Ben BergeronĀ has wrapped up his top 10 moments from the 2017 CrossFit Games. Bergeron shared his list post by post on Instagram recently.
His list gives an interesting look at how Bergeron views the Games as a coach. HereĀ are his top 10 moments…
#10
There are lot of moments that stand out from the 2017 @crossfitgames. Iāve had some time to reflect, and want to share some of my favorites. Over the next few days, Iāll post my Top 10 Moments from the 2017 CrossFit Games. _ If you were at the Games or watched them from home, some of these moments will be familiar. But what happens on the competition floor is just part of the storyāfor all the time we spend preparing, only about 3% of the Games is spent competing. The other 97% happens off the competition floorāin the athlete warm-up area, in workout briefings, recovering, eating, strategizing. These are the moments that stand out most to me, so without further adoā¦ _ #10: Madison _ No discussion of the 2017 Games would be complete without mention of the new host city. Madison. is. awesome. It feels like a really big small townā¦ or a really small big town. _ The first day we were there, we were driving from @crossfitconnex back to our hotel, and got stopped downtown by hundreds of people running across the Capitol with canoes over their heads. It was the Isthmus @paddleandportage, which is apparently an annual lake to land to lake race. Everyone sat in traffic while the portage cleared downtown, but no one seemed to mind; the whole city was totally down with it. _ Madison was just as welcoming to the CrossFit community during the Games. Buildings downtown had huge, life-size cutouts of Games athletes in the windows, restaurants had specialized paleo menus (if you didnāt have the Bibimbap from @grazemadison, you missed out), bars had lists of ācleanā drinksāit was a really cool new vibe. Looking forward to at least two more years in Madtown. _ #GamesTop10 #BuiltByBergeron #CompTrain #CrossFit šø: @paddleandportage
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#9
Top 10 Moments of the 2017 CrossFit Games _ #9: Brooke _ If you grew up riding bikes, you donāt have to think about things like dismounting quickly, when to change gears or pedaling through turnsāyour body just instinctively does it. Not so for @brookewellss. Before the Games, Brooke had been on a bike a handful of times, most of which were during Games training this summer. She was uncomfortable physically and mentally on the Cyclocross bike. Not surprisingly, Wednesdayās time trial did not go well for her. _ Afterwards, I rented some bikes and took Brooke to a empty construction site to practice. We practiced popping her front wheel up, getting on and off quickly, and carrying her bike over objects. Her confidence improved, but she still finished the event near the bottom of the pack on Thursday. The next two events went poorly for her as wellāafter taking 35th in Cyclocross, she finished 33rd and 37th in Amanda .45 and the O-Course. _ I donāt care how mentally tough you areāthree near-bottom finishes in the first four events of the CrossFit Games is rough. After a year of training harder and smarter than she ever had, it was the last place Brooke expected to find herself going into Saturday. The first two days of competition were the most mentally challenging of her career. But she showed up on Saturday like it was the first day of the Games, competed with the kind of mental fortitude we spent the last year developing, and clawed her way back up the leaderboard. _ Brookeās attitude immediately following the award ceremony was one of my favorites moments of the Games. When she got back to the athlete area, I told her itād be easy to compare last yearās leaderboard (where she finished 6th) with this yearās (where she finished 14th) and conclude sheās less fit or that she didnāt make any progress this year. In CrossFit, as in life, success is rarely linear. She surprised me by shaking her head. āIām not worried about that AT ALL,ā she said. āI know Iām fitter than I was last year. I learned so much this year, I canāt wait for next year.ā That’s the attitude of a champion. As a coach, I couldnāt ask for more. 2018 is going to be a big year for Brooke Wells.
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#8
Top 10 Moments of the 2017 CrossFit Games _ #8: O-Course _ The Sprint O-Course was one of my favorite Games events of all time. We talk a lot about building the worldās the fittest athletes, and we spend a lot of time in the gym doing it. But if weāre talking about the worldās fittest, the test should encompass a lot more than what someone can do in the gym. You have to be able to apply it to the real world. _ When the athletes took the field for the Sprint O-Course event, that was the buzz in the stands. āNow were going see who the real athletes are,ā was a common sentiment among the spectators and commentators. I think thatās awesome. Raw athleticism is a cool and necessary part of the test. The O-Course brought balance, accuracy, agility, and coordinationāthe neurological adaptations of the 10 physical skillsāthat are prerequisites of a complete athlete. Generally, we test those with the snatch. But Games athletes snatch so often that itās no longer the best test of raw athleticism. _ The O-Course was also visually badass. The size, scope and magnitude of the course was insane. The construction was bulletproof, the obstacles were well thought-out, and it was huge! It was one of the best events to watch because it was a race in the purest senseāget from point A to point B as fast as possible. The king-of-the-mountain style, bracket heats made it exciting for the athletes and the fans. _ The best part about the O-Course though, are the implications of it. The @crossfitgames spent a million dollars to build itā¦ then tore down four days later. Itās a phenomenal precedent. Theyāll do anything to test the fitness of these guys if they feel its a valid test. Everything is on the table. _ #GamesTop10 #BuiltByBergeron #CompTrain #CrossFitGames
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#7
Top 10 Moments of the 2017 CrossFit Games _ #7: Morning Routine _ Some of the best moments of the Games were the quiet ones. Every morning, @katrintanja and I had the same routine. Iād wake up and head to her room. She was usually in some state of getting ready, so Iād grab her bags and take them downstairs to the valet, then come back up and hang out until she was ready. After that, weād walk across the street for breakfast at Gooseberry. We ordered the same thing every morning: omelets with greens (Katrin also got oatmeal). After breakfast, we walked back to the hotel, got the car, and drove to the venue. _ Our morning routine took about 45-60 minutes. In that time, we probably had a total of 8-10 minutes of conversation. Not because we were in bad moods or we were tired or because it was early or because there was nothing to talk about. Weāve just grown into a place where weāre completely comfortable in silence. Itās a sign of profound friendship, I think, when you donāt need to fill the silence with empty chatter; when the quiet feels just as warm as a deep conversation. _ #GamesTop10 #BuiltByBergeron #CompTrain #CrossFitGames
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#6
#5
Top 10 Moments of the 2017 CrossFit Games _ #5: 2223 Intervals _ I thought this event was a great addition to the @crossfitgames test this year. The interval style, work/rest format had never been tested at the Games before. And if youāre trying to find the fittest, itās an appropriate test that fit nicely within the programmingāwho can put the pedal down, recover and recoup? The work/rest format was very different than say, doing 4 rounds of the same workout for time. _ Visually, 2223 was unique and exciting. Like a prize fight, the athletes would come out guns blazing for 2 furious minutes before slowly making their way back to their “corners.” With vacant barbells marking each athlete’s placement along the floor, it gave the crowd a chance to reflect on the previous round while anticipating the next. Loved it. _ It might have been a novel format for the Games, but for our team it was āTuesday.ā Literallyāfor the last year or so, @competitorstraining has included a max effort interval piece once a week, usually on Tuesdays. 2223 Intervals was remarkably similar to our usual format. We mix up the time domains, but itās always some kind of heart rate-spiking buy-in to max effort work, followed by a short rest. So when Dave announced this workout, I was confident our athletes would do well and they didnāt disappointā@mathewfras and @katrintanja won the event. _ #GamesTop10 #BuiltByBergeron #CompTrain #CrossFitGames
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#4
Top 10 Moments of the 2017 CrossFit Games _ #4: Dottir Showdown / Womenās Final _ The womenās final was probably the single most epic moment of the 2017 Games. The extraordinary spectacle that was the Fibonacci Final owed a lot to programingāthe event was so perfectly crafted that there was virtually no separation between the top women throughout the HSPU and KB deadlifts. _ @anniethorisdottir got to the lunges first, and had a big 20-foot headstart over @katrintanja and @sarasigmunds. By the time the three Dottirs emerged as the leaders, every single person in the stadium was on their feet. Then, about three-quarters of the way down the floor, something happened. Annie put her kettbells down. Within seconds, Katrin and Sara had closed the gap, and it was suddenly a three-way Icelandic battle for the lead. If the Alliant Energy Center had been a spaceship, it would have taken offāthe crowd was absolutely beside itself. As cool as the Coliseum was, it wasnāt until that moment that it felt as electric as the StubHub tennis venue. _ The three Dottirs finished 1-2-3, but the drama wasnāt overā@karawebb1 and @tiaclair1, who were battling for the top of the podium, finished in a dead heat. Kara slid onto the finish mat nineteen hundreds of a second before Tia, and it was 2016 all over againāthe points race was so close that no one knew for sure who had won the Games. Super exciting way to close out the 2017 seasonāloved it. _ #GamesTop10 #BuiltByBergeron #CompTrain #CrossFitGames
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#3
Top 10 Moments of the 2017 CrossFit Games _ #3: Katrinās Favorite Games _ There was so much I wanted to debrief with Katrin after the Games, but I had planned to wait until we at least got back to the hotel, maybe even until the next morning. The competition had literally just endedāthe results still felt emotional. But when Katrin returned from the awards ceremony, she wasnāt down. She wasnāt emotional. Iām not sure what I expected, but Kat was as clear-eyed as a raptor. We dove into the weekend in the car on the drive back, and we ended up pulling over into a parking lot so that we could go through the 10 pages of notes I had taken throughout the week. We stayed there for over an hour, just talking and thinking. We were still debriefing when we got back to the hotel, so we talked for another hour back at the Marriott. _ One of my favorite momentsāof the Games but also of this yearāwas Katrin telling me that this was her favorite @crossfitgames ever. It says a lot about who sheās become as a person in the three years weāve been working together. In a lot of ways, the 2017 Games was the 2014 Meridian Regional all over again. Both seasons exposed big holes in our game, and ended well short of the results we wanted. The difference was her response. In 2014, Kat felt as though her life was over; not making the Games that year was a tragedy to her. In 2017, after taking 5th as the two-time defending champion, she recognized the opportunity to improve and walked away with more fire and motivation to make 2018 her best year yet. _ You win or you learn, and we learned more than we ever have. @katrintanja will be back. _ #GamesTop10 #BuiltByBergeron #CompTrain #CrossFitGames
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#2
Top 10 Moments of the 2017 CrossFit Games _ #2: Matās Final _ There wasnāt a lot of uncertainty around the menās final. With one event remaining, @mathewfras had established a 200 point lead. Still, rules are rules. He couldn’t win the titleāor even stand on the podiumāunless he completed the minimum work requirement of two rounds of HSPU and KB Deadlifts. So that became our sole focus. Do the work. Leave nothing to chance. _ Mat takes this to heart. The clock starts, and heās being almost comically conservativeāhe’s breaking everything up in tiny sets and taking his time adjusting his belt. He has all the urgency of someone window shopping on a Sunday afternoon. Before Mat went out onto the floor, I told him to soak it all up. Make some memories. Youāve earned this. Enjoy it. And as he locks out his last set of deadlifts, you can see him doing it. A smile spreads across his face. He doesnāt advance to the KB lunges, not right away. He just stands there for a few seconds, grinning.Ā He looks up at the crowd to his right, then scans left, soaking it all in. _ But this is Mat Fraser, and technically, the event isnāt over yet.Ā Still smiling, he gets his kettlebells overhead and completes the 89-foot lunge to the finish unbroken. When he steps on the finish mat, he has repeated as the Fittest Man on Earth, with the most dominant performance of all time. As Mat would say, #HWPO. _ #GamesTop10 #BuiltByBergeron #CompTrain #CrossFitGames
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#1
Top 10 Moments of the 2017 CrossFit Games _ #1: Cole Wins Spirit of the Games _āØWhen the awards ceremony started, I wasnāt in the Coliseum. I was back in the athlete warm-up area, which was almost completely deserted except for a handful of volunteers. I was sitting in the area that had been our makeshift camp all week, a quiet corner at the end of the rig. The TV near the front of the room was broadcasting the awards, but the audio was so low that I couldnāt hear any of it. Fine by meāI wasnāt really paying attention. The Games had just ended, and I was much more interested in reflecting on the week. _ The next time I looked up, @nicole.carroll was on screen. That could only mean one thing, and it did interest me. I walked over to the TV and turned the volume up. Nicole, of course, is the presenter of the Spirit of the Games award. I love this award. Itās what our sport was founded on, that adaptation between the ears. CrossFit isnāt just about making people fitter. Itās about making them better. If everyone acted the way people act inside of a CrossFit gym, the world would be better. _ I listened as Nicole explained how the @crossfitgames selects the recipient of the Spirit of the Games award. For some reason, I wasnāt even thinking of who it might be. Then she announced @colesager35, and I smiled. Of course itās Cole. As soon as she said it, it seemed like the most obvious thing in the world. _āØCole winning Spirit of the Games was my favorite moment of the 2017 Games, for so many reasons. I canāt think of a more deserving person for that award. It’s easy to say all the right things. A lot of people talk about integrity. A lot of people would say that they act with other people’s best interests at heart. Very few people live, breathe and personify those values the way Cole does. Itās one of the main reasons heās on our team. Character is at the heart of what weāre aboutāitās the way my team approaches training. Better people make better athletes, and Cole Sager is the best of us. _āØ#GamesTop10 #BuiltByBergeron #CompTrain
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