The second week of the 2016 Reebok CrossFit Games Open brought us 16.2, a workout containing toes-to-bars, double-unders, squat cleans, and an initial 4-minute time cap. Athletes were able to earn additional 4-minute extensions by completing each successive round before the time expired. Each additional round contained heavier squat cleans but fewer reps.

For the average athlete, this translated into an 8-minute workout. For the top athletes, it lasted up to 20 minutes.

A nice feature of this workout was that you didn’t have to wait for the full 4 minutes to start the next round. This was similar to the style of 13.5 (thrusters and chest-to-bar pull-ups). In 15.2/14.2 (overhead squats and chest-to-bar pull-ups), the periods were each 3 minutes, and you had to wait until the next 3-minute period to start the next round of movements. Strategically this makes a big difference in how to best approach the workout. You have a lot more control over your work/rest periods in the current style.

16.2 Workout Analysis

There were a total of 277,298 scores submitted for 16.2 (down 6 percent from last week).

This is a substantial improvement over last year when we saw a 9 percent drop-off from 15.1 to 15.2.

In 16.2 we had 3.6 percent more women go Rx’d than last week, and 3.4 percent fewer Rx’d Men. A significant number of Rx’d Women stopped during the first round; 9,839 got stuck on the toes-to-bar or double-unders and didn’t complete any squat cleans. Last week we only had 2,491 do just the lunges and burpees on the first round without completing any of the chest-to-bar pull-ups. This could explain the uptick in Rx’d participation for the women.

The most common round for Rx’d Women to get stuck on was round 1 (46 percent). The most common round for Rx’d Men to get stuck on was round 2 (34 percent). Less than 5 percent of women and 3 percent of men made it past round 3. And even though almost twice as many men chose to go Rx’d, more women made it to round 5 (405 women vs. 278 men).

After round 1, a lot of people finished the double-unders but couldn’t get any squat cleans at the heavier weight. In the Rx’d divisions, 6,825 men and 4,101 women finished the workout with 50 double-unders and no squat cleans on their final round (rounds 2-5).

A lot more women than men got stuck on the first round of toes-to-bars, but most women got at least some reps in the first round of squat cleans. Among the women, 3 percent more got stuck on the first round of squat cleans than the second. The opposite was true for the men, with 67 percent more getting stuck on the second round of squat cleans.

Percentiles

When analyzing the field of results on a workout, we rely heavily on percentiles. For athletes not at the top of the Leaderboard, this is a more meaningful way to understand your performance than just your overall placing (e.g., “How good is 30,000th place?”). Your percentile represents the percentage of athletes you scored higher than on a given workout.

The Rx’d Men and Rx'd Women percentiles were very similar this week. For the upper quartile they were almost identical. In the lower half of the field, the Rx’d Men slightly outperformed the Rx'd Women.

For a percentile breakdown of every division , check out the Percentile by Division Table and the Percentile by Division Charts.

This next graphic lets you know what percentile you’re in based on what section you finished the workout on. Getting through toes-to-bars and double-unders on a given round didn’t offer much of a bump in percentiles, but finishing an extra rep on the squat cleans could.

In the Rx’d division, to score in the 90th percentile you needed to complete 3 squat cleans in the third round. To score in the 99th percentile you needed 4 squat cleans for the men and 7 for the women in the fourth round.

It’s not surprising that most athletes ended on the squat cleans because they take a long time to get through once they get heavy. And if you finish them, you buy yourself an extra 4 minutes, which is enough time for most athletes to get through the toes-to-bars and double-unders.

Analysis by

