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CrossFit Games recap pt. 4 – Broad Jump, Ball Toss, and Track Triplet
After spending the day at Camp Pendleton CFHQ was gracious enough to give us competitors a day off. I took full advantage of this and got a massage. My hips when I woke up Thursday morning we like rocks. Every muscle in the area was stiff and bound up with knots. An hour long massage did wonders.
Friday morning we were back at the HDC bright and early for another orientation. At this point we still didn’t now what was happening with the broad jump. We, as a group were briefed on the broad jump. After our broad jump, ball toss, and Track Triplet briefing we were informed that we would be performing the broad jump now. Like in 20 min, so go get warmed up. Realistically a broad jump isn’t something you REALLY need a good warm up for. I like how they kept us on our toes the entire time… Now broad jump is a pretty cool event. As a guy who loves weightlifting, sprinting, and the NFL I can really appcreciate a standing broad jump as a test of fitness. It is, as far as I’m concerned, the best metric for determining explosive power and speed (outside of standing vertical jump). Our performances as CrossFitters weren’t mind blowing by any standards. Nate Schrader won the event with a 117″ leap. Only 3″ short of 10′. What’s really impressive is that it came just a day and a half after finishing Camp Pendleton. This is a good test of resiliency and ‘anywhere’ fitness. The ability to be ready for anything, anytime.
Now my mother always taught me that if I didn’t have anything nice to say, then I shouldn’t say anything at all. But I’m still going to talk about the ball toss. I think the GHD situp is useless. I do them because as a competitive CrossFitter I have to practice them. I really just don’t understand the athletic transference of explosive hip flexion. I can see the GHD used as a decent Ab strengthener but there are better exercises out there.
You know that feeling when you know you can continue working out but your lungs may explode and you’ll roll over and die of exhaustion? That’s reching the limit of your aerobic power. That is EXACLTY what the track triplet accomplished. For some the girls and a few of the guys, the bar muscle ups may have changed that but for 90% of competitors this was a how much suck can you endure workout. I loved it. Classic CrossFit at its finest. I don’t think the split snatch was necessary, there and better ways to train coordination and it seemed to serve more to slow people down than anything. I employed a muscle snatch with a step here and it was much faster than any of the other guys were doing.
I talked with a few guys about this, Jason McDonald and Steve Howell both turned in times under 9 min. It was neat to see how even top tier guys were affected by the earlier events. With the top time coming in at 8:03. Now the argument can be made that we ran a little further each round but I don’t see that making up for a whole minute.
When I started this bad boy my plan was to get out in front and stay there. I definitely got out in front. I was real quick on the snatched, transitions and bar muscle ups, easily stringning together unbroken sets. I was pacing the runs, hoping to have a little left in the tank for the end. On round 3my hands EXPLODED. Talk about mentally defeating. I dropped from the bar 3 times in my final round, and had nothing left for the run. I went from first in my heat to 5th or 6th. Tough pill to swallow but that’s the way she goes. The track triplet was a fun event and a workout I would definitely do again. Ball toss… Not so much.
Notes:
People that I expected to excel in the broad jump didn’t. This was based off of large Olympic lifting numbers. Rich, the athletic juggernaut posted his second lowest score of the competition here with 104″. Rich boasts a 365lb clean. Dan Bailey, a former 400m sprinter placed 12th and POWER cleaned 345 on the clean ladder. Only 24 men jumped 100″ or better.

Push Press 6×3
5 Rounds for time:
5 Overhead Squats
10 Abmat Situps
2 Rope Climbs