Who Won the 2024 CrossFit Games Season So Far?

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Good morning and welcome to the Morning Chalk Up.

In today’s edition:

• So far this season, the 40 men and 40 women who qualified for the CrossFit Games have completed the same 13 workouts. How do they stack up using the CrossFit Games scoring table at this point in the season?

• Invictus Weightlifting coach Jared Enderton lays out the five key things all elite CrossFitters do in their Olympic lifts.

• It was gut-check time for Athena Perez as she entered what she calls, in a general way, “Phase II” of any weight-loss and fitness journey as her early progress began to slow. In her update today, Perez shares the mental struggles this brought and why staying the course makes all the difference.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“If you are struggling as you read this, don’t give up. Every smart choice you make is changing you in ways you can't even imagine.” - Athena Perez on managing emotions when you’re in a weight loss or fitness plateau

CROSSFIT GAMES

Who Won the 2024 CrossFit Games Season So Far?

Open > Quarterfinal > Semifinals. 

• 3 Open Workouts

• 4 Quarterfinals Workouts

• 6 Semifinals Events

All 40 women and 40 men who will compete this August in Fort Worth, TX, at the 2024 CrossFit Games have competed in all 13 events from the Open through the Semifinals. 

We can compare them.

• Okay, we know they aren’t all created equal… let’s move past the “TSA line” of the Far East Throwdown vs the “Berm run” at West Coast Classic in Event 1 at Semis. 

(For the 800m truthers out there, we can call it 12 events. More on that below.)

The 13 events that have made up the season so far are all classic CrossFit: WG, MW and MG Couplets, a Fran variation, an MGW Triplet, a Fight Gone Bad-style Triplet, two Oly Weightlifting Ladders, and a 3-2-1 round test of gymnastics skills. 

• Gone are the days of machine-heavy Semifinals, max lifts in the Open, and gimmicks in the Quarterfinals. 

Remind me: The 2023 Games included 12 events across four days, three on each day. 

On these 13 events from 2024 so far, we can build a model that clearly illustrates who looks to be at the top of their game going into the Games. 

• The data: Click here for the full rundown of all 13 events of the 40 Games qualifiers utilizing the points scale of the Games, i.e. 1st = 100, 2nd = 97… 40th = 0. 

For the “Semifinals Event 1 run folks,” there are also points and rankings using just the other 12 events further down.

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SPEED READS

🎙️👂Constantly Varied Conversations: John Wooley, the creator behind the WooleyMemeth (formerly known as Make WODs Great Again), dropped a new podcast, “Constantly Varied Conversations.” 

• The first episode is out now featuring Emily Kaplan, co-founder with Greg Glassman, of the Broken Science Initiative. Check it out now!

📋📋 Unofficial 2024 CrossFit Games Rosters: Although the final leaderboards are pending until the completion of drug testing and any backfills, check the full Individual and Team CrossFit Games fields now.

🥇🏃New HYROX World Champions: Congratulations to Alex Roncevic and Megan Jacoby, who are the 2024 HYROX World Champs, taking the men’s and women’s elite medals.

• According to a press release, this was HYROX’s “most successful season ever with a landmark event [the World Championships] welcoming 4,200 athletes and 6,000 spectators to the Palais Des Expositions” in Nice, France. Check out the full live stream now.

⬆️🏋️‍♀️ UPLIFT Challenge: UPLIFT is an annual fundraiser workout initiative created and organized by Mark Moss to help bring awareness to suicide and suicide prevention.

• Every month, UPLIFT runs a challenge with great prizes — this month, WODZombie and Hero Barbell. Check it out and learn more.

🔥💙 Geaux CrossFit x Working with Larger Bodies: Later this summer, Geaux CrossFit in Baton Rouge, LA, will host the Working with Larger Bodies seminar. The seminar will provide members and the broader community with access to expertise and resources about fitness, nutrition, and working with athletes with varying needs for movement adjustments. Register now!

📊📈 Rogue Invitational Qualifying System: The Rogue Invitational announced a new qualifying system for its annual event, which is moving to Aberdeen, Scotland, in 2024.

• From the announcement: “Over the past few years, we have been working on the method to select the best CrossFit athletes in the sport. This system takes into account the most recent event performance along with the last five years. There is a predictive component to replace missing scores due to various life events.”

• The post clarified that Rogue “reserve[s] the right to invite anyone but plan on using this to choose a MIN of 10 along with 5 MIN from the Q.”

• Check out more details on the qualifying system and search for athletes here.

ICYMI: The Semifinals are done and dusted. Today, we are looking ahead to Fort Worth this August for some way too early predictions “educated hunches” about what might go down.

MEMBER EXCLUSIVE

5 Things All Elite CrossFitters Do In Their Olympic Lifts

What are the key things the best weightlifters in CrossFit do? 

First, I’d like to just discuss the overall importance of your weightlifting skill in CrossFit.

It’s not a coincidence that Rich Froning, Mat Fraser, Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr, Laura Horvath, Justin Medeiros, Jeff Adler, Katrin Davidsdottir, and Annie Thorisdottir all were/are phenomenal weightlifters. 

• Not just strength-wise but from a technique standpoint as well. 

They always place or placed at the top—or very near the top—in the heavy snatch or clean and jerk events at the CrossFit Games.

If their 1RM snatch and/or clean and jerk is 5-15% higher than their peers—that matters a LOT for all workouts involving these lifts, even when it’s not a 1RM test. 

Say Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr’s max clean and jerk is 270 pounds (I don’t know her exact max, but it is in this ballpark as she did a 260-pound Bella Complex in 2021 at the Rogue Invitational), and the rest of the field averages a max of 220 pounds. 

• Tia would be 18% stronger in that lift. 

Not just that, but think about any other workout involving a clean type of movement: thrusters, wall balls, etc.

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COMMUNITY

“The Journey to 300,” Part 8: The Dreaded “Phase II”

Editor’s Note: This is the eighth part in a multiple-part series written by Athena Perez, chronicling her year-long weight loss challenge, which she now calls “The Journey to 300.” Perez has documented her weight loss and fitness journey across social media and in her articles for Morning Chalk Up. You can read the other parts here, here, and here.

In the middle of March, when I made my coaching shift, I had reached a point where my nutrition and physical activity were pretty dialed in. 

Despite running on very little sleep and too many gallons of coffee, I felt more confident in these two areas than I had in several years. 

• However, I was taken aback when my progress started to slow down.

I call this “Phase II” of the journey. It wasn’t the first time I had experienced a slowdown, but this time, it almost came to a grinding halt.

Weeks would pass, and I saw only a pound or two drop. 

I knew I needed to let my body do its thing, but I won’t lie — seeing such agonizingly slow progress on the scale was frustrating.

I knew better!  

I’m a huge proponent of non-scale victories and always tell others to “trust the process” and stay consistent, no matter what the body does.

• Yet, here I was, grumbling and kicking the scale across the hardwood floors of my living room after a week of hard work, all for a one-pound loss.

HIGHLIGHTS

Celebrating a PR, hosting a fundraiser, this, that, or otherwise? Send us a tip.

• Congratulations to Joao from CrossFit High Pulse in Brazil on the 120-kilo/264-pound clean and jerk.

• Check out Javier from Spain as he does a single-arm bar muscle-up.

• Like mother like daughter, great job to Kara Saunders’ daughter Scottie on the box jumps.

• Great work to Jerusha from Gas Station Fitness in the UK on racking up 300 classes.

• Great job to Olympic weightlifter Antonino Pizzolato on the 230-kilo/507-pound jerk.