The most exciting five weeks in fitness is coming down the home stretch. The past four workouts of the 2019 CrossFit Open have offered a variety of challenges that have kept athletes guessing before they’re announced and pushing themselves to levels they didn’t think they could reach after. The result has been a greater sense of community and achievement from people in local boxes and elite athletes trying to reach the Games. 

19.5 Announced

19.5 calls for a workout that may remind you of 19.1 because it looks simple to perform on paper or a screen but is actually very difficult to execute. There are only two movements but they are compound exercises that challenge the athlete’s muscular endurance thanks to the rep schemes.

Workout 19.5

• Thrusters
• Chest to Bar Pull-Ups

Descending ladder - 33, 27, 21, 15, 9 reps of each movement. 

Perform reps of each movement with minimal rest in between.

20 minute time cap.

Men use 95 pounds on the bar. Women use 65 pounds on the bar.

The score is the time it takes to complete the workout. If you can’t complete the entire workout within the time cap, your score is the reps you were able to complete.

As with the other workouts so far in the Open, athletes have until the following Monday to complete the workout and submit their scores onto games.crossfit.com. The deadline for 19.5 is Monday, March 25, 2019, at 6 p.m. PT. Once the scores are submitted and videos are reviewed, the official results will be announced.

Open Winners So Far

CrossFit has been acknowledging the weekly winners of each workout so far in the Open and those winners have each received a prize of $2,019. Some familiar faces, including four-time Fittest Man on Earth Rich Froning and three-time reigning Games champ Mat Fraser are among the top finishers. Below are the winners from each workout so far. 

19.1    Men – Snorre Fjagesund of Sweden    Women – Mikaela Normal of Norway

19.2    Men – Rich Froning of USA        Women – Brooke Wells of USA

19.3    Men – Mat Fraser of USA        Women – Karissa Pearce of USA

*19.4 winners have yet to be announced as of this writing.

What’s At Stake

Thanks to the new qualifying system that has been put in place this season, the overall men’s and women’s winners will earn a qualifying spot at the 2019 CrossFit Games. The male and female national champions of each country, as well as the top 20 overall finishers will also earn a ticket to Madison this summer.

You may also remember that there have been Sanctionals that took place at various locations around the world that also helped determine qualified athletes. There were also second- and third-place winners at those events. That’s important because the Open takes precedence over the Sanctionals. So if one of the Sanctional winners wins the Open overall or their national championship, the second-place finishers at those Sanctionals earn a qualifying spot to the Games.

Let’s use Mat Fraser as an example. The Fittest Man on Earth won the first Sanctional in Dubai in December of 2018. Bjorgvin Karl Gudmundsson took second place there. If Fraser wins the Open or the national championship for the U.S., Gudmundsson would then claim the Dubai qualification in Fraser’s place.

There’s one more aspect to consider. For those athletes who don’t earn a spot through the Open or any of the four invitational spots offered by CrossFit, then the remaining Sanctionals are their final opportunities to qualify for the Games. So for many competitors it will be win or go home. The next Sanctionals event will be the Mid-Atlantic CrossFit Challenge which takes place April 12-14 in Washington, D.C.

Once the final results of the Open are determined, we will share them here on FloElite. If you’re one of the athletes posting about your Open workouts, make sure you tag us on Instagram @floelite and use the hashtag #floelite so we can see how you’ve done.

Roger Lockridge is from Lewisburg, West Virginia. His work has been featured on numerous platforms and magazines in the fitness industry over the last 10 years. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram @rocklockridge.