The Cross Training Open: What Is It and Why You Should Do It: By Head Coach Paul Roller
As I sit here right now, it’s the middle of January, which means a few things. We have officially entered the winter doldrums- that post-holiday time when it’s cold and we all yearn for warmer weather and fun activities, and the Cross Training Open is approaching very quickly! At least we have this to look forward to! Today I’m going to fill you in on what the Open actually is and link back to an article I wrote a year ago to tell you why you should do it!
Not only is Cross Training a workout program for the general population, but in the recent years it has become one of the most popular up and coming sports, with hundreds of thousands of people joining in to test their fitness in a yearly qualification process aimed at finding the fittest human being on the planet. Pretty cool stuff if you ask me. The first round of qualification in this process is the Open- a five week online competition consisting of one workout per week. Cross Training HQ releases these workouts on Thursday nights and leaves you until Monday night to enter your score into an online leaderboard. You can do the workout as many times as you want to get the best score possible.
How does HQ make sure everyone’s scores and valid and accurate? Well if you want to make it to Regionals (the second round of qualification), you must record yourself on video for review. For everyone else who won’t make Regionals (99% of us), you must perform the workout under the supervision of a Cross Training certified judge, all of which the coaches at BK Fit will be. We count your reps and make sure your movements are held to the standards.
Every week, you are reshuffled in the worldwide online leaderboard to reflect your position based on your performance in the previous week’s workout. At the end of the 5 weeks, the top men, women, and teams advance to Regionals.
It doesn’t matter if you are just beginning Cross Training or have been doing it for years, the Open is for you! There is a scaled and RX option, which allows people of every skill and fitness level to battle it out. There are only a select few who will be able to do all the workouts RX, so there is no shame in competing in the scaled division! I would argue the scaled division is more fun, as there is less pressure to perform well and more of an inclination to go out there and just have fun.
At CFO, we are planning to have weekly events across all 4 locations where we gather, watch the announcement of the workouts, do them together, cheer each other on, and have fun! Stay on the lookout very soon for announcements of our plans for this year’s Open!
Still looking for more reasons as to why you should compete? Look no further, I wrote an article last year around this time detailing why you should. Check it out here. You can register for the Open at games.cross-training.com. Make sure when you sign up to join the “BK Fit Studios 1” team. Our gym gets points for the amount of people that sign up and our best performances on the workouts!