CrossFit Games season is upon us! We’re putting together a series of workout predictions and training tips to help you set a huge PR this Open season.

Have you read our predictions for CrossFit Open 23.1 and 23.2 workouts? We’re all on in this being a year where HQ challenges us with new movements, ones that logically advance us from workouts we’ve seen over the last two or three years.

Check out our prediction for the final workout in the 2023 CrossFit Open, plus how we’d tackle this hypothetical workout below.

Check back for when the actual individual and teams workouts are released!

Contents

Let’s start with the fitness workout prediction and then break it down as we go. Here’s ours:

For Total Time:

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*20 min time Cap.

Keep an eye out on the CrossFit Games Instagram page for more clues. Last year, they dropped hints a few weeks ahead of time, including a Wordle-type puzzle for Open workout 22.1

Below we break down some clues about the workout and our rationale for the movement/format of 23.3.

We’re very likely to see an Olympic weightlifting movement or two at some point in the CrossFit Open. In this hypothetical scenario, neither the snatch or clean has come up yet, so we felt compelled to put it in the third and final workout.

This workout gets progressively more difficult, so the thrusters at the end are really meant to separate competitors in the final round. It will be the final bottleneck for many and the place their workout ends.

Regular pull-ups have only ever made an appearance once in the CrossFit Open (last year). It’s a bit of a risky pick, but in this scenario, where they progress to chest to bar pull ups, it’s not as crazy. Chest to bar pull ups have been in all but one Open season!

The 20 muscle ups at the end will be impossible for many athletes to get through. In our opinion, they need one final threshold like this to separate athletes who may be on the cusp. Athletes at the games can easily be expected to complete a workout like this in under 20 minutes, so it’s your chance to prove you belong.

Wall balls are another favorite; they’ve appeared in over 80 percent of CrossFit Opens since the beginning, so it’d be no surprise if they came up. In this case, they fit snugly into this workout as an opportunity to test your cardio but also to get your heart rate back down after some very difficult barbell and gymnastics work.

Unlike the cleans/pull-ups, the reps here stay the same. They don’t like super complicated workouts, because it’s hard for affiliates to score.

In terms of mentality, wall balls will also give newer athletes motivation if they struggle. This workout definitely needs some balance, and the wall balls give it that.

Simply put, double unders are a skill you need in CrossFit. If you stumble and fall and lose 30 seconds because you can’t knock out 40 straight double unders, you likely weren’t going to qualify for the next round.

Double unders have never not been used in a CrossFit games season.

We saw “as many rounds as possible” workouts in the first two weeks, so this one is a chance to get a great score and test yourself. Qualifying for the next round likely means you have the skill to finish this workout under the 20 minute cap.

The CrossFit Games season officially begins on February 16, 2023. Workouts are announced on Thursday and athletes have until Monday at 5pm to submit their scores.

If your affiliate doesn’t submit your scores by the deadline, there is no way to add your score back into the database. So if you want to do the workout multiple times to attempt the best score, it’s best to save the date for the announcement and plan to do your first workout that night!

There are scaling options available for the community if the RX workouts aren’t an option given your fitness level. Last year, Adrian Bozman at CrossFit HQ released the “three tiers” to help athletes decide if they should go RX or scale the workout. Watch below:

For this hypothetical workout, you would need:

Below we’ll break down how you should approach this workout to get the best score.

Get ready for a classic CrossFit grinder! As a reminder, here’s our prediction workout:

For Total Time:

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*20 min time Cap to complete the following complex.

This workout is designed for all levels, even if it doesn’t look like it at first. Newcomers might see the muscle ups at the end and think there’s no way they’ll ever finish, so what’s the point? But there’s solid work to finish before you ever have to worry about that. If you don’t make it to the muscle ups or through them, you have a goal for next year.

As with 23.2, you’ll want to save your grip by dropping the bar between each rep—even for thrusters, when you’re dropping from a locked out overhead position. So long as you stay in rhythm and drop with the bar to complete your next rep, it shouldn’t add any time to your score. This is a subtle thing that makes a big difference.

You’ll save your grip for the later rounds, which matters because there’s really no point for your forearms to ever rest in this WOD.

You may need to regrip several times during the workout. (We know from experience that sweaty hands can make even wall balls into a nightmare quickly.) Have chalk nearby in case you need it. Walking to get chalk will waste precious time.

Think of the first sequence of four movements as a “buy in” for this workout. Unless you’re on the cusp of qualifying for the next round—where literally every second matters—you will preserve your strength and cardio for the later rounds by not crushing yourself on the first 75 repetitions.

This sequence should take 2 to 3 minutes if you complete it unbroken. You’ll still have plenty of time to finish under the 20 minute cap if you start slow.