Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Train for a Great Life. It is CrossFit Open season and I'm going live to do the draft in about an hour and a half and I figured that I would get a little bit of information out there. I always get a ton of questions this time of year and that extrapolates out to our captains and our coaches getting a lot of questions about, like, what is this all about? So I'm going to do my best to talk through that a little bit. This won't be too long. So the Open what is it? The Open is CrossFit HQ's event. It is meant to cast as wide of a net as possible and select for those who go through to the next stage of their competition, which has been various different events over the years regionals, online quarterfinals and, I believe, back to in-person events this year.

Speaker 1: 0:51

I've been around CrossFit since before the Open and actually competed through the 2010 season, the final year before the Open was put into place. That is a long time ago and things change. Back in the early days of the Open, there was just one workout. There weren't different divisions. Rx scaled foundations. It was a lot less inclusive that way, but it's also. It put people in positions to do things they'd never done, maybe even right from 3-2-1-go, and I've seen many beautiful moments come from that. The sport was very young and naturally progressed over the years, both the size of the group of people doing it across the world and the abilities of those people right. So you had a pool that got wider and deeper and over the years, crossfit, the methodology and the sport of CrossFit have become two very different things. 15 years later, that is even more pronounced.

Speaker 1: 1:49

In 2014, we ran our first intramural open. The idea was to have our own in-house thing, regardless of what was going on with CrossFit's competitive season. You might have seen me talk on our Instagram about it being like back in your elementary or high school where you know you might have a lunch hour program where you get drafted onto an intramural team and you play whatever. You play handball every like, once, once a week, every noon hour for a couple of months or something like that, and then it switches to something else, but you kind of keep your teams. The idea is to have have a team and have a bond, have a bit of a tribe right. So the first couple years that we did this, it didn't feel much different, but we started to get the hang of it and we learned how to make it what it is now. Back in those first few years of the intramural open, our coaches were the captains, and that was fine, but we recognized that it could be an opportunity to give members a cool leadership opportunity as well. How the captains were chosen was something that did come fairly naturally to us once we switched over to that.

Speaker 1: 2:52

We want people in place who are going to help bring a positive experience to those around them. That's really about it. We don't care if you're a top athlete or not. We care that you're going to take the time to notice people on your team who maybe haven't been in the gym for an open yet, and be a comrade to them. It can be overwhelming to start at outlaw in the first quarter of the year with this coming, but it's also a time in the year where you just if that's you you have to turn off that stupid part in your brain that doesn't want to enjoy things because they're uncomfortable or because they're unfamiliar, or that doesn't want to try something new because you're the new kid. You just need to look around at the magic and the energy in the gym, and I promise it will be something that keeps you coming back. It's a time of year that is very unique and it's impossible to replicate, I think. So the nuts and bolts of what we do. You'll notice that in the draft, everybody gets assigned to a team. We don't ask if you want to participate, but we're not going to force you either. Think of it like this we're going to put on a super fun event that takes a fair amount of planning and execution, and you're going to get a free ticket to it every Friday for three weeks. If you want to get a little more involved and show your team spirit, the only cost of the Open will be your team shirt. We're not going to force you to show up on Fridays, though I strongly suggest that you do. You're going to see some cool stuff happen. You're going to feel energy in the gym. That's just different, and you may even surprise yourself.

Speaker 1: 4:28

Something that we value very strongly at Outlaw is a sense of community. Doing hard things every day is a great way to build a community in and of itself, but it can also be limited to the people that you see at the time you attend or the people that you naturally gravitate to. That's kind of a given. One of the things that I want the gym to be for everybody is a place of connection. It's why we're going to draft everybody and why the teams are randomized. It's one of the things that we want out of the Open. It's also one of the things we want out of the Christmas party.

Speaker 1: 4:57

I don't want people staying handcuffed to your best friends all night. It's one of the things we want out of the amazing race that we put on during the summer and why you can expect to be on a team with people that you aren't super familiar with. I handpick those team. Some of this stuff is by design. I just want you getting out and experiencing different people, even partner workouts.

Speaker 1: 5:16

If I notice that you partner with the same person over and over and over again, I'm gonna subtly have a little conversation with you, just say, like, mix it up a little bit. I'm not gonna force you to. You can do whatever you want, but you're missing out on other people at outlaw. You're gonna meet a ton of awesome people who you'll share a lot of things with, things that we believe to be important and why you land at a place like outlaw, but you're also going to meet people who are into different things than you, and that's beautiful. You may find a new friend, you may have a contact to help someone in their time of need, and someday maybe your card will come up too and someone will help you. Our community really kind of starts and ends with fitness, but we have the opportunity to weave a whole lot of cool stuff in the middle, and we do. It's open season. I hope you're excited. Remember, nervousness and excitement often feel the same. I'll see you in the gym.