It was announced in late February that weightlifter Dmitry Klokov had entered the 2021 CrossFit Open. Armed with ferocious power and the strength of, well, an Olympic weightlifter, strength sports fans have been waiting to know how the Russian athlete would do. Well, his 21.1 results are in: Klokov finished with a score of 213 reps before hitting the 15-minute time cap. The full workout consists of 605 total reps.
Note: at the time of this article’s publication, the official CrossFit Open leaderboard has yet to reflect Klokov’s result.
Here is a quick refresher of the workout Klokov and all the athletes competing in the Open were tasked with:
CrossFit Open Workout 21.1
For time:
- One wall walk
- 10 double-unders
- Three wall walks
- 30 double-unders
- Six wall walks
- 60 double-unders
- Nine wall walks
- 90 double-unders
- 15 wall walks
- 150 double-unders
- 21 wall walks
- 210 double-unders
15-minute time cap.
Fifteen minutes may sound like a lot of time, but many athletes are having trouble finishing the full 605 reps. Klokov was one of them, hitting the time cap with 392 reps left to go. That sounds like a low score but it makes sense considering most reps are accrued in the final two rounds. For reference, elite CrossFitter and 2020 CrossFit Games bronze medalist Kari Pearce finished 21.1 in 13:04.
You can check out Klokov’s performance in the video below, which was posted to his YouTube channel:
[Related: Sara SigmundsdĆ³ttir Will Miss the 2021 CrossFit Season Due to Ruptured ACL]
The Russian weightlifter, by his own admission, struggled to perform the double-unders. Unfortunately for Klokov, this workout called for a lot of double-unders ā 550 of the 605 reps. Given that the higher rep sets came towards the end of the workout, failing to perform double-unders smoothly can eat a lot of the limited time workout 21.1 allotted.
Note: the following quotes were translated from Russian via Google Translate.
The inability to do double-unders in a row took a lot of time and effort.
When the event was first announced, many top athletes and coaches in the CrossFit space identified the stress 21.1 puts on the shoulders. Wall walks are almost entirely a combination of proper technique plus shoulder strength, and double-unders heavily tax the shoulders, especially in such a large quantity. Shoulder strength, however, was not an issue at all for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games silver medalist.
View this post on Instagram
[Related: Burn Fat and Boost Your Work Capacity With Body Conditioning]
“It was difficult to breathe, but bearable…the shoulders were not tired at all.”
Klokov did say he thoroughly enjoyed his first-ever Open workout, despite his “modest result.” It may be tough to break into the top 10 percent of Open competitors in his region to advance to the Quarterfinals with only two Open workouts left. However, if either or both of those workouts place a barbell and weight plates in front of the champion weightlifter, it is certainly possible that he could score a top finish.
Featured image: @klokovd on Instagram