Thursday 30 August 2012

South Island Showdown 2012 - East Sussex Team Competition


Team East Sussex

On Sunday August 26th 2012 Reebok CrossFit Connect teamed up with CrossFit Hove for a county CrossFit competition.

Hosted by CrossFit Bournemouth the event was designed to bring the south of England CrossFit community together and also to team up boxes within each county.

With teams of 12 (7 boys and 5 girls) chosen from qualifying WODs between our two boxes we took a great team down to Bournemouth for a very fun day of socialising and WODing. The sun was even out for us   as we spent the first half of the day on the beach before heading back to CrossFit Bournemouths new box for an afternoon of lifting heavy stuff!

With a team of 12 it was important to select the right individuals for each event based on their strengths. And it worked out that we all got to do 3 or 4 WODs each across the course of the day.

The WODs

1) Team Carry Relay. 4 x 50m firemans carry where every team member has to carry someone else during their run.

2) Hit The Surf. Four team members have to complete 100x mountain climbers, 100x squats, 100x sit ups and 100x burpees with everyone sprinting down to the sea and becoming fully submerged between each exercise.

3) Skill WOD. Two team members performed a 10 minute AMRAP (as many rounds as possible) of 5 x handstand push ups, 10x over and unders, 15x double unders taking it in alternate rounds.

4) 3 Person Carry. Three girls then three boys have to perform 50x simultaneous squats whilst holding the third person. Then a 50m firemans carry. Then 50x simultaneous walking lunges whilst carrying the third person. Then another 50m firemans carry. Girls go first, then boys with an 8 minute timecap.

Back to the box for lunch.

5) Clean & Hold. The team has 20 minutes for everyone to establish a 1 rep max in the Clean. Then straight afterwards 8 minutes to find a max length L-sit hold from the bar. Total weight and total time combined give the score.

6) Shoulder to Overheads. With 10 minutes on the clock four boys had to score as many reps of shoulder to overhead presses as possible with 60kg on the bar.

7) Big Balls. Three girls had 10 minutes on the clock to get as many medicine ball cleans as possible. One member of the team ran 400m whilst the other two performed the cleans swapping round each 400m.

8) Team Liz. Six boys and three girls had to complete two rounds of 200x hang cleans (60kg/40kg) and 200x ring dips as fast as possible.

Team East Sussex getting to the beach.

Prepping for the seriously tricky WOD 4!

George carrying Jamie during WOD 1

Jamie returning the favour to Lina!
And Barney carrying Jamie D.

The L-sit hold event.



So as you can see it was a fairly full on day!

It was a great opportunity for some of our newer members to see what a CrossFit competition is like. When you have only trained and been into one box it is sometimes hard to imagine the scale of CrossFit now in the UK and meeting up with so many other like-minded people really hits home just how big CrossFit is becoming in this country.

Team East Sussex managed to finish a very respectable 4th place. Whilst you would always like to do better (unless you end up coming 1st!) the standard of athlete now competing in CrossFit is very high and all we could do was give our absolute best which everyone did. It is inspiring to see other people training so hard and it gives you a boost to get back to the box and look forward to the next competition (which incidentally is in November at the Divided We Fall Games).

Holly building up to her max weight Clean
Growling like a gorilla!

Barneys turn in WOD 6

Matt bangs out 20 reps with ease!

Team captain Dave tries to get them to listen!! ;)

I now know how those 400x ring dips make your triceps feel!


Thank you to Martyn at CrossFit Bournemouth and David Millings for arranging the event. It really was a great day and a cracking first attempt at organising a South coast comp. Thank you also to all our supporters who had an early start to their Sunday and came down to cheer us on. Much appreciated and i hope you had fun.


And lastly well done to all the team members! It was a pleasure sharing the fun and sweat with you all. Till the next time........................