Differential Improvements Between Men and Women in Repeated Crossfit® Open Workouts

Abstract

The CrossFit® Open (CFO) acts a preliminary round that qualifies men and women for later stages of its annual Games competition. The CFO typically consists of 4-6 workouts that variably challenge an athlete’s weightlifting strength, gymnastic skill, and endurance capacity. Except for differences in prescribed intensity loads, workouts are designed the same for men and women to elicit a similar challenge. While all workouts within a single year are unique to each other, one has been repeated from a previous CFO each year between 2012 and 2021. Because previous CFO workouts are often integrated into training, improvements are expected when a workout is officially repeated. However, besides documented record performances, it is unclear whether most athletes are improving, if these improvements affect ranking, or if differences exist between men and women. PURPOSE: To examine sex differences and performance changes across repeated CFO workouts, as well as their effect on CFO and workout ranking. METHODS: Eleven separate samples of 500 men and 500 women, who were representative of the same overall percent rank within each year involving one of the nine repeated CFO workouts (2011-2021) were drawn for this study. Each athlete’s age (18-54 years), rank (overall and within each workout), and reported workout scores were collected from the competition’s publicly-available leaderboard. Each sample had excluded any athlete who had not met minimum performance criteria (e.g., at least one completed round) for all prescribed (Rx) workouts within a given year (including those not analyzed). Since some workouts could be scored as repetitions completed or time-to-completion (TTC), and because programming was often scaled between men and women, all scores were converted to a repetition completion rate (repetitions divided by TTC [in minutes]). RESULTS: Separate sex x time analyses of variance with repeated measures revealed significant (p<0.05) interactions in all but one (CFO 18.4 vs. 20.3) repeated workout comparison. Initially, men were faster in four workouts (~18.5%, range = 3.9 – 35.0%, p<0.001), women in two (~7.1%, range = 5.2 – 9.0%, p<0.001), and they tied in the remaining three workouts. When these workouts were repeated in subsequent years, men were no longer faster in two workouts (CFO 11.1 to 14.1 and CFO 12.4 to 13.3) but became faster in another (CFO 16.4 to 17.4). In contrast, women were slower in CFO 14.2 and became faster than men when the workout repeated (CFO 15.2), but then performed CFO 19.2 slower than men, a workout they initially completed faster (CFO 16.2). Though performance improved in seven of the nine workouts (~14.3%, p<0.001) and percentile rank was controlled, athletes earned a lower rank (overall and within workout) on each repeated workout (p<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Performance (measured as repetition completion rate) has improved in most repeated CFO workouts, particularly females. However, improvements seen among all athletes, along with increased participation, have made it more difficult for athletes to improve their overall rank. To rank higher, individual athlete must improve their pace to a greater degree than the average improvements seen across the competitive field.