CF Games - safety suggestion

[Vanessa Fullerton]

Was anyone else bothered by the lack of control when dumping weight during the Games? I witnessed a lot of athletes dropping weight and allowing the bar to bounce around uncontrollably and crash toward others. Most of the time the coaches that were judging managed to stop it but there were many close calls. And I know of one broken toe that came out of the weekend from a lifter’s weight smashing on someone else’s foot.

I was thinking, for future Games’, that adding a time penalty might help alleviate this issue. For instance, if your bar touches another lifter it’s a 30 sec penalty. Maybe even add a condition that once the clock starts no one can touch the bar except the lifter. So it forces everyone to control their own bar. The advantage of having help from the judges in resetting the bar wasn’t a huge deal as pretty much everyone was doing this, but I think it also helped to encourage the dump and run mentality that seemed very prevalent throughout the weekend.

I’m not trying to take away from the amazing feat that organizers and volunteers accomplished in executing this weekends’ competition. Or from the competitors who all inspired me with their effort and abilities. It was awesome! I am humbled and can’t wait to come back next year. I just wanted to share this idea in the hopes of making the Games even better.

[Chris Stroud]

CrossFit is a hostile workout enviorment, thats the nature of the sport. I see where you are coming from but I believe that providing a larger area for the workouts would be more benificial than possibly decreasing intensity.

[Chris Walls]

Like I tell all my athletes here "safety slows you down".

But seriously, it's not like dropping the bar in a controlled fashion would take SO much longer that it would decrease intensity....

[Wayne Lewis]

I have to agree with you on this one. Safety for everyone equals a great time.

I think they should implement maintaining positive control of the bar, even while dumping.


Just my humble two cents.





"Victory is reserved for those who are willing to pay the price"

[Chris Stroud]

Perhaps next year we should ask the athletes to walk down the hill...

[Blair Robert Lowe]

A lot of athletes were trying to control the bar somewhat when thrown instead of just relying on the coaches. Some barely let go of it, while I just dropped it. Luckily, I was tucked away in a corner.

More so the danger was when someone started walking while catching a clean or getting it overhead.

[Nick Cruz]

Originally Posted by Chris Stroud

Perhaps next year we should ask the athletes to walk down the hill...

HAH, seriously, I dont know how noone rolled down that hill. It was more of a semi controlled fall than a downhill run. You could have almost rappelled down that damn thing.

[Brandon Oto]

The Oly rule of maintaining hand contact until below the waist would probably work.

Wait until someone wants it enough and does just roll down the hill (like this wfs)... no reason why not.

[Andrew Gray]

I doubt a time penalty would do anything, as the likelihood of hitting someone is so small I don't think anyone would really think about it. I also think having the judges reset the bar for the athlete's made it more safe, not less safe. If you leave it to the athlete's we would have just let our bar go wherever and continue from there. Actually, I think it would have been safer if the volunteers would have been even more involved with resetting the bars to the correct spot.

Safety is definitely important, you can not hold public events like this without taking safety very seriously. They definitely could have used to give a little more room to the competitors in the C&J but it wasn't horrible, I never felt in danger. The run was definitely the most dangerous part (had the most injuries), would have been better to have the descent a bit less steep but they didn't really have a choice and it was your choice if you wanted to go faster and put yourself at risk (unlike the C&J where you could be injured from someone else's actions).