* The 2001 meter row represents the year * The 4 rounds represent the four planes * The 9 Rope Climbs represent the month * The 11 Bear Complexes represent the day * The 2977-meter row represents the lives lost
In addition, we would like to put another challenge to the entire Cove community, which we did last year. We are going to look to accumulate 2071 step ups (weighted or unweighted) as a gym. The World Trade Towers each consisted of 110 floors and 2071 steps, and this is our way of paying tribute to those that so fearless climbed those steps to give their lives for complete strangers. If you can’t make it to the gym and want to contribute to the gym total, just let us know (email, text, messenger) and we will add it to the tally.
Thank you for participating and paying tribute to the 2,997 people that lost their lives in Twin Towers, the Pentagon and on the United Airlines Flight 93, some 21 years ago today.
Over the next 9 weeks leading to Veteran’s Day, we will be doing a Hero Wod in honor of the fallen. These hero wods offer a chance to go beyond a workout and give us a moment to reflect and honor those that have made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. Our first Hero workout will be “Jack”
In memory of Jack Martin, here is an article form the Associated Press
Jack M. Martin III dreamed of working as an educator or finding another way to help people when his time in the military ended, his family said.
The 26-year-old from Bethany, Okla., was helping to resupply a school construction project in the Philippines when he was killed Sept. 29 by a bomb buried beneath a road on Jolo Island. Military officials said he was part of a task force deployed to help quell militants there.
Martin, the youngest of five children, was born in Iowa and grew up there and in Oklahoma. He played football and was an honors student at Bethany High School, graduating in 2001.
He started out in the Army Reserve before studying at the University of Central Oklahoma, said his father, Jack Martin Jr., adding that his son was in basic training during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The younger Martin had volunteered to go to Iraq, and when that deployment was canceled, he met with a recruiter looking for special forces volunteers and became a Green Beret. He was assigned to Fort Lewis.
“He was a very kind and loving person that was very intelligent with numbers,” his father said.
This Labor Day Monday we will be running a limited schedule. Classes will be at 9 AM and 10:15 AM. Starting on Labor Day Monday, we will be doing a hero workout every Monday in preparation for Veterans Day. If you aren’t familiar with CrossFit “Hero” workouts they are workouts are chances for us to reflect and pay respect to those individuals who have made the ultimate sacrifice in order to protect us. We love the CrossFit tradition of Hero workouts and are excited to do them over the coming weeks.
In other scheduling news, not have Saturday classes on the weekend of September 17th and 18th, as we are hosting the CrossFit Level II seminar. These seminars are important to the Cove staff, as our coaches often will take these classes to improve their craft. Although the gym will be closed, we have a number of athletes competing at the Execution Games in Elderberg, MD. We are looking to get a big crew of Covies to support those Cove teams that will be competing. Look for more information to come.
Shout out to the 5 teams that made the journey to Sparks, Maryland for the Charm City Throwdown. These 10 athletes got out of their comfort zone, going through 3 to 4 workouts in one day, pushing themselves to the very limit. We actually had a Cove team make it to the final workout (only the top teams get to do the 4th workout) in all 4 divisions (Masters, Teens, Scaled, and Rx).
Congratulations to all the athletes, thank you to the Covie fan crew and thank you Outsiders CrossFit for throwing such a great competition and we look forward to the Throwdown next year.
We have another big group of Cove competitors that will be doing the Execution Games on September 17th in Frederick, Maryland. For those not competing, it’s a great spectator event and a fun time to hang out with your fellow Cove athletes.
If you hadn’t caught our previous blog post about 3 weeks ago, we are posting the week’s programming over the weekend to help you plan your training schedule. To provide additional value, we are also providing some post-class accessory work. These are additional pieces to work on technique, skills, strength, and overall fitness. The class workouts are more than enough to develop a high level of health and fitness BUT if you are looking to do a bit extra, then grab a friend after class and try some of these extra workout pieces.
This is it – the final event of the 2022 Games. Amazingly, Jenna has gone through the entire week without looking at the leaderboard at all. She has asked us how she placed after each individual event, but everyone in her crew was expressly forbidden to tell her where she was on the overall leaderboard. Once again, this strategy paid off for Jenna because she wasted no mental energy stressing about it, especially considering her overall position varied significantly throughout the week. In fact, on Day 1, Jenna couldn’t even tell you the events on Day 2 because she didn’t waste time looking – all her energy was always focused solely on “the next event”.
Though she didn’t know it, Jenna came into this final event in 7th place overall – only 10 points behind the athlete in 6th and 30 points behind the athlete in 5th. If she could beat the girl currently in 6th by at least 2 places (i.e., have 1 athlete “get in between them”), she could overtake 6th place overall. At this point we weren’t giving much thought to her overtaking 5th place overall, because she’d need to beat the girl currently in 5th by at least 4 places – and that’s extremely difficult to do when you have a field of only 10 athletes.
The Final Sprint
25 cal Echo Bike
20 burpee box jump-overs (30 inches)
10 sandbag-to-shoulders alternating 100#
Time cap: 5 minutes
For anyone that’s ever seen Jenna in the back of the gym killing herself on Echo bike interval sprints, and collapsing on the floor in tears – all that work was for a moment like this. One week before leaving for the Games, Jenna did a workout with 100# sandbag-to-shoulders with Carlos and her father (her father did a 70# sandbag) – it was for the possibility of a moment like this. Throughout the Games, Jenna consumed 600-800 carbs per day (!!) – keeping her body fueled was a part-time job itself – and it was for a moment like this. She was prepared for this event and she knew it.
There would be no “strategic pacing” in this event – it was time to Send It!
The event starts and we’re watching her moving the Echo bike FAST. We see her judge’s hand go up (to signify 5 cals remaining) at the 58 second mark – she completes her 25 cals at 1:14 and she’s 4th off the bike – significantly in front of the girl currently in 6th. Onto the 20 burpees – if she can avoid any costly no-reps (for feet going outside the plane of the box), it is highly unlikely she will be caught.
Jenna completes her burpees and she is in 4th. There are 5 athletes way ahead of everyone else – the top 4 girls on the overall leaderboard, plus Jenna. Jenna starts the 10 sandbag cleans and her pace is faster than anyone else – 2 cleans, then advance each time until 10. She quickly moves into solid 3rd. But the athlete in second is struggling with the 100# sandbag and gets no repped. Jenna continues to quickly advance and appears to move into a tie for 2nd! The #1 athlete finishes and Jenna has 1 rep to go. She completes her rep and crosses the finish line at the exact same time as the athlete next to her. BUT…Jenna has the presence of mind to kick her right foot forward (i.e., the foot holding the timer chip) as she crosses the finish line and grabs 2nd place by 14 one-hundredths of a second!
Jenna’s support crew are all ecstatic! We then look back at the rest of the pack and realize the athlete in 5th overall is far back – she finishes in 8th. Through her final push, Jenna’s performance in the final event elevated her to #5 overall for the 2022 CrossFit Games.
This has been the culmination of a year of hard work, adversity, overcoming injuries, brutal workouts, sacrifice, and a ton of mental challenges. Jenna came in with an unmatched mindset and a mental toughness that was focused only on maximizing her own performance without focusing on other external distractions around her. It’s now time to celebrate and eat all the cheese curds and ice cream!
After what was clearly her toughest event of the Games thus far, Jenna had to quickly regroup mentally and physically to get ready for the next event: Rinse ‘N’ Repeat…the swim event. Last year in the 2021 Games, the swim event was by far Jenna’s worst event and, as a result, she embraced it as part of her training throughout the year and got to the point where she actually *enjoyed* her swim training sessions – in short, she “made friends with her weaknesses” and worked to improve them – she didn’t avoid them in her training.
Rinse ‘N’ Repeat
Every 2 minutes:
50-yard swim
8-cal Ski Erg*
*Add +2 cal each round
The structure of this workout is what’s known in CrossFit as a “beep test” – that is, do a given amount of work on a fixed time interval, and “earn” your next interval – if you don’t hit the target for the interval, your workout is over. In this case, if you finished the work in 90 seconds, that means you’d have 30 seconds to rest (i.e., the remainder of the 2 minutes) before the start of the next round.
Side bar for a story from last year: In late 2021, one of the online qualifier workouts Jenna did to qualify for Wodapalooza was a “beep test”. In that qualifier, she went so hard on each round to “get to the rest period”, but could never fully recover, and had a brutal workout and was not satisfied with her score. Upon reflection, she decided to re-test but this time to pace it and “go slow” in each round and not “race to the rest” – treat it as one continuous workout (making sure to just barely hit the targets), rather than sprint-rest-sprint-rest. We ironically called it “The Lollygag Strategy” – and it paid off tremendously – she got a MUCH higher score, with less effort.
Back to 2022 Games Event 7: Jenna quickly identified the similarity of the Event 7 structure to the Wodapalooza qualifier from last year, and she decided in advance that she would employ the “The Lollygag Strategy” for this event. In the first round, Jenna was in “last place” – not just 10thplace, actually 20th place since they were all going in the same heat with the ten 16-17 boys. Whereas everyone had about 30-40 seconds rest in the first round, Jenna only had about 10. You could tell people in the stands weren’t even sure if she’d make it out of the second round. Another interesting note: the jumbotron in the venue showed everyone’s real-time cals/hour on the Ski Erg – Jenna’s was showing about 800-850, while everyone else was well over 1000-1100.
Second round comes up – same thing, Jenna only has about 10 seconds of rest. Third round – same thing, Jenna is still in 20thplace with only about 10 seconds of rest…but something interesting is now happening: everyone else is getting less and less rest while Jenna’s rounds all look the same. Fourth round – they need to hit 14 cals this round – Jenna’s competitors, who were getting out of the water about 15-20 seconds before her on earlier rounds – are only getting out of the water about 4-5 seconds before her. Jenna is now hitting about 1000 cals/hour on the ski erg but…her rounds still look all the same! Fifth round – they need to hit 16 cals – a couple of her competitors start to fall off and Jenna is getting out of the pool at the same time (or a little before) them! Jenna now starts to put the hammer down on the Ski Erg at over 1150 cals/hour on the jumbotron and her ski shows even with 3 other athletes. The athlete 2 spots ahead of Jenna on the overall leaderboard fails to hit the 16 cal target for round 5 and she’s out – but Jenna moves onto the next round. Sixth round (18 cal target) – this is it. Jenna swims hard and gets out of the pool even with a couple other girls. She needs to hit 18 cals in less than a minute and she hammers the Ski at over 1250 cals/hour. Watching the “virtual race” on the jumbotron, Jenna is chasing down 3 athletes, including the girls currently in 2nd and 3rd on the overall leaderboard. Down to the final second of the round…Jenna hits 17 of the 18 cals and her workout is over. But…we look at the results on the big screen and see that she has beaten the 2nd and 3rd ranked girls by 1 cal! The remaining competitors move on and finish their last round. Jenna is absolutely thrilled with her results (she wasn’t sure if she’d make it out of the round of 12 or 14 beforehand) – and for the first time during the Games, she gives a smile and wave to her family in the stands.
The Rinse ‘N’ Repeat event at the Games was the absolute pinnacle of Jenna’s strategic acumen – she maximized her current abilities for that specific event – one of her proudest moments of the 2022 Games.
Now only one event remains!
Coach Brian’s view of Event 7 from the Airport Bar
This is my final write up for our review of Coach Jenna’s journey in the 2022 CrossFit Games. I, unfortunately, had to get an early afternoon flight on Saturday as I had family coming into town, so I missed Jenna’s amazing final two events.
We have good news though, we have some blogs coming up from Steve Michelotti, so look for them soon.
168-ft Husafell carry 50 wall-ball shots 168-ft Jerry bag carry 40 wall-ball shots 168-ft sled push 30 wall-ball shots 168-ft Husafell carry 20 wall-ball shots 168-ft Jerry bag carry 10 wall-ball shots 168-ft sled push
Event 6 was the grind workout of the Games. We saw the pros struggle with this workout, so the teens had their work cut out for them. I got a quick chance to check in with Steve to ask how Jenna was doing and he said great. Then I asked what woop band (a device that checks recovery) and it was well into the red. The programming is taking a toll on Jenna and all of the other teen athletes.
One thing that I can communicate enough going into this workout was the heat. It’s now 11 AM and the turf is attracting the heat. The word is that you can’t touch the turf without gloves or you will burn yourself.
Steve gives me the warning that Jenna is pacing herself in this workout. Doing small sets of wall balls, saving herself for the carries in the workout. She does a great job to start, carrying the Husafell. She hits those walls balls and all is looking good. She is losing some time but I know she is going to catch people.
Then to the Jerry bag. It is a new piece of equipment and it throws Jenna and everyone else for a loop. Think of a really heavy kettlebell carry but the kettlebell isn’t a stable piece of iron, rather it’s an amazing heavy bag that is violently moving all over the place. It isn’t just the weight but the fact that you can’t stabilize yourself holding on to it. It is a midline crusher!
I am just off the field, trying to get videos and I am just boiling doing and all I am doing is holding a phone.
Jenna finishes the carry and is back for the wall balls. She is still behind. I take a peek at the other athletes hitting the sled push and I realize that this workout is about to go from bad to flat-out horrible. This sled is impossible to move.
It’s a slow grind, fighting inch by inch to go 168 feet. I can only imagine the emotions going on. Jenna just won’t stop though and somehow finds a way to get the sled to the other side of the field.
She somehow makes it to the finish line and it’s back to the wall balls. The last carry took everything out of her. Thirty wall balls isn’t much for these amazing athletes but the carries are taking a brutal toll.
Time is ticking down and Jenna gets a chance to get her hands back on the Jerry bags again. She is moving and starting to track down one of her competitors. The clock is not her friend and the workout ends before Jenna gets a chance to make her move.
Jenna didn’t have the event she was hoping for and she fought so hard. We have two workouts left and there is no time to dwell on this event.
I am so sad to leave the Games. It was been the best Games that I have ever been to and it was just so special to watch Jenna. We all have our heroes in CrossFit. How many people get to see their heroes workout every day? How many people have a chance to have their hero’s actually coaching them? How many people have a CrossFithero that is a 17-year-old girl? It’s just crazy and just so special.
We continue our running blog on Jenna Michelotti’s journey during the 2022 CrossFit Games. This is Event 5 on day two. You can actually watch the broadcast of the event with this link (the coverage starts at the 2:16 mark)
Jenna has been doing great and these are the type of workouts that I think are awesome. CrossFit needs to train all time domains, the short sprints and the long workouts. This workout gives us three 3 minute sprints separated by a one-minute interval. It is not only a sprint but can you recover for another sprint. It’s not one movement, but a super demanding gymnastics, Olympic lifting, and monostructural movement.
The first workout is 20 muscle ups for time followed by a run through a relatively simple obstacle course. Muscle-ups used to be a real weakness for Jenna but they are turned into something she is very proficient in. After watching her work relentlessly on this movement in the back of the gym, I am feeling like she is going to be able to handle part one relatively well.
They are off and she is biting off her first set of muscle-ups. They look clean but you can tell she is struggling a little bit. I look down the line and all the athletes are struggling with the muscle ups.
The muscle up is a movement that our elite CrossFitters work on constantly. They have it down but all the fatigue of the last four events is finally catching up to them. I hate to say it, but for us normal adults the kids just drive us crazy. Their ability to recover after workouts is just so superior to our own but it looks like the head programmer Adrianne Bozeman has finally gotten to the kids. Teen athletes welcome to our world of soreness and fatigue.
She is down to singles and the clock is ticking away. She just might make it to 20. The dips are starting to get harder. UGH, that parallel bar traverses front event 4 are taking their toll in this workout. You can tell her triceps are fried. We have a couple of athletes off the muscle ups and Jenna is getting close to that 20th. And then she misses a dip out of the muscle up. Jenna just got no repped, not by a failure of technique but just that she has reached her physical limit. It’s amazing how few no reps she has had this entire competition. This missed muscle up turns out to be a real problem because if you don’t finish that muscle up piece you get a time penalty. You get an additional time penalty if you don’t get on to the obstacle course. It turns out to be a costly no-rep as she finished at 19 muscle up.
Jenna is not alone. This workout has just knocked a number of the teen athletes for a loop. It now comes down to how you can respond to this adversity. Jenna is in the one minute rest interval and she is bending over her name pylon trying to recover. It’s recovery time but also a time to get focused on the next three minute sprint.
She attacks workout two. She is far from deterred and moving smoothly with the snatches. This event is on the stadium field and it is brutally hot and the turf just draws in that heat. I can’t imagine how she is doing this! She hits that 20th rep and is onto the obstacle course. She scales the log/fence jump easily and is hitting it hard. She is back!
On to the final workout. Part I was high-skill gymnastics, Part II was high-skill Olympic lifting and Part III is just brute strength and toughness. Jenna is a solid rower but it’s not her strongest monostructural movement (she is great runner, biker, and on the ski erg).
The heat is brutal down there. You see it rising off the turf. She straps in, the bell sounds and she is off to her 30 cal sprint. She does amazing! Getting off quickly and now it’s sprint time. She digs in and it’s a sprint to the finish.
The event is over and the day is over as we watch her collapse in front of one of the cooling fans. There are screams of pain. She put so much into this workout and the brutal heat becomes even more apparent. There is nothing left, at least for today. Tomorrow is the final day for the Games and the close of her birthday at the Games. Some people eat cake for their birthday, Jenna is going to close it out with 45 minutes of a cooldown flush ride.
The Games are over and what an amazing experience, especially watching our very own athlete, Jenna Michelotti, do so well.
To give some insight into the Games from a spectators perspective, we have done a handful of blogs. Here is a review of the events from Day 2, event four.
Parallel Elizabeth
For time:
21 squat cleans 7 parallel bar traverses 15 squat cleans 5 parallel bar traverses 9 squat cleans 3 parallel bar traverses
The pro’s did a scaled up version of this workout earlier and it looks to be brutal and a total trap workout. The parallel bar traverse (+ dips for the pros) proved to be really problematic to a number of athletes. We saw the very best struggle with workout and it’s a scary preview for Jenna’s upcoming workout.
I have mentioned before how much I love the programming in the Games and this is another great workout. It’s a new movement but I am especially in love that this one is added for the female athletes. Parallel bars are an event that doesn’t exist in female gymnastics but only for the men. I love that these girls have the opportunity to show that they are plenty strong enough to do a movement normally reserved only for males.
Jenna starts the workout very much the Jenna way. Small sets of squat cleans. She could bite off big chunks, be she is maintaining a great heart rate knowing how hard the next exercise is. She has really mastered all parts of this movement, especially the footwork. The movement is quick and purposeful.
She thenjobs onto the parallel bars. She is bit behind the other teen athletes but I have seen enough of Jenna’s workouts to know that this is the plan, she is planning on passing people. She is calmly going through the traverses. I am watching other girls struggle and seeing some no reps. She knocks out the round of 7, doing smart traverses followed by a short rest period. She does her 7th and back to the squat clean.
The weights for the squat cleans a light to moderate but we all know how expensive they are. No matter the weight, squat cleans make you breath heavy but Jenna is staying steady and focused. There is another great teen athlete in the lane next to her that is ahead of her by a bit of time but Jenna is chasing her down. She just might catch her.
This is going to turn out to be a great finish! I decide to sprint to the end zone to catch the race for the end. I have no idea how she did with the 7 parallel bar traverses because by the time I am at my seat she is done. I am guessing pretty well.
Jenna is still hitting the squat cleans smoothly going into the round of 9. I was right to change seats. This workout is going to come down to a race on the parallel bars. Jenna gets there before her neighbor and it comes down to the 3 reps on the traverse. No rest, she goes right to it. And this is one of the beautiful things we see in CrossFit, we are given these new movements that we don’t have experience and it comes down to how quickly you can figure them out. WELL JENNA HAS IS DOWN NOW! Her arms and legs are working beautifully together (see the video below). She hits all three with no rest in between and dives to the finish line. WOW, she took 4th place.
What a great event and it’s her BIRTHDAY! I get a chance to check back in with team Michelotti (Steve, Kim, and Justin are all there). I had talked to them earlier but now I realize they are all wearing Jenna’s CrossFit Games clothes from last year. They all look great but especially Steve who is wearing a crop top. It looks amazing on him! We might need some crop tops for the other guys at the gym.
I head back with them to the athlete area. It’s a building just for all the CrossFit athletes. This is one of those things that people miss. When Jenna is done with the workout, she is working on recovery and preparation for the next step. When I am sure she is absolutely exhausted, she is stretching, spending 20 minutes (to 45) on a ski erg, rower, or bike. It’s that discipline piece that has gotten her to this point. It looks like she is having a great birthday (she of course got CrossFit shoes as a present) but celebration time is for later this weekend. On the NEXT EVENT!
