Jerk Any Way You Want 5-5-3-3-1-1-1 Reps
Push Jerk, Split Jerk, Jerk From The Back, Use Snatch Grip or whatever.
Many of us at CFES have become obsessed with our scores on the whiteboard and our ranking amongst the group. This is a good thing. We encourage you to be competitive and to do your very best, but lately we have noticed that the obsession of being competitive with your peers has led to significant cheating during the WODs. Some common examples of things we have observed are missing the bottom of a squat or the full extension on a lockout overhead, missing a wall ball target, tripping on a double under and counting it anyway, nose to the bar pull up, incomplete push ups or dips, not jumping upright on your burpees… its all cheating. If this is you, you are cheating yourself and you are cheating your peers. Travis and I have been standing back counting reps and observing movement standards lately and we notice that many of you have fallen into this trap. You are being overly concerned about your time and rank among the group rather than the quality and honesty of your movement. Even though nobody is calling anybody out yet… we know who you are, you know who you are, and your peers know who you are. It is actually much easier to spot cheating than many of you might think. Do not think that this behavior goes un-noticed.
It is time to clean up your acts. The reason we time and score workouts is to get measurable, observable, repeatable data about your fitness level. The reason we enforce stringent movement standards is to ensure that that this data is reliable and useful. We want to know if you are truly improving, and where you rank compared to other athletes with as much accuracy as possible. If you skip a few reps or miss full range of motion on a few reps, you still got a great workout, but you may have just edged out someone who did the WOD completely legitimately, and the data from your WOD is unreliable and useless. Would you go out to a 400m track to run a mile and record the time from 3.75 laps. Fudging on your reps or range of motion is the same as the guy over at Gold's gym who boasts of a 405 bench press even though 385 is the best he ever pressed. Writing down a less than honest WOD in your journal, on the whiteboard, or posting it to the leaderboard is not only dishonest, but it is a complete waste of time and it goes against everything we stand for in CF.
This program was built around the concepts of virtuosity and integrity. Virtuosity means to perform the common uncommonly well. Integrity is consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations and outcome. Many of our top athletes have come to us over the last few months and been disappointed about their WOD time compared to other members of the group. In many cases we explained to them that they should let it go because their movement standards were much better than those who they were comparing themselves to. Its not fair to this athlete if they struggled to do 50 legitimate dips and they were beaten by somebody who did 10 legitimate dips and 40 half-ass-not-deep-enough-no-lockout-dips. If you are the latter person who botched the range of motion, you have two options. 1) Scale the WOD back until you can do it correctly, get reliable data, and leave with integrity or 2) check your ego at the door, get over where you rank in the class, up the virtuosity and integrity, take longer to do it right, and sleep better at night knowing that you're not a cheater.
We understand that when you are flying at full tilt speed and intensity, there is going to be an occasional error in range of motion or in rep counting. This is not what I intend to address here. The things we have been seeing are blatant and inexcusable as accidents. Last year after the 2008 CrossFit Games, one of the athletes got home and watched video footage of himself in the final event. He realized that he had done only 28 reps instead of 30. Both he and his judge had miscounted. This athlete had placed very well overall. Instead of bragging about his placing and being proud, he emailed headquarters and had himself disqualified from the entire event. That is what a true CrossFitter would do. Learn from this individual, embrace integrity in your WODs. Its that simple.
From time to time in CrossFit, there are examples of people posting real fast times or videos with short range of motion. You can see these on the posted main site, on leaderboard, and on whiteboards around the world. When these pop up on the main site the comments go crazy with CF'ers around the world questioning the legitimacy of the WOD. If one athlete completes a WOD with the movement standard of a CF judged competition and another athlete completes the same WOD with shit range of motion, the times can't be compared. Get over it. All you can really control is yourself and the standards by which you complete your own WOD. Be focused on yourself and what you can do and how you can improve. If you want to compare with other athletes and compete against them them, do so with people who uphold a high standard.
If you want to be a great CrossFitter, hold virtuosity and integrity in high regard. If you get beat and did the best you can, fuck it who cares. Keep your head high and keep working hard. In any case do the whole WOD, every rep, and every rep correctly or don't count it. If you screwed up then call yourself out. And remember its not all about getting the best time or the best score on the board, its about personal growth and personal achievement. Cheating won't help you to your goals and you owe it to our community to do the WODs honestly.
