CrossFit Games

The CrossFit Games is an athletic competition sponsored by Crossfit Inc. and Reebok. The competition has been held every summer since 2007. Athletes at the Games compete in workouts that they learn about hours or days beforehand, consisting mostly of an assortment of standard aerobic, weightlifting, and gymnastics movements, as well as some additional surprise elements that are not part of the typical CrossFit regimen such as ocean swimming, softball throwing, or ascending a pegboard. The Games are styled as a venue for determining the "Fittest on Earth," where competitors should be "ready for anything."

In 2007, the first annual CrossFit Games were contested in Aromas, California, on a small ranch owned by the family of Games director Dave Castro. Interest and participation in the event grew in the following years, and in 2010, the Games moved to a new venue: the StubHub Center (known at that time as the Home Depot Center) in Carson, California. Following seven years at that site, the Games moved to the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, Wisconsin, where the first Games outside California will take place in summer 2017.

The CrossFit Games season comprises three stages of competition: the Open, Regionals, and the Games themselves.

The Open, introduced in 2011 and so called because participation is open to anyone, is held over five weeks in February-March; a new workout is released on each Thursday night (Pacific Time) and competitors complete the workout and submit their scores online by Monday evening, with either a video or validation by a CrossFit affiliate. Since 2013, Open workout announcements have been broadcast live, and featured two or more past CrossFit Games athletes competing head-to-head immediately following the workout description.

Each Open competitor is categorized into one of 17 regions according to primary training location; North America is divided into 12 regions, with the remaining regions roughly corresponding the five other populated continents. After all five Open workouts, the overall performance of competitors within each region is ranked, and the top few athletes (currently 10, 20, or 30 depending on the region) advance to the next stage: Regionals. In 2015, the format changed from 17 regional events (one for each region) to eight. Each "super-regional" event includes qualifiers from two or three regions, totaling 40 or 50 athletes. Regional events last three days and are held two or three per week over three consecutive weekends in late (boreal) spring; the workouts are the same for all regional events.

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