The 2023 CrossFit Open at Empower: Celebrating Community

The 2023 CrossFit Open is nearly upon us and that means our Empower Intramural Teams will be starting shortly! February 4th we will be drawing teams live in the gym or you can join us by Zoom. To be in the draw, you must be registered for the Open before February 3rd.

The Open is a very inclusive, fun, worldwide community event. There are age divisions, Rx’d, Scaled and Foundations divisions so CrossFitters of every level can participate. The Open will occur simultaneously worldwide so even if you are out of town during the event, you can still earn points for your team by completing the workouts at a local CrossFit affiliate anywhere in the world. Ask Shine about this.

The 2023 Open will run for 3 weeks starting February 16th. Each week’s workout will be released every Thursday evening and your score must be submitted before 5pm the following Monday. At Empower, each Friday will be a make-up day so that you can use your group class time to do the WOD, every Saturday the Open workout will be programmed for the group class WOD so you can also choose to do your workout under Big Cat’s guidance.

The final weekend Saturday March 4th will be our big event potluck and BBQ as teams gather to complete the final event together in heats 8am until noon.

You can win points for your team by dominating your age and competitive bracket but most points will be based on participation. Every score you log earns your team points. More importantly, teams will be awarded Spirit points every week. In weeks one and two our coaches will assign specific spirit challenges worth 20 points per week, in week 3 your team will be judged by the spirit you bring to our final event with 50 points on the line. Bring your creativity! Last year 5 O’Clock Somewhere earned the win by performing a song written by Doc Disc!

The whole idea of the Empower Intramural Open is the opportunity to get out and play with members from different time zones that you might not regularly get to meet. Our goal is to have fun and create an event that everyone of every fitness level can participate in. And to help you realize that competition is just an opportunity to play harder and sillier!

Judging Course
All competitors are strongly recommended to complete the 2023 version of the CrossFit Judging Course. There are new movements included in this year’s course with which you need to familiarize yourself. Not only will it help you as an athlete to understand movement standards, it will help your team as we will require all 2023 CrossFit Open workouts to be verified by a qualified judge.

At Empower, we pride ourselves on understanding and upholding movement standards. Our members are often surprised when they travel abroad to visit gyms where members do not understand the standards for basic movements like a push up, air squat or thruster. If you are newer to Empower, the Open is an opportunity for you to develop awareness of correct CrossFit movement standards.

We realize that, like CrossFit itself, the Judging Course is not easy. At Empower we are committed to excellence, not easy. As such we will award your team 2 points for every member of your team who submits proof of their completed judges’ course before February 16th.

If you are caught cheating on the judging course, your team will be stripped of all judging points and assessed a 20 point spirit penalty and you will not be allowed to judge athletes at this year’s Open. The spirit of the Open and the spirit of Empower is honest effort, not short cuts in the face of challenges. Please stay true to this spirit!

Monday
Today’s workout is another great example of a CrossFit Open style workout and we are going to use the opportunity to get used to competition style workouts by partnering you up and running two heats so you can take turns playing the role of judge counting reps and enforcing movement standards.