The CrossFit BlackRock gym on Fifth Street early Friday morning featured a thundering techno music soundtrack enveloping an exhibition of athletes pushing themselves to the limit while their peers crowded around yelling support and cheering them on.
Estevan’s CrossFit BlackRock athletes were facing a grueling fifth and final test in a series of spur-of-the-moment Open Games workouts that are designed to challenge their fitness level in comparison to crossfit athletes from around the world.
Thirty-seven members of the Estevan gym competed in the five-week and five-workout Open Games that had the competitors complete a surprise CrossFit Games organized challenge. Each athlete performed the workout in front of a judge who tested their ability to complete the tasks and passed those scores to the Games’ world body that ranked competitors from across the globe based on their fitness level.
“It’s a really fun way to test your fitness and see how far you’ve come in your fitness journey,” said CrossFit BlackRock co-owner and head coach Krista Schwentke. “They make the workouts scalable, so everyone in the world can do it. We had a 16-year-old and we had a 60-year-old compete in the Open. It’s pretty cool to see how you can modify everything so they can still participate, get scored, submit a score and see how they rank worldwide.”
The intense functional-movement workouts were released each Thursday with the athletes having three days to complete the challenge and submit their scores. The week-five workouts demanded athletes complete a diminishing sequence of thrusters, where a person squats with a weighted barbell and thrusts it overhead until they are in a full lockout position, and burpees, which is a variation on pushups.
“It definitely helped me identify (my weaknesses) and it showed me what I can actually do,” said Jacqueline Da Silva, a CrossFit BlackRock competitor at the Open. “I’ve never pushed myself harder than what I did these past five weeks.”
Da Silva said the Open showed her strength exercises such as thrusters are workouts she has an edge on, but challenges involving body weight such as pull-ups or pushups present a struggle. She said her regular workouts at CrossFit BlackRock since she began training there last May had helped her prepare for the Open exercises, but the aspect of competing was entirely different.
“It was definitely a little bit tougher just because you knew that your score was being recorded, but doing it was an absolutely amazing experience,” she said. “You had everybody else there cheering you on and pushing you, so it was a fun experience and a fun community to be a part of.”
Schwentke said the annual Open Games test everything a crossfit athlete has trained for during the past 12 months. She said the 37 local athletes who competed in the Games this year, which is a major increase on the six individuals who took part in the competition last spring, gave their all in the challenges and showed the hard work they’ve put in at the gym.
“They did amazing,” she said. “I’m so proud of them. Everyone hit big (personal records) or learned something about themselves and has a new idea of what they need to work on and can get ready for next year when the time comes again.”
