For the last two years, hundreds of gyms have used our “Intramural Open” idea.One affiliate was featured on the CrossFit Games site for his version.The Intramural Open is a fantastic way to build your community during the CrossFit Open. The focus is on inclusion and celebration instead of competition (though there’s a good bit of that, too.) Every year, I’ve improved on the idea thanks to the feedback from hundreds of gyms.This year, for clarity, I’ll divide the “Intramural Open” into four stages: Draft, Pre-Open, Open and Post-Open. Immediately after the draft, the rest of your gym membership is open for recruitment. Captains can bribe, coerce or otherwise attempt to sign up any member for their team. Members sign up on the Games site [link: http://games.crossfit.com] to indicate their intention to compete. Captains report the recruitment of each athlete to in our Facebook group so two teams don’t lay claim to the same person. 1. Remind your clients that your goal is to provide fun, collaborative competition. Here’s how we presented it. Copy the post if you like (just link back to the catalyst gym site from whence it came). In our case, because scoring favors the largest team, we have a recruitment limit to keep things even. Any team can recruit up to 25 members–but must then wait for other teams to recruit 25 members before recruiting more. We have two Captains who are very good at recruiting–one left the draft with a list of texts already waiting on his phone. Expect more people to sign up for the Open because they’re asked by the Captains; this is the whole point of the Intramural Open. We had 22 signed up before the Draft, and hit 60 before 6 a.m. the next day. Skills Seminars Leading up to the Open, consider the main areas of potential “Bright Spots” for clients: -First time hitting a gymnastics skills, like toes-to-bar -First time reaching ...
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