I'm approaching this year's Open mainly as a fan. I know that it pushes people to do more weight than they normally would and work harder than they normally would. We've had a great turnout for the Open at Eugene CrossFit and I've seen some awesome PRs.
For me, my shoulder is still bothering me. And honestly, it's more in my biceps. Pushing weight overhead hasn't been in my workouts for a while, so I knew that I wouldn't be comparing my scores to anyone else. It's frustrating.
So for the first workout, the burpees and snatches, I tried the 45# weight when it was announced. It felt...weird. I told my coach before the workout that I would try 75#, but if it didn't feel right, I'd stop. And honestly, this is where technique comes in. It took a couple tries, but I snatched 75#. Then my coach told me to be more explosive - don't use my arms. I did one more rep and called it good for that one. I was feeling it. Obviously, I can do that weight (I didn't get all 30 reps last year but I got 20+), but it's not worth it to hurt myself.
And so this week when the WOD was announced, my heart sank a little when I saw that shoulder to overhead was the first part of it. This is not smart for me to do. I tried 75# on Thursday and it felt...bad. It felt bad. So I approached today the way I would tell someone else to do it: just get one round in, grit your teeth through that pain, put up a (small) score for the Games site, and sub something else and continue the workout. And that's just what I did. I did my 5 reps at 75#, which hurt, and continued with the deadlifts and box jumps, adding in pull-ups as a sub for round 2 on. I got a good workout, and really, that's all it's about. I got 207 reps, which is what I figured I'd get anyway if I wasn't injured.
It's hard. This is the time of year where you want to do your best and see how well you can do. But sometimes the movements just don't work with the injuries we have, so we have to do something different. That was not easy, but I know it was the smart thing to do.
I just wish there was a double under buy-in for one of these WODs. Come on, HQ!
