The 2018 OPEN is here.

The time of year all CrossFitters Love to hate and hate to love. This year at Ironstone we will continue our Intramural tradition with a few important changes. Read on below to find out what is the same and what has changed this time around.

What is the Ironstone Open?

The CrossFit Open is a 5 week online competition put on by CrossFit Headquarters. Each Thursday they announce a workout and you must complete it and submit your score by Monday evening. Last year 400,000 people worldwide participated in the CrossFit Open and all their scores – from brand new athlete in their first week to Games veteran – appeared on the same leaderboard. At Ironstone we use this as an amazing opportunity to challenge ourselves, test how far we have come, and build a sense of pride and excitement in our community. To keep it fun, focused and local we take it back to the way we did things in school – intramurals!

The Intramural Open is a fund, lighthearted way to create a little competition within the gym. Although you can score points, the real reasons to throw your name in the ring are participation, challenge and excitement.

Intramural Teams

Like in years past we will divide the gym up into Intramural teams with our own in-house scoring system. We will assign teams in a semi-random fashion by fist splitting up the leaderboard from last year evenly and then assigning all the new participants across the remainder.

Scoring (Same)

Scoring will be the exact same as in years past Points for the top 3 positions in each of Mens/Womens RX and Scaled, a weekly spirit award, and one point per completed workout per team member.

Themes (Change)

This year we will night prescribe a theme or a team name – just a colour. For instance, instead of being told you are on team water, you might instead be told you are on team blue. It is up to your team to come up with a (tasteful) name.

T-Shirts (Change)

With no prescribed theme or team name we’ve decided that this year we will not order shirts by theme for you. It is up to your team to decide how you want to dress. Instead, every participant will get an Ironstone Open shirt as a keepsake for participating. We promise that shirt will be much nicer than what you would get as a themed shirt. These will be delivered closer to the end of the open after registration is complete.

Payment (Change)

The biggest single change for this year is that we have managed to secure sponsors for our event from 5 businesses. In addition to providing prizes and setups during the Open they have generously agreed to cover the gym-based expenses – which means there is only 1 registration fee. In years past participants had to pay both CrossFit HQ and the gym – not this time around.

Event Days (mostly the same)

The Open workouts will be run on Saturdays starting at 11 AM and running until we get through the heats. If you cannot make it on a Saturday you have the option of completing the workout during Open gym time as long as you can secure a judge. There will also be time allocated at 730 PM on Mondays as a last minute opportunity to register a score. As in years past there will be a strictly enforced gym rule that open workouts cannot be completed while classes are in progress – the equipment, space, and overall distraction the open workouts create can be very disruptive and we need to do our best to ensure that those who have chosen not to take part in the Open are not swept away by Open fever.

Skill Sessions (NEW!)

Leading up to the open we have created 3 1-hour skill sessions to help athletes get or refine those gymnastic elements which tend to be the sticking point in Open workouts. The 3 skill sessions are the pull-up, handstand push-up, and muscle up. These are ideal fro athletes wanting to get their first pull-up in time for the open or hopefully make the transition from scaled to RX for a few workouts. These would also be great for those who want to increase their efficiency and improve their scores. They will cost extra to participate ($10/session) but will be totally worth it when you crush your first handstand push-up in 18.3!

Registration (modified)

1. Go to games.crossfit.com and create a profile (or login if you have one).
2. Register for the Open and choose CrossFit Ironstone as your affiliate
3. Join the Ironstone Team inside our affiliate.
4. Pay $20 USD to games.crossfit.com
5. Sign the T-shirt size list at the gym
6. That’s it! No additional charges at the gym this time around.

Keep it in perspective!

The Open is all about community and fun. The Team Captains, once selected, will be tasked with doing their best to keep things safe, inclusive, and to keep the cost down. There is no need to get carried away with expensive costumes or props – use what you have or make it out of something close. Remember, the judges are volunteers and the competition is for fun – non of us are likely to go to the CrossFit Games and if we are Intramurals probably isn’t the place where we would do the workouts.

We look forward to seeing you all out there.

The Intramural registration deadline is 21 February to get a T-shirt and to be placed on a team in time for the kick-off party.