15.3 Leaderboard Analysis

Get the breakdown of 15.3.

For the third week of the 2015 Reebok CrossFit Games Open, competitors were asked to complete as many rounds as possible in 14 minutes of 7 muscle-ups, 50 wall-ball shots and 100 double-unders.

This is the first time in the five-year history of the Open that a workout has started with muscle-ups. Consequently, to earn an Rx'd score on the workout, competitors who were 16-54 years old needed to get at least one muscle-up.

Let's take a look at how this played out in the CrossFit community.

Community Performance Breakdown

In total, 194,640 people submitted scores for 15.3. 

Below, you can see where the Rx'd men and women finished the workout. 

The 7 muscle-ups were like tar pits, capturing competitors and holding them there until the end of the 14-minute time cap. As you can see from the spikes at the start of each round, many athletes ended on the rings.

The majority of Rx'd men finished in the second or third round, while Rx'd women were relatively evenly spread between the first, second and third rounds.

Finishing in the fourth or fifth round was exceptional for Rx'd men and Rx'd women. Only two men and one woman reached the fifth round (629+ reps)—Ben Smith (630 reps), Brad Townsend (630 reps) and Sam Briggs (633 reps).

Here are the corresponding round and percentile tables.

	Round 1	Round 2	Round 3	Round 4	Round 5
Men	12,272	26,351	25,791	3,027	2
Women	3,748	4,671	3,093	237	1

	Percentile	Score
Men	50th	281
	75th	333
	90th	398
	95th	471
	99th	496
Women	50th	171
	75th	316
	90th	351
	95th	404
	99th	475

Muscle-up Watch

If an athlete scored 1 rep, or even 2 or 3, odds are good we may be witnessing their first-ever muscle-up(s).

There are thousands of athletes who fall within this range. Joining them are many athletes who had at least one muscle-up before the release of 15.3, and put in a hard-earned Rx'd score. 

This is pretty incredible.­ 

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7+
Men	2,186	1,137	861	736	625	512	61,388
Women	992	473	360	316	269	180	9,160

To get a sense of how much competitors have improved at muscle-ups over the years, I found the athletes who didn't have a muscle-up in 13.3 (the 12-minute AMRAP of 150 wall-ball shots, 90 double-unders and 30 muscle-ups), or 14.4 (the 14-minute AMRAP of 60-calorie row, 50 toes-to-bars, 40 wall-ball shots, 30 cleans and 20 muscle-ups), and checked whether they logged an Rx'd score on 15.3.

More than 10,000 people (7,950 men + 2,388 women) who did not have a muscle-up last year for 14.4—at least not under fatigue​—got at least one muscle-up in 15.3.

Below, you can see the breakdown of the number of people for whom I've got both a 14.4 score and a 15.3 Rx'd score, the latter meaning they have at least one muscle-up now. I show how many did not have muscle-­ups in 2014, meaning a score of 180 reps or less on 14.4, and do have them now. 

Division	Have Score from 14.4	Have Score < 180 in 14.4	Have Score = 180 in 14.4
Men	37,714	12,079	7,950
Women	8,709	3,514	2,388

Below I show the analogous table for 13.3, which tells a similar story. Nearly 4,000 athletes (2,141 men + 1,655 women) who did not have a muscle-up two years ago for 13.3 logged at least one muscle-up in 15.3.

Division	Have Score from 13.3	Have Score < 240 in 13.3	Have Score = 240 in 13.3
Men	17,977	6,436	2,141
Women	5,194	1,731	1,655

On the other side of the coin, we can look at those who chose to do the scaled version of 15.3, presumably because they just don't have a muscle­-up yet. Eighty-five percent of the women's field opted for the scaled version of 15.3, as did nearly 40 percent of the men.

Relationship Between Height, Weight, Age, Experience and 15.3 Performance