4 Reasons Why CrossFit Competitions Should Base Their Division Levels on BeastScore

Group of athletes practicing box jumps at gym

Competition is fundamental to CrossFit. Every time you go to the box for a WOD, you’re competing with yourself and your peers. But for some, that’s not enough. They crave even more competition. On the weekends, they seek out throwdowns or charity WODs, anything where they can go head to head against others to test their strength and skill.

But if you’re a CrossFit affiliate hosting one of these competitions, what if there were a way to make your competitions not only safer, but better? There is a way. Using BeastScore can help you create a simple, safe, competitive event. Here’s how:

4. Simplify Registration

Let’s start with an easy one. Say you want to host a competition. You have to worry about registrations, staffing, programming the WOD, insurance—the responsibilities go on and on. BeastScore can not only take registrations off that list, it can actually improve the process.

First, BeastScore can handle registrations for any type of event. Is this a single entrant comp? No problem. Teams? We got this. Multiple divisions? Easy as pie. BeastScore is set up to handle all this online, process the payments, and provide boxes with a simple, organized registration list along with the collected fees.

But BeastScore goes a step further. Say John Q. Crossfitter is interested in signing up for a competition. He looks at the Rx and Scaled options and suddenly he’s got a decision to make: sign up for Rx even though some of the lifts (like snatches) look intimidating, or sign up for Scaled even though the WODs look like a breeze? BeastScore takes the guesswork out this process. If you’re a competitor, all you have to do is enter 10 of your PRs and BeastScore will tell you definitively what division you belong in. The algorithm is just that accurate.

If you handle registrations manually without third-party registration software, you can still use BeastScore for your division levels, but making sure your competitors all have BeastScores prior to the registration deadline might be akin to herding cats. With our registration system, BeastScores are verified at time of registration.

If you already have a preferred registration software, it’s possible the developers of the software would be willing to make changes to require BeastScores during registration (email us to discuss).

3. End Sandbagging

Unfortunately, in organized competitions you run into sandbagging. What is sandbagging? It’s when athletes compete in lower divisions to gain a competitive advantage. Why do they do it? Who knows? Maybe they have their sights set on the Second Division (D2) top prize. Maybe they’d just rather be somebody in D2 than nobody in D1. Whatever the reason, sandbagging has two serious consequences:

1. It’s demoralizing for competitors who are facing a stacked deck.
2. It discourages lower-skill athletes from competing—what’s the point if you’re just going to get smoked by a sandbagger?

BeastScore eliminates the possibility of Sandbagging. Competitors are placed in the appropriate division level based on their skill. With BeastScore, you can encourage more people to compete, knowing that they’ll be going up against other competitors at their skill level.

2. Increase Safety

Let’s go back to the earlier scenario of John Q. Crossfitter trying to pick his own division. Let’s say, he chooses Rx despite some trepidation about the WOD difficulty. The day of the competition arrives. Fueled by the crowd and adrenaline, he pushes past his limit on snatches, sets a PR… and seriously injures himself. He just wasn’t ready for that level. In the back of his mind, he knew it, but BeastScore could have told him unequivocally. Now he’s got months of rehabbing his shoulder before he can even set foot in a box again.

For you, the host, insurance will cover John’s injury and liability. But insurance is for after the fact. BeastScore can help reduce the likelihood of this sort of thing occurring. Injuries are bad for the athlete (of course), the box, and the sport of CrossFit. BeastScore can even help you plan your WODs to challenge competitors in each division level without overwhelming them.

1. Improve Competition

Look at this like the aggregate of the three previous items. If you’re planning a competition where you don’t have to worry about registrations, you’ll be able to spend more time focusing on the important stuff. If you know that competitors will be placed in the right divisions and challenged with appropriate WODs, you’ll worry less about safety. Plus, you can promote the event to a wider range of competitors, assuring them that they’ll be going up against athletes of comparable skill. And if that’s the case, then your event will be more competitive and more exciting to wa

Interested in using BeastScore for your next competition? Email us.

5 Ways BeastScore Can Help Athletes

CrossFitters doing Ring Dips

5. Keep a Record

You hear it every day from every angle: keep a journal, track your progress, write it down. The common consensus is that if you want to improve your fitness, you’ve got to record your workouts. But what do you record? Your WOD score? Sure, that’s handy. I refer to old WODs when I’m traveling and can’t get into a box. Pull out a WOD from a couple of years ago, adapt it to my available equipment and voilà. But I don’t want to program a WOD if I don’t have to. And with stuff like this, I may not ever need to. So does it matter that I got 15 + 8 on that AMRAP? Not really.

How about PRs? Now we’re getting somewhere. If your box is like mine, considerable time is devoted to developing strength pre-WOD. It’s usually a task like, “do X sets of 5 back squats at 75% of your one-rep max (1RM).” So if you know your 1RM—same as your PR—you’re all set. Some boxes don’t even work with prescribed weights in their WODs. They just say, do this at X% of your 1RM.

This is where BeastScore comes in handy. BeastScore has all the lifts (and the benchmark WODs) in its database. Input your PRs and you’ll always know just how much to lift, wherever you are.

 

 Exhaustion-Reversed4. Find Your Weaknesses

One of the coolest things about BeastScore is that there is no guessing. Just hard data. We ran the numbers so that you don’t have to. The BeastScore algorithm started out with about 20 components  testing a range of different movements. Along the way, we figured out that some of these movements were related. For example, if your deadlift goes up, your power clean is going to go up, too. We put a team of statisticians on this and narrowed it down to just 7 components that can tell you how fit you are. Want to get stronger? Look at the BeastScore of that guy/girl who goes to your box—you know the one—can snatch a house, run a marathon, and squat a mountain. What’s his/her BeastScore look like? Compare your 7 components and then set about improving your scores.

 

3. Challenge Your Peers

Remember during the CrossFit Open when you and your buddies created that custom leaderboard ? Every week you’d post your scores, then check in to see how you fared against your friends. And every week Steve was still kicking your ass… Steve.

Look, you know who your peers at the box are. It’s those five people who you see almost every time you work out. You push each other; you encourage each other; and you get stronger together. With BeastScore you can see exactly how you rank. Sure, Steve kicked your ass in the Open this year, but it’s almost May and you’ve made some strides.

 

2. Monitor Your Progress

It’s the most frustrating thing. You work out for a few months, hit your rhythm, then start wondering, “am I actually getting stronger?” You’ve got no way to tell. Sure, you shaved 5 seconds off of your Fran, but maybe you ate your Wheaties that morning (ugh, gross, stick with Paleo, bro) and had some extra energy.

BeastScore doesn’t just look at one workout on one given day. It aggregates your PRs from the 7 key components and gives you a simple, clear score for your fitness level. Want to know if your fitness is improving? If your BeastScore is improving, then your fitness is improving. It’s that simple.

 

Rings2-Reversed1. Get Fitter

Seems like a cop-out, doesn’t it? But it has to be said: BeastScore will help you improve your fitness. If you keep a record, monitor your progress, compete with your friends and improve your weaknesses, you will get fitter. That’s the whole philosophy of CrossFit in a nutshell, really. BeastScore just makes it easier to do these things.

BeastScore Algorithm Predicts 2015 CrossFit Games Open Rankings

People Doing Handstands At Cross Training Box

Predictions are big business. Joe Lunardi makes a pretty decent living predicting the NCAA bracket each year. August BCS predictions often influence December bowl selections. In fact, it seems like every year, any Joe Schmo with a computer and some numbers will predict something and ask you to believe him. But with any predictive algorithm, the question is always the same: how accurate is it?

We regularly test the accuracy of the BeastScore algorithm, and the CrossFit Games Open presented us with another opportunity to do so. We randomly selected 42 athletes (see tables below) and ranked them according to BeastScore as well as their finish at this year’s Open. If BeastScore was perfectly accurate at predicting relative competition placement, then these athletes’ BeastScore rank would perfectly match their Open rank.

Of course no predictive algorithm is perfect, but BeastScore’s accuracy is pretty impressive. For the 42 women that we evaluated, the average difference between their BeastScore rank and Open rank was about 2.8. In other words, for these 42 athletes, on average BeastScore predicted their relative Open ranking within 3 places. For three men and two women, their BeastScore rank exactly matched their Open rank.

One key result is how well BeastScore would have properly segmented the athletes into division levels for a competition. Keep in mind BeastScore was invented for precisely this purpose (matching athletes of similar ability for fairer competition), so one would expect it to do this well. Indeed it does, and the Open data confirms it. Let’s assume this year’s Open consisted of only the 23 men shown below. And let’s also assume Dave Castro, Director of the CrossFit Games, wanted to have two division levels (with the top 12 athletes by BeastScore placed in Division I, and the bottom 11 athletes placed in Division II). Had this been the case, BeastScore would have divided the athletes almost perfectly. For the 12 athletes in Division I, all but one finished in the top 12. For the 11 athletes in Division II, all but one finished in the bottom 11. (The ‘Law of Conservation of Athletes’ dictates that number of athletes crossing over is the same…) If the same scenario is repeated for the 19 women looked at, all but two perform in line with the division they were placed. That’s really good! Even coaches who have known their athletes for years couldn’t split them into divisions that well.

Deep Freeze CrossFit, Antarctica

Penguin1

Deep Freeze CrossFit opened three weeks ago in Antarctica. How awesome is that!? I’m so ready to get a crew together and fly down there for some seal pulls and penguin over burpees.

Deep Freeze CrossFit was opened by Daniel Jose, a United States Air Force veteran of 10 years who is now a flight line mechanic working for a private contractor at McMurdo Station. The station is a research center and home to the largest community in Antarctica, which is about 1000 people. We asked Daniel a few questions about the world’s most southern CrossFit affiliate.

1. Why did you decide to open a box?

The main goal for me starting up this box is to bring CrossFit as an option to people who are staying here. Since I was in the US AF for 10 years, I have come to try to give back to the military community.

Daniel Jose, owner of Deep Freeze CrossFit in Antarctica, performing ice shelf squats.

Daniel Jose, owner of Deep Freeze CrossFit in Antarctica, performing ice shelf squats.

2. What’s membership like?

As of right now I have only 3 people on average in my day to day classes. In total numbers I have 6 people that come to my classes as of right now. And it is growing here every day. It is free for people to go to the classes because I am registered as a military affiliate. The members that I do have right now are mostly the contracted fire fighters on station and Air Force National Guard that are a part of 109th Airlift Wing of the New York Air National Guard.

3. What region do you compete in?

It is true that I am not in any region. Or none that I know of right now. I really do need to ask CrossFit HQ about that one. But I have a feeling they will lump us in with Australia or something like that. Kind of like how Hawaii is part of NorCal region. I will hopefully have people compete in the open.

Typical WOD at Deep Freeze CrossFit.

Typical WOD at Deep Freeze.

4. Do you ever WOD outdoors?

Thankfully for us we have an indoor facility that is heated! It is a fitness room that I am just using for a little over an hour a day. I am using the ASC’s (Antarctic Support Contract) fitness space and equipment as of right now. But I do have a few things from Rouge on its way here to help open up the programing a little. The lack of equipment and sub zero temperatures outside does play a difficult but fun factor in how I can program.

As of right now we are unable to WOD outdoors. And this is due to the very intense weather! Hopefully later on in the summer the weather will clear up for us to be able to do some more outdoors stuff.

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Don’t miss our next Affiliate Spotlight, which features a box dedicated to helping at-risk youth. Never miss a post by subscribing to our RSS feed or following us on Twitter or Facebook.

Stats on CrossFit Affiliates

The following statistics on CrossFit affiliates were compiled using data from games.crossfit.com. All stats are current as of 10/26/2014.

The accuracy of this data is unknown. In my opinion, it is probably very accurate, it just hasn’t been confirmed or verified by CrossFit. But I have no reason to believe that there are affiliates missing from their website, or that the data there is inaccurate.

Interesting Results

118 different countries have affiliates (if you include Antarctica as a country). Yes there is one, Deep Freeze CrossFit, in Antarctica at McMurdo Station! (I’m interviewing this box owner and coach in a later blog post.)

There are only 17 affiliates in China and Hong Kong for 1.4B people… talk about expansion opportunities…

The most competitive region in terms of number of boxes per spot at the Games is Latin America with 698 boxes and only 1 Games spot. Surprising how poorly Latin America has performed at the Games so far with such a large talent pool. The easiest region should be Canada West with only 192 boxes and 2 spots (96 boxes per individual competitor Games spot). Of course quality of the coaches and athletes, and popularity of the sport are bigger factors when it comes to region competitiveness rather than raw number of participants. The Central East region, home to 5 of the top 15 male world finishers in the 2014 regionals, is widely recognized as the most competitive region but but the size of the region’s talent pool is quite average (about 200 boxes per Games spot).

Iceland has the most boxes per capita with 11 affiliates for only 343,000 people (34.1 boxes per million people). I’m sure this has nothing to do with 2-time Games champ Annie Thorisdottir being from there. New Zealand and Australia are next with about 25 boxes per million people. The US ranks behind them at around 20 boxes per million people.

Pasadena, CA, where the author of this blog lives, has 3x as many boxes than the US average. That’s about 60 boxes per million people. (There are 9 affiliates for a population of 140,000.)

Total Number of Affiliates: 11,002

Affiliates by Region

Region Number of Affiliates Number of Spots at 2014 Games Boxes Per Spot
Africa 162 1 162
Asia 312 1 312
Australia 696 3 232
Canada East 319 2 160
Canada West 192 2 96
Central East 617 3 206
Europe 1714 3 571
Latin America 698 1 698
Mid Atlantic 784 3 261
North Central 807 3 269
North East 850 3 283
North West 481 3 160
Northern California 412 3 137
South Central 847 3 282
South East 946 3 315
South West 561 3 187
Southern California 544 3 181

Total Countries Represented: 118*

*If you include Antarctica.

Affiliates by Country

Country Number of Boxes Population (M) Boxes per million people
Afghanistan 30 30.55 0.98
Albania 0 – –
Algeria 0 – –
American Samoa 0 – –
Andorra 1 0.08 12.50
Angola 0 – –
Anguilla 0 – –
Antarctica 1 0.01 200.00
Antigua & Barbuda 0 – –
Argentina 98 41.50 2.36
Armenia 0 – –
Aruba 3 1.02 2.94
Australia 578 23.13 24.99
Austria 30 8.47 3.54
Azerbaijan 0 – –
Bahamas, The 0 – –
Bahrain 6 1.33 4.50
Bangladesh 0 – –
Barbados 2 2.84 0.70
Belarus 0 – –
Belgium 34 11.20 3.04
Belize 2 3.31 0.60
Benin 0 – –
Bermuda 2 0.01 307.69
Bhutan 0 – –
Bolivia 3 10.67 0.28
Bosnia and Herzegovina 1 3.83 0.26
Botswana 0 – –
Brazil 273 200.40 1.36
British Virgin Is. 0 – –
Brunei Darussalam 4 4.17 0.96
Bulgaria 1 7.27 0.14
Burkina Faso 0 – –
Burma 0 – –
Burundi 0 – –
Cambodia 1 15.14 0.07
Cameroon 0 – –
Canada 517 35.16 14.70
Cape Verde 0 – –
Cayman Islands 3 0.58 5.17
Central African Rep. 0 – –
Chad 0 – –
Chile 28 17.62 1.59
China 8 1357.00 0.01
Colombia 33 48.32 0.68
Comoros 0 – –
Congo, Dem. Rep. 0 – –
Congo, Repub. of the 0 – –
Cook Islands 1 0.11 9.17
Costa Rica 29 4.87 5.95
Cote d’Ivoire 0 – –
Croatia 5 4.25 1.18
Croatia 0 – –
Cuba 0 – –
Cyprus 10 1.14 8.76
Czech Republic 10 10.52 0.95
Denmark 48 5.61 8.55
Djibouti 1 8.72 0.11
Dominica 0 – –
Dominican Republic 7 10.40 0.67
East Timor 0 – –
Ecuador 29 15.74 1.84
Egypt 8 82.06 0.10
El Salvador 1 6.34 0.16
Equatorial Guinea 0 – –
Eritrea 0 – –
Estonia 2 1.33 1.51
Ethiopia 0 – –
Faroe Islands 1 0.00 204.08
Fiji 0 – –
Finland 45 5.44 8.27
France 82 66.03 1.24
French Guiana 0 – –
French Polynesia 0 – –
Gabon 0 – –
Gambia, The 0 – –
Gaza Strip 0 – –
Georgia 0 – –
Germany 155 80.62 1.92
Ghana 0 – –
Gibraltar 0 – –
Greece 22 11.03 1.99
Greenland 1 0.01 178.57
Grenada 1 0.11 9.52
Guadeloupe 0 – –
Guam 9 0.17 54.55
Guatemala 13 15.47 0.84
Guernsey 0 – –
Guinea 0 – –
Guinea-Bissau 0 – –
Guyana 0 – –
Haiti 0 – –
Honduras 4 8.10 0.49
Hong Kong 9 7.19 1.25
Hungary 9 9.90 0.91
Iceland 11 0.32 34.1
India 16 1252.00 0.01
Indonesia 4 249.90 0.02
Iran 0 – –
Iraq 7 33.42 0.21
Ireland 42 4.60 9.14
Isle of Man 1 0.85 1.18
Israel 34 8.06 4.22
Italy 173 59.83 2.89
Jamaica 0 – –
Japan 18 127.30 0.14
Jersey 1 0.97 1.03
Jordan 5 6.46 0.77
Kazakhstan 3 17.04 0.18
Kenya 0 – –
Kiribati 0 – –
Korea 28 50.22 0.56
Kuwait 13 3.37 3.86
Kuwait 0 – –
Kyrgyzstan 0 – –
Laos 0 – –
Latvia 4 2.01 1.99
Lebanon 4 4.47 0.90
Lesotho 0 – –
Liberia 1 4.29 0.23
Liberia 0 – –
Libya 0 – –
Liechtenstein 0 – –
Lithuania 0 – –
Luxembourg 4 5.43 0.74
Macau 0 5.63 0.36
Macedonia 1 2.11 0.47
Madagascar 0 – –
Malawi 0 – –
Malaysia 10 29.72 0.34
Maldives 0 – –
Mali 0 – –
Malta 3 42.32 0.07
Marshall Islands 0 – –
Martinique 1 38.64 0.03
Mauritania 0 – –
Mauritius 0 – –
Mayotte 0 – –
Mexico 94 122.30 0.77
Micronesia, Fed. St. 0 – –
Moldova 0 – –
Monaco 0 – –
Mongolia 0 – –
Montserrat 0 – –
Morocco 2 33.01 0.06
Mozambique 0 – –
N. Mariana Islands 0 – –
Namibia 4 2.30 1.74
Nauru 0 – –
Nepal 0 – –
Netherlands 89 16.80 5.30
Netherlands Antilles 2 2.27 0.88
New Caledonia 0 – –
New Zealand 117 4.47 26.17
Nicaragua 2 6.08 0.33
Niger 0 – –
Nigeria 0 – –
Norway 59 5.08 11.61
Oman 2 3.63 0.55
Pakistan 0 – –
Palau 0 – –
Panama 13 3.86 3.36
Papua New Guinea 0 – –
Paraguay 6 6.80 0.88
Peru 10 30.38 0.33
Philippines 17 98.39 0.17
Poland 31 38.53 0.80
Portugal 42 10.46 4.02
Puerto Rico 28 3.62 7.75
Qatar 5 2.17 2.31
Reunion 1 8.40 0.12
Romania 3 19.96 0.15
Russia 2 143.50 0.01
Russian Federation 35 143.50 0.24
Rwanda 0 – –
Saint Helena 0 – –
Saint Kitts & Nevis 0 – –
Saint Lucia 0 – –
Saint Martin 1 7.48 0.13
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 0 – –
Samoa 0 – –
San Marino 1 31.73 0.03
Sao Tome & Principe 0 – –
Saudi Arabia 3 28.70 0.10
Senegal 0 – –
Serbia 4 7.20 0.56
Seychelles 0 – –
Sierra Leone 0 – –
Singapore 11 5.47 2.01
Slovakia 7 5.40 1.30
Slovenia 1 1.89 0.53
Solomon Islands 0 – –
Somalia 0 – –
South Africa 142 51.80 2.74
South Korea 1 50.00 0.02
Spain 173 46.70 3.70
Sri Lanka 0 – –
St Pierre & Miquelon 0 – –
St. Maaarten 1 1.30 0.77
Sudan 0 – –
Suriname 0 – –
Swaziland 0 – –
Sweden 124 9.42 13.16
Switzerland 50 8.02 6.23
Syria 0 – –
Taiwan 1 23.40 0.04
Tajikistan 0 – –
Tanzania 0 – –
Thailand 8 61.50 0.13
Togo 0 – –
Tonga 0 – –
Trinidad & Tobago 0 – –
Trinidad and Tobago 1 1.30 0.77
Tunisia 0 – –
Turkey 14 76.60 0.18
Turkmenistan 0 – –
Turks & Caicos Is 0 – –
Tuvalu 0 – –
Uganda 0 – –
Ukraine 4 45.40 0.09
United Arab Emirates 24 9.20 2.61
United Kingdom 395 64.00 6.17
United States 6867 317.00 21.66
Uruguay 3 3.30 0.91
Uzbekistan 0 – –
Vanuatu 0 – –
Venezuela 0 – –
Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of 2 27.00 0.07
Vietnam 1 89.70 0.01
Virgin Islands, U.s. 1 10.64 0.09
Wallis and Futuna 0 – –
West Bank 0 – –
Western Sahara 0 – –
Yemen 0 – –
Zambia 1 14.58 0.07
Zimbabwe 3 14.59 0.21

Affiliates by State

State Number of Boxes Population (M) Box per Million-People
IN 91 6.6 14
NY 281 19.7 14
ND 10 0.7 14
MI 147 9.9 15
WI 86 5.7 15
WV 29 1.9 15
KY 69 4.4 16
NE 30 1.9 16
SD 13 0.8 16
MO 101 6.0 17
MS 51 3.0 17
MN 92 5.4 17
IL 221 12.9 17
TN 112 6.5 17
PA 221 12.8 17
MD 102 5.9 17
NM 35 2.0 18
OH 203 11.6 18
DE 16 0.9 18
KS 53 2.9 18
IA 58 3.0 19
ME 26 1.3 20
OK 79 3.9 20
RI 20 1.0 20
NJ 191 8.9 21
AZ 142 6.6 22
VA 179 8.3 22
AL 104 4.8 22
AR 65 3.0 22
NC 216 9.8 22
SC 106 4.7 23
VT 14 0.6 23
CA 907 38.3 24
FL 476 20.0 24
LA 112 4.6 24
NV 71 2.8 25
TX 684 26.4 26
GA 261 10.0 26
CT 94 3.6 26
NH 35 1.3 27
MA 184 6.7 27
MT 29 1.0 29
OR 123 3.9 32
ID 53 1.6 33
HI 48 1.4 34
UT 105 2.9 36
DC 23 0.6 38
WA 273 7.0 39
CO 209 5.3 39
AK 28 0.7 40
WY 24 0.6 40