After 17.1 unleashed a workout of pure dumbbell snatches and burpee box jump overs and 17.2 mixed things up with high rep walking lunges, muscle-ups, toes-to-bars, and power cleans, we didn’t know what to expect from 17.3. (Of course, you never do — that’s the fun of constantly varied functional fitness.)
When 17.3 dropped, we groaned with the same mixture of dread and excitement that Open workouts are known for: six rounds of squat snatches and chest to bar pull-ups. That’s three rounds of six squat snatches and six pull-ups followed by three rounds of seven pull-ups and five squat snatches.
There was a fiendish twist, of course: the time cap of eight minutes gets extended in four minute intervals to up to twenty-four minutes if an athlete manages to complete all of the work assigned.
So if six rounds are completed in eight minutes, the athlete is “rewarded” with an extra four minutes to complete three more rounds, this time of eight pull-ups and four squat snatches.
If he or she is still going strong, they get four more minutes and three more rounds — the pull-ups increase and the snatches decrease as the workout progresses, so the next round is nine pull-ups and three squat snatches, then ten pull-ups and two squat snatches, and finally eleven pull-ups and one squat snatch.
After twenty-four grueling minutes, the lucky athlete will have completed 216 reps: 153 chest-to-bar pull-ups and 63 squat snatches.
Oh, and the lifts get heavier as the first six rounds progress: men start with 95 pounds and the women 65 pounds, finishing with 265 pounds and 185 pounds respectively.
So, Who’s On Top?
The best result came from Kara Webb, which might not be surprising to those that know she can snatch 220 pounds (99.7 kilograms). The seventh-place finisher in the 2016 Reebok CrossFit Games finished her workout in 15 minutes and 56 seconds at CrossFit Roar in Brisbane, Australia. You can watch her entire performance below.
After Webb, Camille LeBlanc-Bezinet came second with 16:11, followed by Sara Sigmundsdottir with 18:03, and two-time defending Games Champion Katrin Davidsdottir with 18:08.
Ben Smith, winner of the 2015 Reebok CrossFit Games, came first on the men’s Leaderboard with a 17:17 finish. This is the second week in a row that the winning female athlete’s time was faster than the men’s time.
Check out Smith’s performance below.
After Smith — who is now in 77th overall worldwide — 17.3 saw Jeff Evans in second place with 17:30, Mat Fraser in third with 17:36, and Nicholas Urankar in fourth with 18:13.
In fifth place was George Sterner, at only eighteen years old, with a time of 18:17.
After three weeks of workouts, Mat Fraser is in first overall in the men’s division, followed by Rich Froning, Noah Olsen, Marcelo Bruno, and Alex Vigneault.
For women, we have Kari Pearce in first place, followed by Sara Sigmundsdottir, and tied for third are Annie Thorisdottir and Camille LeBlanc-Bezinet, and Jamie Greene is coming in fourth.
It’s anyone’s game at this point. Right now, we’re looking forward to 17.4, where we’ll see Brooke Wells compete against the Fittest Woman in Mexico, Brenda Castro.
Featured image via AgainFasterAustralia and Ben on YouTube
