Congratulations to all the Masters Athletes who participated in the Age Group Quarterfinals! Your hard work, dedication, and passion for fitness were truly impressive. Now that the Quarterfinals are over, it's time to shift our focus to the next stage of the competition. In this week's newsletter, I be sharing my approach to each of the events as I landed my first ‘unofficial’ qualifier win - that’s correct, I’ve never won a qualifier before this!!

All for time: 3 rounds of: 2 x 25-ft dumbbell walking lunge (hang position)20 toes-to-bars Immediately followed by: 2 rounds of: 2 x 25-ft dumbbell walking lunge (rack position) 15 chest-to-bar pull-ups Immediately followed by: 2 x 25-ft dumbbell walking lunge (overhead position) 10 bar muscle-ups

♀ 2 x 35-lb dumbbells ♂ 2 x 50-lb dumbbells Time cap: 20 minutes

What I was thinking: GRIP MANAGEMENT.

I can do all of the movements. And toes to bar, chest to bar, and bar. Muscle ups are strengths for me. I’ve also gotten decent at walking lunges over the past year.

Each individual movement was not the challenge. The challenge with the cumulative taxing of my core and my grip.

I broke up all of the movements on the pull up bar (except the first set of TTB). And I broke up every set of walking lunges by setting the dumbbells down for one second at the turnaround point.

Pacing the entire workout allowed me to do two sets of five muscle ups at the end, with the final two muscle ups being absolute max effort. I could NOT have done one more! 💪

Smooth and fast on this one.

TEST A:10-minute AMRAP: 6 chest-to-wall handstand push-ups 9 GHD sit-ups 12 box jumps

♀ 24-inch box ♂ 30-inch box

TEST 2B: Immediately following Test 2A, athletes will have 5 minutes to establish: 1-rep-max clean

What I was thinking: Push part A hard! And let’s get over 300# in part B. That was the plan.

I knew I could push the AMRAP. I'm good at HSPUs and GHDs, so this all came down to being fast and pushing the pace on the box jumps. And that meant that it was a heart rate workout. Shoulders and core were fine, but the box jumps really taxed my heart rate. I pushed hard, and by the time I was at the 9 minute mark, I was very thankful that I was likely done with box jumps :-) 7 rounds plus 16 reps in 10 minutes was pure fire.

Moving into the 1RM Clean... I had a game plan. 228, 258, 278... then play it by ear for the last two lifts. The first lifts felt great. But I didn't want to be crazy aggressive after 278#. So I added 15lbs... and 293 went up fairly easy. I had over a minute before the time was over... so I added 10lbs. 303 was tough. When I stood it up, I set a new personal record at age 47. I've never cleaned over 300!!

For time:50 shuttle runs7 rope climbs25 bench presses7 rope climbs50 shuttle runs

♀ 125-lb bench presses♂ 185-lb bench presses

What I was thinking: I want to walk. So bad. This hurts so much.

i didn’t start the workout with these thoughts… but at about 20 or 30 shuttle runs in, out of a total of 100 in the entire event, I knew this was a pure pain endurance workout.

Don’t get me wrong, I love running. All day long. But shuttle runs aren’t running. They’re a short burst of effort, followed by applying the breaks, then pivoting on a foot, then changing direction, while trying to remember which hand I want to touch the ground, then back to the short burst. We did this motion 200 times in this workout. Brutal.

For the rope climbs, I went precisely as fast as I thought I could without reaching failure.

With the bench, I hit a set of 9, then 6, then 6, then 4. I was never in danger of failure.

But this workout, for me, wasn’t about the bench or rope, it was about how fast I could move through the shuttle sprints, without walking, or dying.

I’d prefer to never do that again :-)

For time (repeat CrossFit Open 15.5): 27-21-15-9 Row calories Thrusters

♀ 65-lb thrusters ♂ 95-lb thrusters

What I was thinking: I remember how bad this was in 2015. But I was just 15 months into CrossFit at the time. This will hurt just as bad if not worse.

That was my expectation. I expected it to be pure death. It wasn’t. It was definitely challenging and I found myself pacing to make sure I could stay unbroken on the thrusters, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

I approached the first row by trying to stay calm. I wanted to row an 1800… but I held it at around 1300 and tried to hold that pace through the entire event. I fell off that pace a bit on the set of 21 calories, but finished the last set of 9 calories in the 1600s.

The thrusters required a mental break up strategy. When I pick up the bar and think about doing 27 thrusters, I can feel my heart rate increase just thinking about it. So I went into it thinking 10, 9, 8. At rep 10, I would rest with the bar overhead for exactly one big breath. And I did that at rep 19 as well. That helped break up the set in my mind. I did the same thing on the set of 21 (8,7,6) and 15 (8,7). That helped me stay fast on the thrusters, and more importantly, not drop the barbell and lose a ton of time.

I was very happy with the outcome on this one and was, again, surprised at my capacity to experience hard things.

If you're a Masters CrossFit Athlete, this show is specifically for you. This week, we're recapping and discussing the exciting Age Group Quarterfinals competition that took place over this past weekend. We'll be diving into the memorable moments from this weekend. Tune in as we analyze the competition, share our thoughts on how masters athletes adapted to the challenges, and discuss what this means for the upcoming Semifinals in less than a month.

Pick or Tip of the week:Jason: Normatec Compression System for RecoveryRick: Rapid Reboot for Recovery

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I appreciate you all!!

Jason