History of the Challenge

SCORECARD AVAILABLE HERE
CURRENT LEADERBOARD HERE

It's time to take a look at the history of the challenge! Anyone who has been coming to my clinics and classes for a while realizes how central the challenge is to my instruction. How was the challenge born? What changes has it undergone, and why? 

The Rise of the Challenge

Very soon after the success of the inaugural "G WOD" I quickly identified the need to efficiently break my students up into skill groups. People of all different skill levels and athletic backgrounds needed to receive gymnastics instruction in the relatively short window of time available in the class. How could I keep the more skilled athletes engaged while not sacrificing the needs of the novice athletes, thereby alienating and discouraging those who needed the most attention? How could I ensure that those wanting to learn the more advanced movements truly had the necessary pre-requisite skills?

With these needs in mind, I started to map out the progressions of some of the most sought after gymnastics skills for which athletes approached me for help. The idea was to have them perform as many of the movements in these progressions as possible, starting from the easiest level until whichever level they broke down. I created a rep scheme for each level and a time domain, so that these elements that could be re-tested in order to quantify progress. At this point, the first iteration of the challenge was born!
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Challenge Version #1

The first version of the challenge was a gateway WOD with rep scheme and time domain as follows:
LEVEL 1- (POLAR BEAR LEVEL: 0-3 minutes)
10 AIR SQUATS
10 PUSHUPS
10 SITUPS
10 KNEE RAISES

LEVEL 2- (PANDA BEAR LEVEL: 3-6 minutes)
8 V-UPS
8 BOX JUMPS
8 DIPS
8 PULLUPS

LEVEL 3- (GRIZZLY BEAR LEVEL: 6-9 minutes)
1 ROPE CLIMB
6 RING DIPS
6 CHEST TO BAR PULLUPS
6 HANDSTAND PUSHUPS

LEVEL 4- (BLACK BEAR LEVEL: 9-12 minutes)
4 RING MUSCLE UPS
4 PISTOLS
4 BAR MUSCLE UPS
4 MAT HANDSTAND WALK (each mat measuring 4ft length)

This first challenge focused on progressions of the 4 most sought after skills people requested instruction from me to learn: the Ring MU, Bar MU, Pistol, Handstand Walk. In the lower skill levels I also saw the need to include movements that, while not technically being progressions to those skills, were most often tested in our daily WODs and competitions. Regarding the time domain, I liked the idea of a gateway WOD, from a recent CrossFit Games Open at the time, as a way to test the movements of each level. I didn't want the whole challenge to be too long, but each skill level needed enough attention, so I decided on a 3 minute window for each level.  I was originally going to have a similar rep scheme for all levels, but after some preliminary tests, I realized in order to maintain a 3 minute window it would be more practical to have a lower rep scheme for the higher difficulty levels, which allowed me to raise the rep scheme for the lower levels. Voila! Challenge version #1 was born, performed by 12 athletes on April 29th 2014, generating the first leaderboard of this functional gymnastics competition which has been going on ever since!

Challenge Version #2- Simpler Time Domain, More Advanced Moves

Very soon after the introduction of the challenge, I quickly saw the need to add another level that tested more advanced movements in order to motivate the more skilled athletes in my classes. Some of these athletes were able to complete the challenge in only their first few attempts. I also decided to simplify the time domain by making the WOD a straight 10 minute time cap as opposed to a gateway WOD. This version of the challenge was as follows:

10 MINUTE TIME CAP
LEVEL 1- (POLAR BEAR LEVEL)
10 AIR SQUATS
10 PUSHUPS
10 SITUPS
10 KNEE RAISES

LEVEL 2- (PANDA BEAR LEVEL)
8 V-UPS
8 BOX JUMPS
8 DIPS
8 PULLUPS

LEVEL 3- (GRIZZLY BEAR LEVEL)
1 ROPE CLIMB
6 RING DIPS
6 CHEST TO BAR PULLUPS
6 HANDSTAND PUSHUPS

LEVEL 4- (BLACK BEAR LEVEL)
4 RING MUSCLE UPS
4 PISTOLS
4 BAR MUSCLE UPS
4 MAT HANDSTAND WALK (each mat measuring 4ft length)

LEVEL 5- (MASTER BEAR LEVEL)
2 STRICT HSPU
2 STRICT RING MU
2 MAT UNBROKEN HS WALK
1 LEGLESS ROPE CLIMB

The new highest level introduced strict elements that require more strength and coordination to perform. The unbroken 2 mat (8ft) distance requirement of the handstand walk in the highest level added another element of difficulty, although not by too much. You might notice the 10 minute time cap reduced the time domain of the WOD from its previous total of 12 minutes, despite adding another difficulty level. After seeing the amazing performances of my top athletes I was convinced 10 minutes was more than enough time to complete all this work, if they truly had consistency in their skill set for these movements. 

Challenge Version #3 (Short Lived)- Flashy Skills over Function

Impressed with the performances of my highest level athletes, who were not only completing challenge version #2 but in progressively faster record times, I decided to introduce yet another level of higher skilled gymnastics movements to push the limits of their skill sets:

10 MINUTE TIME CAP
LEVEL 1- (POLAR BEAR LEVEL)
10 AIR SQUATS
10 PUSHUPS
10 SITUPS
10 KNEE RAISES

LEVEL 2- (PANDA BEAR LEVEL)
8 V-UPS
8 BOX JUMPS
8 DIPS
8 PULLUPS

LEVEL 3- (GRIZZLY BEAR LEVEL)
1 ROPE CLIMB
6 RING DIPS
6 CHEST TO BAR PULLUPS
6 HANDSTAND PUSHUPS

LEVEL 4- (BLACK BEAR LEVEL)
4 RING MUSCLE UPS
4 PISTOLS
4 BAR MUSCLE UPS
4 MAT HANDSTAND WALK (each mat measuring 4ft length)

LEVEL 5- (MASTER LEVEL)
2 STRICT HSPU
2 STRICT RING MU
2 MAT UNBROKEN HS WALK
1 LEGLESS ROPE CLIMB

LEVEL 6- (SWOLAR BEAR LEVEL)
1 BACK UPRISE
​1 DISLOCATE
1 BACKWARD ROLL TO SUPPORT ON RINGS
1 PIROUETTE
1 FREESTANDING HSPU

The highest level of difficulty introduced skill moves that to be honest, while more advanced than the previous high level, were not regularly tested in our daily WODs and local competitions. Not that working toward attaining these movements is necessarily wrong,  but I quickly saw that it was going to draw focus away from improving efficiency in the regularly tested fundamental movements in all the levels below it which are the focus of my instruction. It also bothered me that there were other movements frequently tested in our fitness programs that serve as great progressions toward these skills that I hadn't originally included.

Since I had an ongoing leaderboard though, I initally didn't want to change the lower levels of the challenge, because that would essentially mean having to introduce a new leaderboard in order to fairly compare the newer participants. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the competition aspect of the challenge was always secondary to its function as a teaching and diagnostic tool for my clinics. So I decided to finally take the step to rework the lower levels of the challenge, introducing movements that create smoother progressions to the higher level skills. This resulted in:

Current Version of the BearMuscle Gymnastics Challenge

This is the challenge that forms the basis of instruction in my gymnastics clinics, classes, and sessions. It is as follows:

10 MINUTE TIME CAP
LEVEL 1- (WHITE BEAR LEVEL)
10 AIR SQUATS
10 PUSHUPS
10  SITUPS
10 KNEE RAISES

LEVEL 2- (BLUE BEAR LEVEL)
8 V-UPS
8 BOX JUMPS
8 DIPS
8 RING ROWS

LEVEL 3- (BROWN BEAR LEVEL)
1 ROPE CLIMB
6 RING DIPS
6 TOES TO BAR
6 PULLUPS

LEVEL 4- (BLACK BEAR LEVEL)
4 RING MUSCLE UPS
4 PISTOLS
4 BAR MUSCLE UPS
4 HSPU

LEVEL 5- (NINJA LEVEL)
1 LEGLESS ROPE CLIMB
2 STRICT HSPU
2 DEFICIT HSPU
3 MAT UNBROKEN HS WALK

This current version shifts certain movements that were previously in lower levels of difficulty to higher ones while introducing smoother progressions of those movements in their place (such as ring rows leading to pullups). The unbroken distance requirement of the handstand walk in the highest level was increased to 3 mats (12ft) because, let's face it, it's still not that long compared to what is normally required of us in most competitions. I'm confident though each category of movement is tested sufficiently to reveal basic proficiency.

While this version of the challenge may be considered "easier" than last version, the focus returns once more to improving your efficiency of movement in these highly tested skills as opposed to working to acheive flashy movements that aren't tested as regularly. Indeed, if it is your goal to reduce your completion time as much as possible in order to sit atop the current leaderboard, then you will see that the time and effort needed to do so is challenging enough. What specific strategies will help you accomplish this will be discussed in detail on my next blog post.

Until then, I hope you had an interesting read on my thought process behind different iterations of the challenge down to the version I use today. If you're interested in performing this challenge, as always you can find more details on movement standards on the Challenge page of website, or contact me for details on my classes and clinics. Let me know what you think, and stay GymNasty my friends!