Welcome back to week four of our tips & strategies for the 2015 CrossFit Open season.
My first thought as a coach and affiliate owner when this workout was announced was oh no. This workout is going to encourage a lot of people who have no business in attempting a HSPU to do exactly that and if you are a coach/affiliate owner I strongly suggest that you have some firm guidelines in place to keep your members safe.
Rx Category:
HSPU: It’s pretty obvious that these should be broken into achievable sets from the start avoiding failure by 1 rep at all times. I would strongly suggest that you practice the standard before you start the workout under the eyes of a judge. Once you get it right, put a mark on the floor where each hand needs to go so that you don’t get it wrong each time you come back to the wall.
Personally I have a passionate dislike for the Kipping HSPU and would never encourage anyone to do it, however if you’re going to do them please remember your safety. Getting a good score is not worth shock loading your cervical vertebrae repeatedly with your entire body weight, regardless of whether you’re a regional contender or just doing the workouts for participation.
Clean: How you do these will depend heavily on how much of a percentage of your 1RM this load represents. A power clean is going to be the quickest and most efficient way of getting these reps done, however if the load is going to be quite challenging I would suggest that you practice full cleans in your warm-up so that you have primed that movement pattern for the time that you need them.
I don’t really see any great benefit of doing your cleans touch and go in this workout unless you’re really struggling through the HSPU. Otherwise, performing singles with minimal reset time should do the trick.
I’m always a fan of lifting a good chunk above the workout weight in my warm-up too. This not only helps to prepare you physically but gives a good confidence boost when that first rep in the workout feels light.
Scaled:
Overall, this is going to be a gasser. These are relatively big sets of large ROM movement. I think the best scores in this will come from people who are good at picking the right pace from the start. My advice is to maintain UB push presses as much as possible and use breaks in the cleans as your recovery. I think if you get too wrapped up in UB push presses and touch and go cleans, you could find yourself in a hole very quickly.
