15.3 is over and done with. This workout marks the first time an Open workout has featured the complex muscle-up as the first movement. It’s also the 2nd new Open feature we’ve seen this year (the first new feature was the double workout in 15.1/15.1a). Stay tuned as this probably won’t be the last trick Dave Castro has up his sleeve. Read on to see how the BTWB community fared on 15.3.
Open Workout 15.3
Analysis
The men maintained a slight edge in each of the percentile categories. That is likely a result of the muscle-ups. Even the reduced wall ball target for women (9 ft) wasn’t enough to outweigh the difficulty of the muscle-ups. 99th percentile men earned 3.4 rounds (483 reps). 99th percentile women earned 3 rounds (476 reps). 90th percentile men finished with 2.6 rounds (365 reps), while 90th percentile women made it through 2.4 rounds (345 reps). 50th percentile men and women finished shy of 2 full rounds at 1.8 (271 reps) and 1.3 (163 reps) rounds respectively.
Interestingly, there is only a 1 round difference between the 75th percentile men and the 99th percentile men. The same goes for the women. As an example, the difference in reps, for men, between the 75th percentile and the 90th percentile is 43 reps. It seems like a lot, but not when you consider the time it takes to complete 10 wall ball and 33 double unders (the difference between the two percentile scores). It takes about 2 seconds per wall ball and around 20 secs for double unders. Factor in about 10 secs of transition time, and the difference between a 75th percentile score and a 90th percentile score is an additional 30-40 seconds. That means that every single rep went a long way in determining placings on the leaderboard.
The graph above shows a breakdown of what portion of each movement athletes finished 15.3 on. A lot of women got stuck with just one muscle-up, while hardly anyone finished the workout on their 7th muscle-up, regardless of the round. In round 2, we see a lot of men and women finishing on the second half of the wall balls. In rounds 1 and 2 we see a lot of athletes ending the workout during the last 25 double unders.
When trying to get an overall picture of the workout, the rep-breakdown graph at the beginning of the article can be a little misleading. You have to keep in mind that each movement in the workout had a different number of reps, and each bar on the graph represents different sized ranges of finishing reps. The big benefit of the first graph is that you can see what portion of each movement people finished the workout. Our next two graphs, though, (one above, one below) give a bigger picture of where people finished on the workout.
In the graph above, grouped by round, we can see that the majority of athletes finished the workout in round 2. Most men finished in round 2 or 3, while most women finished in round 1 or 2. Very few athletes made it into the fourth round. Grouped this way you can see a very nice statistical distribution.
In the graph below, where each bar represents a movement, we can see what percentage of athletes finished on a particular movement. In round 1, over 25% of the women doing the workout Rx’d did not get past the muscle-ups. Only about 8% of the men had the same problem. In round 2, we find a pretty even distribution amongst the movements, with more women ending on the muscle-ups and more men ending during the double unders. The third round shows us that most women ended on the muscle-ups and most men ended on the wall balls.
The Future: 15.4 & 15.5
The Open workouts appear to be getting more and more difficult. Compared to an 81% Rx’d rate for men on 15.1, the 15.2 rate fell to 72%, and it dropped further to 55% for 15.3. The women’s Rx’d rate stayed steady for 15.1 and 15.2, but dropped way down to 13% for 15.3. Will 15.4 and 15.5 continue the increasing difficulty trend? It seems CrossFit HQ may be getting super serious about finding the absolute best prospects for this year’s Regionals. That may mean handstand push-ups!
Open Workout 15.3 – Scaled
Analysis
At first glance, it’s easy to underestimate the scaled version of 15.3. After all, there aren’t any muscle-ups, and the double unders have been replaced with singles. What seemed to have been overlooked, however, was the non-stop nature of the workout. For people fit enough to handle the Rx’d version, but not quite strong enough for the muscle-ups, 15.3 scaled was always going to be a metabolic burner. At no point during the workout was it necessary to take a long break. In some ways, especially for those struggling to get through their first muscle-ups on 15.3 Rx’d, the scaled version was infinitely more taxing.
Look no further than the amount of reps performed by our athletes. 99th percentile men accumulated 4 rounds (1000 reps). 99th percentile women earned 4.3 rounds (1030 reps). 1000+ reps of anything is ridiculously hard. It doesn’t matter what the movements are. In contrast to 15.3 Rx’d, the women maintained a slight edge in each of the percentile categories for the scaled version. Our best guess for the reasoning behind this is that most of the men with the capacity to do well on 15.3 Scaled opted to perform 15.3 Rx’d, even if they could only get a couple of muscle-ups. More women with the same metabolic conditioning capacities could not make that same choice.
15.3 Top 5
Here are the top 5 finishers for 15.3. We’re starting to see some repeat names from week to week. It’s no coindecence that those same athletes are in the running for a Regionals spot (Brandon Pastorek – 25th North Central region, Julie Foucher – 1st Central East region, Maude Charron – 2nd Canada East region, Jennifer Smith – 8th North East region).
15.3 Men
- Richard Idoine – 600 (Fitness Level 96)
- Jason Hatch – 596 (Fitness Level 90)
- Brandon Pastorek – 530 (Fitness Level 83)
- Dan Finck – 519 (Fitness Level 89)
- Natan Geva – 513 (Fitness Level 92)
15.3 Women
- Julie Foucher – 501 (Fitness Level 93)
- Maude Charron – 500 (Fitness Level 96)
- Jennifer Smith – 495 (Fitness Level 92)
- Laura Batis – 474 (Fitness Level 95)
- Jessica Fitzgibbons – 472 (Fitness Level 93)
