Week 4 of the 2017 Reebok CrossFit Games Open brought us a chipper-style AMRAP of deadlifts, wall-ball shots, rowing and handstand push-ups (HSPUs).

It’s become customary to repeat a workout from a prior Open, and this year we repeated 16.4. The repeat allows us to compare our performance over time and see how/if we’ve improved. Of the individuals who did 16.4 and 17.4 as Rx’d, 77 percent improved their score. Of those who did better this year, the average improvement was 14.1 reps. Surprisingly, these improvements were the same for both men and women.

This year, 86 percent of men completed the workout as Rx’d (compared to 87 percent on 16.4), and 67 percent of women did 17.4 as Rx'd (compared to 66 percent on 16.4), which is strikingly similar. In terms of percentiles, this year was significantly more competitive.

For example, last year 200 reps (35 HSPUs) was good enough for the 89th percentile. This year, you needed 205 reps (40 HSPUs) to hit the 89th percentile. For the men, there was about a 5-point difference across most of the percentiles. For the women there was about a 3-point difference.

Where did everyone finish?

For the Individual Men, the majority (54 percent) finished the workout somewhere on the HSPUs, and only 5 percent made it beyond Round 1. For the Individual Women, more competitors finished on the row than on the HSPU.

Rowing is generally more difficult for women compared to men, and that difference is amplified when you're rowing for calories. The 55-calorie row took significantly longer for the women, resulting in only 2 percent having enough time to finish Round 1.

Distributions and Percentiles

While most of the Rx’d Individual Men got to the HSPUs (but didn't complete them), a large portion of the women got stuck still on the rower. Only 285 men and 83 women got to the second round of wall-ball shots.

Because so many competitors finished the workout on the HSPUs, we wanted to take a closer look at those percentiles.

For the men, a lot of athletes were bunched up across the first 20 reps of HSPUs. Finishing with 5 HSPUs (170 reps) got you into the 42nd percentile, while 15 HSPUs (180 reps) was good enough for the 62nd percentile. For the women, we saw a similar effect, but to a much smaller degree.

Below is the percentile table for every division. This is where you can see how you stacked up percentile-wise against your peers. Under “Workout Type” you can see what percentage of your division did 17.4 as Rx’d and under “Score by Percentile” you can estimate the percentile range your result fell within.

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