It’s possible the only thing more dangerous than the second workout of the 2020 CrossFit Open is trying to run a live stream about it. Yesterday w bas a treacherous day in the land of live streams. WODDITY had an internet outage and was forced to broadcast from a phone at video quality that would make anyone with better than 80-20 vision cry. For that, I apologize. I personally alienated 18,000 people last night. My goal of providing outstanding live streams with expert commentary in one place so you don’t have to scramble each Thursday is off to a rough start.
My condolences to Morning Chalk Up, who also struggled yesterday with their live stream of of the announcement at the CrossFit Atlas Games. I have to say, live streams are a much more technical process than turning on a camera and connecting to the internet. Hours and hours go into the creation of hold screens, video segments, connection and testing of microphones, cameras, servers, and a whole list of other hardware systems. I feel for Justin LoFranco and team, but I also feel for you, the fans, who deserve a better experience than we the collective media were able to provide yesterday. But it will get better. We will get better. I will get better.
20.3 Open Live Stream
WODDITY will be running a live stream next week with James Newbury, Madeline Sturt, Kristin Holte, and Nicolay Billaudel, hosted by the Down Under CrossFit Championship and Norwegian CrossFit Championship. That’s one heck of a list of athletes. Newbury had a breakout year last year, Holte took second in the world, Billaudel was the fittest man in Norway, and Madeline Sturt is…well…THE Madeline Sturt. I’ll have the live stream link in my show notes later today so you can bookmark it and set a reminder. That’s right: no more scrambling at the last minute to find a stream to watch. You’re welcome.
Now, let’s talk about that daunting 20.2 workout. I think the best headline I’ve seen about it was from the News Press, which simply states, “CrossFit Open 20.2 WOD announcement — Let’s all suck at this together”.
It is a wickedly misleading workout with low reps and a very short cycle time. Here it is.
20.2 CrossFit Workout
As many rounds and reps as possible of:
- 4 dumbbell thrusters
- 6 toes-to-bar
- 24 double-unders
Here’s the kicker: the time domain is doing this for 20 entire minutes.
20.2 Tips and Tricks
I don’t think we’ve seen a workout like this before, with rounds likely to take under a minute for moderate-level athletes. I think the most important thing here is to pick a pace that keeps your heart rate from spiking too high, too early. It’s hard to wrap your brain around doing a workout for a full 20 minutes, especially one with such a quick cycle. If you set a pace of completing one round per minute, you’re doing three movement transitions every minute for 20 minutes. That’s a lot of perpetual motion, and those transitions are Dave Castro’s secret ingredient to keep your body moving, even when you’re not doing thrusters, toes-to-bar, or double-unders. My other tip is one I can’t do anything about: try being short. We watched Matt Mcleod dominate this over Khan Porter, likely because of the height difference in those toes-to-bar and thrusters. I’m 6’5”, so you enjoy your payback for the obviously height-skewed 19.1 workout from last Open.
I’ll be hopping into the barn and churning this one out later today. I’ll post my official time video and thoughts later today on our YouTube channel. It’ll be a good gauge of what this looks like for the average person.
Mat Fraser was featured in Men’s Health this week in an article titled, “How Matt Fraser Became The CrossFit King”. We’ve all been following Fraser’s story for a few years now, so I’ll include the link in my show notes at WODDITY.com for those who are new to the sport or if you just have the free time to dig into it.
And that’s it for news about CrossFit on Friday, October 18th. Thanks for listening. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe. It’s the best way to give back to the show, because it helps more people find us. I’m Ben Garves.
