The third and final week of the 2023 NOBULL CrossFit Games Open lasted anywhere from 6 to 12 minutes and was made up of wall walks, double-unders, snatches, and strict handstand push-ups. The snatches were ascending in weight but descending in reps. The 5 wall walks in the first two rounds were replaced with 20 strict handstand push-ups in the last two rounds — if you made it that far.
The movements in Open Test 23.3 are all relatively high skill. Many athletes struggle with the inversion and physical demands of wall walks. Even more athletes are still working on mastering double-unders. The initial snatch weight was accessible, but the later weights were very challenging. The strict handstand push-ups were extremely challenging under intense shoulder fatigue.
There was an aggressive amount of work that had to be completed in the first 6 minutes in order to be allowed to move on, and more than ⅔ of Rx’d athletes didn’t make it past that point.
Performance By Country
This week we are comparing the performance of the top 10 countries by looking at how many athletes got beyond the 6-minute time cap (137 reps). Based on this measure the three most competitive countries this week were the United States with 25.3%, Australia with 24.9%, and Canada with 23.7%
Workout Analysis by Division
Test 23.3 had rates of scaling similar to 23.1, with 33% of women 18-34 and 15% of men 18-34 opting for the scaled version. Test 23.2A and B were the most accessible of the Open tests this year, with only 27% of women 18-34 and 5% of men 18-34 performing the scaled version.
If we look at who was able to get beyond the 6-minute time cap in 23.3, we see that 19% of women 18-34, 39% of men 18-34, and 15% of teens and masters were able to perform at least 137 reps.
For athletes doing the Rx’d version, 68% were time-capped at 6 minutes, 28% at 9 minutes, and 4% at 12 minutes. Fewer than 1% were able to finish the Rx’d workout under the 12-minute time cap.
Strict handstand push-ups are one of the most difficult movements tested in CrossFit. Impressively, of the athletes who got beyond the 6-minute time cap, 99% of the men and 96% of the women were able to do at least one strict handstand push-up. In contrast, only 55% of the men and 49% of the women who made it to the strict handstand push-ups were able to complete 20 reps in the extra 3 minutes they had available.
During 23.3 more than 12,000 women and 39,000 men were able to perform at least one strict handstand push-up.
Looking at the score distribution for Rx’d individuals 16-54, we see the largest concentration of both men and women finishing the test on the second set of double-unders or the 12 snatches.
Below are percentile tables for individuals, masters, teenagers, and adaptive divisions with details for each version of the workout. You can see the breakdown of how many reps or how much time it took to achieve a particular percentile. For example, for Rx’d men 35-39, a score of 207 reps got you into the 90th percentile.
These percentiles are comparing you against your division and workout version, which is different from your overall division percentile (compared against all versions).
*The data used for this article is from the official CrossFit Open submissions.
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