A number of local athletes in Estevan celebrated St. Patrick’s Day working up a sweat and aiming for personal bests, at CrossFit BlackRock. March 17 marked one of the workouts in which athletes particiated in the five-week CrossFit Open Games. The open is an ongoing collaborative and competitive event in which athletes are encouraged to have fun, push themselves and strive for personal bests in a gamut of challenging exercises.
“Basically, every year, CrossFit affiliates worldwide participate in open workouts every Friday night, for five weeks,” said Krista Schwentke, head coach and co-owner of CrossFit BlackRock. “All those athletes have until Monday to complete their workouts and submit scores. We submit scores online and rank ourselves worldwide, with everyone who competed in it.”
Schwentke said Friday’s event was the fourth week of the event, one of 350,000 going on at CrossFit affiliates around the world. She noted that CrossFit BlackRock had name draws, challenges for members and even an air of levity with dress-up teams, to make the event feel fun and community focused.
“It was all just us here, in Estevan. Sometimes we visit other affiliates, but this time it was just us,” said Schwentke. “We have almost 30 people participating in our affiliate alone, so it’s pretty big.”
As far as the exercises, the actual meat and bones of the events, are concerned, there is a great deal of variety to the CrossFit Open. Last Friday, athletes went through a gauntlet of challenging exercises, testing their strength, co-ordination and endurance. These included exercises such as rowing, handstand pushups, medicine ball tosses at the wall, and the classic staple of the gym, the deadlift.
“Every week, it’s a completely different workout. All those exercises had to be completed within a certain timeframe,” said Schwentke. “You only find out what workout you’ll be doing on Thursday.”
Schwentke said the adaptation to a new workout every week with no notice is very much in line with the philosophy of CrossFit, adding, “It’s CrossFit’s thing about preparing you for the unknown, and training to be better humans. You might not know what it is, but you do it anyway, and push it through whatever it may be.”
She said that while there may be movements that some athletes aren’t as strong in, there are always ones in which they excel, and finding that balance is part of the goal of the CrossFit community.
“You can kind of see where your fitness lies, so to speak, and then there’s a scale division, so anyone can do the Open. Any one of our members aged 16 and up can participate, and there’s always a repeat workout too, so it’s a good way to test your fitness.”
