Camille Leblanc-Bazinet’s 2016 CrossFit Open Strategy Guide

“Nothing drastic will change on game day. Be who you are. Do what you do. Just a little bit better.”

Key words: “Put on your big boy pants!” “Unbroken”

Workout:

21-18-15-12-9-6-3 reps for time of:
Thrusters
Burpees

Men use 95 lb.
Women use 65 lb.

Timing:

Attempt this workout twice, once on Friday and once on Monday. The afternoon around 5pm is ideal as your body is producing the most red blood cells and will help with the suck factor of this high intensity wod.

Nutrition:

This is an anaerobic endurance effort and a moderate/ short. You want to have plenty of sugars in your body. Having said that you do not want a full stomach. Eat a good breakfast in the morning around 8. Drink a descent amount of fluids . Eat a breakfast and lunch with a good amount of carbohydrates and fat. Make it easily digestable food. Your last meal should be around 3. 30 minutes before, get a little caffeine to wake you up. This should be a small amount = to 1 cup of coffee. You do not want your heart rate elevated, you just want to feel fresh.

Warm up:

Focus the warm up on opening the quads, hamstrings and lower back with some smashing, then bands and McKenzie back exercises:

 

Then open the shoulders with a banded shoulder distraction and external rotation:

 

Grip:

Then go through a general warm up. You want to get your body hot and heart rate up before the wod starts. Think of it like revving the engine. Here is what I am doing:

5 minute lead-up with weight 3×5 thrusters+3 burpees over the bar

Strategy:

This type of workout is a gut check. You need to try to do it unbroken and be efficient with all of your movements. Look back at your old score from 2014 to get a sense of goals. Here are some major efficiency tips in the movements

Thruster:

-Breathe out at the top and slow the reps down with an exhale as the reps get hard. You can actually recover on the thruster (Rich Froning does a great job of this, watch the open demo)

-Use your legs to drive the bar overhead. A snappy hip is a happy hip, save those arms.

-Keep your elbows up in the front rack, as they drop, this gets very expensive on your shoulders

Burpees

– Keep moving on the burpees, even if they are slow, if your rest, rest at the bottom of the push up.

-Do a grace step forward out of the burpee. This is like a knee to elbow lunge step into the jump. (Froning again does a good job with this method)

Pacing

– Go at a sub maximal pace through the round of 18, this is the half way point, then try to accelerate each round after into an all of sprint into round 6.

Recovery:

Quads, back and butt will be tight. Open your back with Mckenzie back exercises and piraformis stretching. Do something light the next 2 days (Biking, rowing or running wod) and re-attempt Monday using the same process with better pacing knowledge

 

 Good Luck!!!

-Camille