James’s First Competition

James’s First Competition
Written by Performance Follower James Dalton

Coach Michele’s Note: James has been an integral part of our online community for a few years now. Not only does he post his results every day, but he also responds to other people’s posts with words of encouragement and to answer questions from his own experiences and gained knowledge from following the Performance Program from England. We are so fortunate to have such a positive and hardworking member of our community representing us from across the pond. And we are very proud of his achievement of this goal – to compete in an official CrossFit event. He trained for a year, attacked his weaknesses, and went in with a plan to give it his full effort. The results have been phenomenal. Way to crush it, James! Here is his recap of the event.

Hi guys, taking today as a rest day after the pairs competition I did with my friend over the weekend. I thought I’d do a write-up. I set a goal last year with Michele of competing in a competition. I’d had a look around for UK competitions, and this pairs one seemed the most approachable, with no high-skills gymnastics. Over the last year, I’ve used getting to a competition as the fuel to train harder and put in extra accessory work to improve on my weaknesses.

The venue was awesome, in the middle of an indoor athletics track, put on by the same company that did the UK Sanctional – Strength in Depth. There were 152 male pairs, including Elliot Simmonds who won the UK Open, and several other guys who looked like they wouldn’t be out of place at what was Regionals!

Event 1 – Both partners find a MAX Hang Clean in 4 minutes

I went in with a plan to hit 3 lifts, one every 80 seconds: 70, 95 and 105kg/231lbs. 105 is a 5lbs PR, but looking back on it, it came up a bit too easily – should have harnessed the competition buzz. The adrenaline I felt standing with athlete control was something I haven’t felt since competitive rowing, it was great! I felt so focused and dialed in on my technique. So next time, I’d have a more ambitious stretch target (e.g. 70 to get moving, 100 safe lift and 110, knowing I could quickly strip the bar and hit 105 if 110 didn’t come up).

My partner also PRd hitting 80kg. Considering his really limited experience with Olympic lifting, this was awesome! This got us 35 points. First place gets 152, so put us quite far down the leaderboard, but this was likely to be our worse event.

Rest 1 min

Event 2

6 rounds, alternating exercises with a 50kg bar:
5 thrusters
7 hang power clean
9 sumo deadlift high pull

We had hit the 5-minute time cap in training, only getting through 5 of the 6 rounds. However, we did 4.46, which got us 77 points.. Quicker transitions and cycle time helped us here. We practiced this in the warm-up area with a lighter bar, but due to limited equipment, didn’t get a chance to practice these 3 movements at the weight. We didn’t panic or let this affect us, I kept thinking: “It’s outside of my control, so worrying won’t help.”

Event 3 – Run!

This was outside on the full-size athletics track, and when running as a pair you were given a rope to hold to keep you together.

Individual 800m
Pair 800m
Individual 800m
Pair 800m

As my partner is a serious obstacle course racer and runs a lot, we went with the strategy for him to do both individual runs, so doing all 4 legs rather than me do one which would mean evenly splitting the work and doing 3 legs each. We did our pairs 800s in 3:01, and crossed the line in 12:50. This got us our best finish of the weekend, 86 points. Despite only doing 2 legs, I was really pleased with holding that pace on the run.

Event 4

50 Cal Row
40 DB Push Press (22.5KG each hand)
50 Box Jump Overs 24″
40 DB Lunges (22.5KG each hand)
50 Cal Row

We split the row calories evenly, I was pulling around 2300 calories. I did sets of 15 and 13 on the push press as I’m much stronger overhead. This was after a great conversation with Michele around a year ago where we put together a plan to improve here!

My partner is far lighter and has the rebound technique down, so he did 12’s on the BJO whereas I did 8’s. Pleased with how my cycle time is getting better on these after spending time practicing the jump into the bottom of an air squat technique twice a week after my session. We broke the lunges evenly, but I got 1 ‘no rep’ for not standing up fully at the top. Was tough to do these forward lunges after mostly doing reverse lunges for a while! Back on the rower for a final push at 2300 calories and we dived over the line at 7:33, exactly the same time as in training when we did it fresh. 84 points in the bag!

Ended day 1 in 89th place.

Event 5

10-minute time cap Snatch ladder

Reps (weight)
75 (35KG)
50 (50KG)
25 (60KG)

AMRAP in remaining time (70KG)

I went out of the gate doing sets of 12 on the 35kg bar, my partner doing 7’s. Onto the 50’s – I had planned to do 5’s, touch and go throughout but reduced to 4’s halfway, which was disappointing but we adjusted as needed without needing to talk too much – we both had a feel for each other’s capacity due to the amount of prep training sessions we’d done.

My partner stayed solid on 3’s, and we just kept on with this pattern until the 50 reps. We got to the 60kg station (having to change our own plates for each weight which was a welcome break) with a minute to go. I did singles, as 65kg is my max, but this 60 felt light, and I felt I could have done more reps if we’d known how much time was left. The clock was pretty small and I was struggling to hear our judge. I also had around 5 ‘no reps’ on the 50 for not fully opening the hips at the top of each lift which meant I was pausing at the top of each lift to make sure it counted. 37 points in the bag and although objectively we did nearly as well as we could have done, the one event this weekend I would like to have redone.

Event 6

2km ski erg for time

We went with the strategy of breaking into 250m pieces, but neither of us had used the ski erg more than a handful of times. Mindset going into this was to focus on technique cues I’d read up on, and remind myself that I have the capacity on the other machines. There also weren’t ski ergs to warm up on, so I improvised with a band tied to a railing! I went for a negative split approach, going 1.42 1.42 1.40 1.38 for my 4 sections, whereas my partner pushed super hard, staying in the high 1.30s up until the final 100ms where we saw some mid 1.40s. He did awesomely! In practice, we did 7.02.8, but a 6.46.2 in this event got us 46 points.

Event 7

200m syncro run
20 syncro down-ups
20 syncro DB goblet squat (30kg)
200m syncro run
20 syncro DB goblet squat
20 syncro down-ups
200m syncro run

Down-ups were fairly new to me, but are burpees without the clap and jump. The first run was a mass start, so we decided to not push the first run and spend effort overtaking people, but push on the next 2 when there was more open track.

This was a real burner throughout, the goblet squats were unbroken and the down-ups felt like a good cycle time. No ‘no reps’ and a huge push on the final run took us past 3 teams. I had to focus so hard on good running technique to block out the pain (keeping heels high behind you and dragging the floor back!). We collapsed over the line in 6.03, having done 6.32 in testing. 69 points to push us up the rankings.

An amazing experience overall, and will definitely be signing up for next year. I learned so much, that I have more capacity than I think I do, that I might prefer team comps over individual and that I need to get far stronger in the Olympic lifts still.