A local youth recently had a very strong performance in one of the world’s biggest fitness competitions, The CrossFit Open.
As a 14 -year-old, Isabella Barclay of Warman placed 1st in Canada, 11th in North America and 17th Worldwide. With this performance she has qualified for the quarterfinals in an attempt to qualify for the NOBULL CrossFit Games slated to be held this summer..
The CrossFit Open is a five-week worldwide competition that allows any and every athlete in the world to compete in specific workouts designed for the everyday CrossFitter that can still challenge even the most elite athletes. It is one of the biggest fitness events in the world, with over 250,000 athletes participating. There are multiple male and female divisions ranging from 14-15 year olds to Masters.
The goal is to be a true test to see how far a person has come, fitness-wise, and where their individual strengths and weaknesses lie. This gives athletes an opportunity to test their progress and make improvements.
CrossFit athletes are among the strongest and well-conditioned athletes in the world because of the all-around nature of their training. They only learn a short time before each event what activities they will be doing, so they need to have wide-reaching training schedules.
Each week, a workout is released on Thursday night at games.crossfit.com, with movement standards, scorecards and an explanation video.
Athletes then have four days to complete the workout in front of a judge at their affiliate, or film the workout at home and submit a link as proof.
This year 1383 athletes competed in the 14-15 year old female age category.
The first week the session involved wall walks, 20 pound dumbbell snatches and box jump overs on on 20 inch box. completing as many as possible in 15 minutes. Week two was doing as many deadlifts with a 95 pound barbell as possible in 10 minutes.
Week three was the ultimate challenge, doing pull-ups, double unders, thrusters with a 45-pound weight, chest-to-bar pull-ups, double unders, thrusters with 55-pound weight, bar muscle ups, double unders and finishing with thrusters with a 65-pound weight in a 12 minute time limit.
“The easiest for me was definitely the first workout which had some handstand elements, some dumbbell movements, and some box jumps which are all things I’m pretty strong at,” said Isabella. “That one that gave me my best score of the competition and gave me a confidence boost for sure.”
The hardest workout for her was the final one.
“It had increasing barbell weights throughout the workout,” she said. “As you got farther into the workout, the weights just kept getting heavier and heavier, and that got quite tough because you would be getting tired from the other movements as well, so every time you picked up the bar it would be a grind.
“I still loved that one though,” she added. “I improved lots and still put in a great score.”
Isabella has always been very competitive. She was involved in both high-level gymnastics and hockey previously. Roughly four years ago she began training in Olympic Weightlifting; transitioning into CrossFit two years ago. Last year she focused exclusively on CrossFit training.
Her family is into fitness and so at the onset of Covid when things shut down they converted their garage to a full scale gym. Working out was a great outlet for her and her brother Arlo.
As CrossFit can be largely independent for athletes with high motivation, Isabella immersed herself into the sport and started following all her favourite athletes online as they trained and competed.
Isabella talked about some of the people she who helped in her training.
“My dad, my coaches and my training buddies are huge inspirations for sure because they are always there to help me out and cheer me on,” she said. “Some athletes that I look up to are Tia-Clair Toomey, Mal O’Brien, Matt Fraser, Hailey Adams, Annie Thorisdottir, Rich Froning, and many more. These people dedicate their lives to the sport and I admire that so much because I know CrossFit isn’t easy at all, so it’s very inspiring what these people do. They also all share their CrossFit journeys in a positive light even though it’s tough so it’s a great example for me.”
This will be her second year competing in the Open. The improvement over the previous year was quite dramatic, as she took steps to become elite in the sport.
Isabella trains 5-6 times a week. She trains in the garage gym and/or in Saskatoon at Synergy Strength with a private coach and a handful of other competitive athletes.
Isabella explained: “Well, when I competed last year, I was still in the kids’ class at my gym, only training three times a week; and not very seriously. It wasn’t a priority for me as I was playing hockey too.
“After the Open last year, the gym staff let me switch to the adult classes even though I was under-aged because I needed to be challenged more in order to improve. The switch really helped me because I’m a very competitive person, so now being with people who were ten times better than me made me want to get ten times better than them.
“Over the summer I trained pretty consistently but nothing too special. I also decided to not continue with hockey, as I knew that if I wanted to pursue CrossFit, I would have to commit fully. Things started to shift for me only within the last couple months because I now get some private coaching and am doing multiple workouts and drills a day, 5-6 days a week, spending hours at a time in the gym.
“I’ve started to get on top of my nutrition and mobility work too, which has also made a difference for me. This years’ Open I took very seriously since I knew I could do well if I put in the work, and I really wanted to see improvement from last year. I ended up improving a lot, which I was thrilled with because CrossFit is a big commitment. Knowing that all the hours I spent in the gym were finally paying off had me excited to just keep going because now I knew what I was doing was working.”
Athletes who qualified for the quarterfinals must complete each workout at a location of their choice but with a registered judge, standardized equipment, and all workouts must be video recorded along strict standards.
Videos and scores are then submitted for verification. Should Isabella qualify, she’ll compete at the 2022 NOBULL CrossFit Games in Madison, Wisconsin in August.