With the CrossFit Games just around the corner, we’re starting to see a lot of speculation from athletes and fans on what new movements will be debuted in Carson. Will all the gymnastics be strict? Will all the barbells be replaced with truck axels? Will the final event simply be a head to head fight to the death?
Oh the drama of this time of year.
Amongst amateur and professional speculators, one potential movement keeps popping up: triple unders. Yes, that’s passing the jump rope under your feet three times. It’s an incredibly technical movement that is infinitely more difficult than double unders, so it stands to reason that eventually, we will see the triple under in competition.
This theory is further substantiated by the fact that in 2013, CrossFit HQ put out a video highlighting the triple unders. We all know that HQ loves to pull out movements from the archives, whether from some obscure statement Greg Glassman made in 2002 or from a video that most people forgot about. Furthermore, on April 8, HQ posted the same video as part of a #tbt throwback, leading many to wonder if we’d see triple unders at Regionals.
The timing for Regionals seemed a little too on the nose for Regionals, but by now, people have pretty much forgotten about the post. We’ve also seen triple unders programmed on the mainsite as recently as June 23, so the Games are a perfect time to announce a triple under workout followed by a “we told you this was coming” jab.
Unlike double unders, which when mastered can actually provide an athlete some much needed rest during a workout, triple unders take significantly more force to complete. The athlete has to jump higher and rotate the rope faster, which means his/her entire body is under more duress — the heart rate spikes, shoulders and forearms ache, and when the body starts to fatigue, the brain actually has to pay attention so as not to trip up.
Even the most elite CrossFitters seem to be having difficulty mastering the triple under. Camille Leblanc-Bazinet was recently literally whipped into shape, thanks to a 30 minute triple under session. She claims she #gotthem, but those rope marks seem to disagree.
Ben Stoneberg, five time CrossFit Games Athlete and one of the most underrated beasts ever, also seems to think the triple unders will make an appearance this year. Stoneberg has been quietly and successfully working on them in his Oregon garage. The big question is, how long has he been working on them to make them look so pretty? And is the dramatic silhouette an attempt to cover up all of the jump rope beatings?
Like all movements, though, there are some people on this Earth who are just naturally great. Just yesterday, we discovered a video of of an anonymous woman performing the CrossFit workout “Annie” entirely with unbroken triple unders. Traditionally, “Annie” is a 50-40-30-20-10 rep scheme of double unders and ab-mat sit-ups. A triple under “Annie” is basically savant level jump-roping.
The video quality is low and some have questioned if the anonymous woman is actually performing triple unders, since we can’t see the rope itself. However, if you look at her hands, you can count the number of wrist flicks performed during each rotation. She very clearly flicks three times. Also, the video is posted by JumpNRope, who are experts in the field of jump roping. We highly doubt they’d publicize a false triple under claim.
Meanwhile, if anyone knows the name of this jump roping ninja, let us know! She deserves a triple round of applause.