What is Open 20.4? Live Stream Drama and Apologies.

What is Open 20.4? The fourth workout of the 2020 CrossFit Open is a long chipper with three movements. With 20 minutes on the clock, athletes will...

Friday, November 1st, 2019

Good morning and welcome to the WODDITY podcast for news about CrossFit. We are a daily podcast, Monday through Friday, doing CrossFit news in five minutes or less.

My name is Ben Garves and today is Friday, the 1st of November, 2019. 

There are three types of people in this world. Those working off a sugar coma today, those who couldn’t sleep because of nightmares about pistol squats, and those in a sugar coma who couldn’t sleep last night because of nightmares about pistol squats. And that’s my ever-so-subtle segue directly into CrossFit’s 20.4 Open workout.

What is the Open 20.4 Workout?

It is a long chipper with a 20-minute timecap. We are alternating box jumps and clean and jerks for three rounds, followed by alternating single-leg squats (aka pistols) and clean-and-jerks for three rounds. Every time you do the box jumps and pistols, you will be doing 30 reps. With the clean-and-jerks, the weight goes up every round, and the reps go down every two rounds.

So, here we go, I hope you can follow this.

30 Box Jumps15 Clean and Jerks30 Box Jumps15 Clean and Jerks30 Box Jumps10 Clean and Jerks30 Pistols10 Clean and Jerks30 Pistols5 Clean and Jerks30 Pistols5 Clean and Jerks

And then you fall on your face and just lay there for a while. Like I said, the weights increase each round. Men are climbing a ladder of 95, 135, 185, 225, 275, 315. Women are climbing a ladder of 65, 85, 115, 145, 175, and 205.

Believe me when I say I re-wrote this eight times to see what would make the most sense over a podcast. That’s the best I could do.

This is the third workout of the 2020 CrossFit Open with a 20-minute time domain. When you factor in 20.3’s 9-minute time cap, we’re averaging a time domain of 17 minutes and 15 seconds per workout. Test of fitness, indeed.

The time to beat is Ben Smith last night on Diablo CrossFit’s live stream. He finished in an unofficial 16:41, winning the first ever cash prize for a workout announcement of $2,000. Sean Sweeney and Jason Carroll were both time capped on the event, but Sweeney was just one rep short. Talk about a big personality. He changed shoes half way through, flirted with the crowd, and did his second-to-last rep with a cowboy hat on. And yes, he handed out pictures of himself when he entered the competition floor.

Live Stream Drama and Apologies

Live streams last night were a mixed bag. Our live stream brought in over 45,000 live viewers, but suffered some dramatic lag problems. We are getting better, but I’m truly sorry for those who were affected. Diablo CrossFit started much later last night than live streams usually do, so we ended up with fifteen confusing minutes of the much-loved, but hard-to-understand CrossFit Italian Showdown. I’m sorry to our fans who just want a reliable stream. We will improve every week, and you can always count on WODDITY for these broadcasts, but last night we had some growing pains. As always, 20.5 will be better than 20.4, which was better than 20.3. I want to personally thank everyone who stuck with us last night. I spend countless hours putting together the best possible pre-shows I can, and those who subscribed to the channel reaffirm the work I’m trying to do for the community. So, thank you.

That’s it. Y’all can go to recess early. Enjoy your weekends, and no meniscus tears on those pistols, okay? Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe. I’m Ben Garves and, unless something breaks, we’ll chat on Monday.