Wodapalooza 2022-23 Apogee in the House!

Apogee’s Wodapalooza Pursuit 2022-23

Week 1 of Online Qualifiers

Wodapalooza’s 2022-23 Online Qualifier started on Thursday Sept 15 when the first 3 workouts were released. This year CrossFit Apogee is working to land 5 athletes in Miami, each competing as individuals in 4 different divisions. The actual competition is in January in downtown Miami at the BayFront Park and Amphitheater on Biscayne Bay - and it is an awesome time! A large four day fitness festival in downtown Miami that has become template of CrossFit’s “Sanctionals” where many athletes will earn a ticket to the CrossFit Games. Wodapalooza served as a vital high profile launching pad for Adaptive CrossFit, thanks to Wheelwod and Chris Stoutenburg’s tireless efforts for the last 8-10 years.

This year Apogee is working to land 5 brave sweating souls in to the Wodapalooza fire! Zach Tedder and Blake Gentry in Men’s Intermediate/Scaled, Heather Cole in Women’s Intermediate/Scaled and me, the author Rich Pond in Men’s Lower Standing Scaled Adaptive division. All of the aforementioned will do the 6 qualifying workouts and will also have to register on a first-come, first-serve basis kind of keyboard race at some point so for us, athletic performance is part one of two parts to get to Miami. Our fifth athlete, Yolanda Cate, is in a purely performance-based division. Her Master’s Division will only allow the top 5 finishers to go (as Rx). This will be her year too!

As promised on Thursday, Sept 15 at noon, the good folks at Wodapalooza released the first 3 workouts. All three to be completed, scored, judged, videoed and submitted four days later at 8PM on Monday.

So, in short, here is the good, the bad and the ugly summary of our first three days of “getting it done.” I’ll say upfront, it is a good thing CrossFit teaches us to lick our wounds AFTER we have finished the job :)

And I like to always remind how “we are all here to learn what we need to learn, when we need to learn it - hopefully”

SO, the Bad and Ugly -

• 3 workouts completed only to later discover valid reasons they must be re-done

• 1 workout started only to discover mid-way through the video wasn’t filming

• 1 workout in which an area power outage/flash caused loss of gym timer clock with 12 of 14 minutes completed (we did keep going and managed to legitimately finish) but didn’t use

• 1 big reminder to use a full “thumb around the bar” grip on the pull-up bar.

• How very hard CrossFit math is even with cheat sheets

The Good (as of Sunday, 9/18) -

• We completed 8 of 15 workouts for submitting

• Everybody has 1 to do on Monday.

• We expect a couple re-do's for better scoring.

• OKAY truth is one athlete, we’ll call him Mr Bloody Mary, has to do all 3 workouts on Monday but Zach is a badass workhorse so I’m not too worried.

• Our re-performed workouts have each exceeded the score of the ones they replaced!

To conclude, I think we are starting to hit our WZA workout stride. Keeping attitudes good despite some ups and downs and I like our chances for achieving this CrossFit adventure in Miami in January. (Did I mention there’s an Open water swim?)...

Anyway, more to come later this week.

These are the first 3 Workouts, for elite divisions. All divisions do the same workouts, the loads will vary.

Wodapalooza 2022-23

Workout 1

As Many Rounds and Reps as Possible in 9 minutes

+3 Hang Power Cleans (increase by 3 reps each round)

+3 Overhead Squats (Increase by 3 reps each round)

30 Double Unders

Workout 2

5 two minute rounds to do

20 Bar Facing Burpees

Max Clean and jerks in time remaining (each round of weights increased by 10-20#s)

1 minute rest btw rds

Workout 3

600’ Shuttle Run

60 Pull-ups

400’ Shuttle Run

40 Chest-to-bar pull-ups

200’ Shuttle Run

20 Bar Muscle-ups

Monday we finish up these Workouts and submit by 8 pm. Then we prepare for the release of the next 3 workouts to come Thursday at noon!

Stay in the Fight!