We are now past the halfway point of the 2016 Reebok CrossFit Games Open. Open Workout 16.3 was 7 minutes of 10 power snatches and 3 bar muscle-ups. It was like Randy with bar muscle-ups peppered in for good measure.
The power snatches were light enough for most athletes to cycle through pretty easily. The bar muscle-ups were only 3 per round, so proficient competitors didn’t have much of an issue there either. For these athletes, the limiting factors on this workout were primarily grip and gas. 100+ snatches and 30+ bar muscle-ups are brutal on the forearms (and the hands).
16.3 Workout Analysis
We’re three weeks into the Open, and our community of competitors is still going strong. 250,631 competitors submitted a score for 16.3, down 10 percent from last week and 15 percent overall. Big props to all of you who are still in there challenging yourselves and grinding it out each week.
Both the men and women had a 3 percent increase in Rx’d athletes compared to last week; this week 81 percent Rx’d for the men and 55 percent Rx’d for the women.
The bar muscle-up made its Open debut this year, and it is one of the more advanced movements seen in the Open. In past years, ring muscle-ups have been a huge roadblock for competitors, and this year was no different with the bar muscle-ups. For the Rx’d women, 25,210 were not able to get any bar muscle-ups and 27,775 got stuck on the first round (59 percent). The Rx’d men fared a little better with only 7,938 completing the workout with 10 reps, and 10,290 ending in the first round (11 percent).
Across all divisions, 120,459 athletes in total performed at least one bar muscle-up with 25,306 of these coming from women, who completed an average of 11 bar muscle-ups during the workout. This includes 246 women aged 50-54 completing an average of 7 bar muscle-ups, and 217 of the younger teen girls (14-15) completing an average of 9. That’s a lot of women with bar muscle-ups, especially when the general public thinks women can’t do pull-ups.
We see a solid advantage for the Rx’d men on this workout. This is due primarily to the difficulty of the bar muscle-up. The chart below shows a much smaller differential at the top of the field than the bottom. The top women aren’t far behind the men in this workout. In fact, the top score in the world came from Sam Briggs with 158 reps.
Where Rx’d Athletes Finished the Workout
Combining a light power snatch (very accessible) with a bar muscle-up (not very accessible) led to some interesting trends on this workout. The power snatch reps generally went very fast, with each rep of bar muscle-ups taking quite a bit longer. If we look at athletes who did not get past round 1, we see that 75 percent of the men and 90 percent of the women got stuck at 10 power snatches, meaning they were unable to complete any bar muscle-ups.
If we look at athletes who got past round one, we see a completely different dynamic. 36 percent of the men and 26 percent of the women ended in the middle of the power snatches. This is further evidence that women had a harder time on the bar muscle-ups (since that’s where more women finished).
The rest of the athletes were spread in a descending fashion along each rep of the bar muscle-ups. Very few athletes ended the workout having completed 3 bar muscle-ups, because it only takes a few seconds to hop off the bar and squeeze in a power snatch or two.
Scaled, Masters, and Teens
Here is a link to percentile charts for every division.
This week was challenging for the Masters and Teens. The Rx’d workout for every division except Masters 55+ contained bar muscle-ups. The older Masters were required to do chest-to-bar pull-ups. There was no free ride for any division.
The Scaled athletes were all asked to do jumping chest-to-bar pull-ups, which allowed them to reach higher rep ranges than their Rx’d counterparts. The reps were increased from 3 to 5 in order to balance to workload a little better, turning it into a very challenging workout in its own right. The 99th percentile for the Scaled division was 174 reps for the men and 158 reps for the women.
Analysis by
