In 95% of Crossfit workouts the person who paces the best wins. Given that you have the requisite strength and metabolic conditioning to back it up, a perfect pacing strategy is what brings you the victory in an event.
Besides the pros, the majority of people in the Crossfit environment, both competitors and not, start out way too hot than they should. It’s a 20 minute workout and they came out of the gate with a pace more suitable for a 5 minute sprint. They do this because it feels good to be in first place for a few minutes only to watch themselves crash and burn as the workout progresses.
In reality you should start at a relatively moderate pace and gradually work yourself up to your max sustainable pace, then hold that pace for as long as needed and finally sprint the last couple minutes. Instead of getting slower as the workout progresses, you should be getting faster.
Jacob Heppner knows this better than anyone. He obviously has built up phenomenal endurance but even the most fit will crash if they start out too hot.
Lets take a look at Heppner’s pacing in this first workout of the 2019 Australian Crossfit Championship.
EVENT 1:
12 min AMRAP
30 Double Unders
3,6,9 etc Power cleans @ 50kgs/35kgs
(reps increasing by 3 each round)
*ROUND # indicates number of cleans in that round so ROUND #3 is the first round. ROUND #6 is the second round since you add 3 cleans, etc.
With all of this data above the most important things to notice are the colored numbers in the CHANGE column.
Since the workout requires you to add 3 power cleans per round you are obviously going to get slower each round. What is truly impressive is that Heppner only slowed by 6-9 seconds every round except for the round of 24 cleans when he took 19 seconds due to him adjusting his weights.
That means that he only took around 2-3 seconds to complete each power clean throughout the majority of the workout. Easy to do when you’re fresh, difficult when fatigued.
Arguably even more impressive is the fact that he actually finished his last two rounds faster than the two previous rounds. He was able to cut time while also having to add 3 reps each time.
And he knew he would have to do this in order to complete the round of 30 power cleans which he finished just in time to squeeze out 13 double unders in the round of 33.
Although the workout was won during the power cleans it is also important to note that Heppner was also extremely consistent with his double unders, doing each set in 16-20 seconds.
This sort of pace may seem easy to replicate on paper, but believe that this performance was a show of elite fitness.
3,638 responses to “A Lesson In Perfect Pacing From A Pro Crossfit Athlete”