply, that’s entirely up to you. You get out of it what you want to get out of it. The workouts will be challenging, whether you’re scaling them or not. They’ll most likely expose weaknesses that you currently possess and give you an idea of things to work on in the future. If you want to compare yourself to others in your age category to see what’s possible then you can. If you simply just want to workout and have fun with a bunch of friends, then that’s great as well. Whatever you decide, keep challenging yourself, defy your limitations and keep moving forward.