Crossfit: Big Love for Sam Briggs

Looking for a super hero? Good news! Your search is over.



Britian's own Samantha Briggs, reigning Crossfit Games Champion, whose performances in the Open (qualifying) stage had her ranked number 1 worldwide.

She arrived at last weekend's Europe Regional event needing to be in the top 3 by the time the 7th and final event was over. A formality, surely.

Event 2. An event that had destroyed the chances of another favourite, Stacie Tovar, in the North Central (USA) Regional. Samantha finishes in a disastrous 26th place.

She's way down in the overall classification, hopes of qualification dashed.

On her Instagram page she admits it's not been the best start to my Regionals, before defiantly adding, I'm no quitter... I'll be there tomorrow to fight to the end!!!

What followed was, without question, the best bit of sport - any sport - I have had the privilege to witness this year. Event 3. She wins. Event 4. Second.

She's climbing up the classifications.

Event 5. Run to a rope. Climb up it without using your legs. Run back to your (sizeable and weighty) marker. Move it back, away from the rope. Run back to the rope. Climb again. Back to marker. Move it further away from the rope again. Keep repeating until the last rope climb, then run back again and carry your marker over the finish line.



Sam is possessed. And by halfway the rest of the field - the other nine top-ranked Crossfitters in Europe - are trailing in her wake. While they get more ragged with each rope climb, Sam seems to actually climb it faster and faster as the event progresses.



"She's amazing!" exclaims my wife, who sat down to watch a bit of the live stream when the men were on, but has stayed to watch, and been impressed by, the women in the previous heats. Nobody has impressed her like Sam though. "Oh my God, she's amazing!" she says again. And she keeps saying it until well after Sam and her marker have crossed the finish line and we're both standing up and clapping.



Sam's finished over thirty seconds ahead of the next competitor, Sweden's Caroline Fryklund, and over a minute ahead of previous Games winner Annie Thorisdottir, who came fourth in the event and was the eventual top European qualifier.

But in fact it was what Samantha Briggs did after she had finished, when she and Annie saw that Katrin Thorisdottir (Annie's sister) was struggling to finish the event that epitomised not only her heroism, but also the camaraderie of the sport. Oh, and it also had the wife in tears (and yes, ok, I'll admit I was fighting them back too).

[I] Have a pic of Sam Briggs being a motivational m’fucker. She and Annie Thorisdottir were so good with Katrin Davidsdottir when she couldn’t finish event 5. What with the crowd being so supportive and everything seriously their heat was just heartwarming to watch, and that’s cheesy and I know it. And I love it.
Glaswegian crossfitter Harriet, aka propositionh



Sam Briggs absolutely CRUSHED event 5 today at the European Regional and then it seemed that Katrin Davidsdottir wanted to quit in the 8th round, even sitting down. Sam, as a true champion and in an unbelievable show of sportsmanship, actually picked up Katrin and tried to coach her through the work. This is CrossFit. This, even with all the bullshit that goes on in the periphery is what makes it all worthwhile.
Floridian (male) crossfitter That Mountain

Can you FEEL the love yet?

So, in events 3, 4 and 5 Sam has won, come second, and won. Sunday. Event 6. She wins again! One more event to go, and if anybody can, Samantha Briggs can...

She finishes 8th in the last event. Overall, she has climbed back up to 4th, but, it's not quite enough. She's outside the top 3. She won't be defending her title at the Games.



Well I gave it everything I had but unfortunately it just fell short! Obviously not happy to finish 4th but considering I had to fight back from a 26th place I'm proud of how I performed! Now to put my feet up, drink some alcoholic berveraves [that's how she spelt it] and cheer on Central East!!! Thank you to everyone for their support it's not the last they've seen of me I'll be back next year even more hungrier than ever!!!
from her Instagram, bicepslikebriggs

And all over the world, fans have been on the forums, on the Crossfit website, on their personal blogs, all saying similar things, all showing their love. They're saying that if, as is possible, wildcards are going to be awarded, Samantha Briggs had better be getting one, because the Games without the Queen is unthinkable, and any winner of the Games who hasn't beaten her will be a champion in name only.

Meanwhile, at home, my wife confesses to me what has been obvious since about 4.30 on Saturday afternoon - she has a raging girl crush on Samantha. She's talking about her on the phone to her friends, her cousin, her sister-in-law, and even her parents, whether they want to hear about her or not. "She's amazing!" she keeps saying.

Indeed she is.



The weekend's events hit me with a bang this morning & I just wanted to stay in bed all day... I gave myself two options: 1) sit and cry over something I cannot change, 2) go to the gym and do what I do best... I chose to TRAIN.

On a scale of 1 (which could be something like "Crossfit? Whatever!") to 10 "I am totally and utterly in awe of this woman, this warrior, this super-human super-hero champion", I'm at about 28. The wife is at about 635, and still rising.

Tube of the Week: Crossfit Special

The first stage of the CrossFit Games is The Open, which runs for five consecutive weeks. Each week, a "workout" is proscribed. Athletes must complete the workout within the week and their performances are then ranked. If they finish in the top 48 for their Crossfit region after the five weeks of The Open, they're invited to The Regionals, and from there they can qualify for the ultimate event, The Games.

It really is an Open competition. There's no seeding, no automatic qualification for the top 10 from last year. Nothing. Each new year starts with a completely clean slate and whole new set of workouts. To defend her title, 2013 champion Samantha Briggs must first do the workouts and submit her scores like everybody else.

As the Crossfit website explains: No test, regardless of its lofty claims, can grant legitimate title to the best without first providing access to all. The Open is a truly "open" competition. Anyone from anywhere can participate.

The name of each workout is "14" (for the year) .1, .2, .3 etc. for the week. So, the workout for week two of this year's Open was "14.2", week three "14.3" and so on.

Every Open workout needs to be validated to count. Competitors will have two options to validate their performances. They can work out at a local affiliate, where they will be judged in person, or they can submit video evidence of their performance to the entire community. There is no limit to the number of attempts an athlete can make, provided the score is submitted prior to the close of each week.

Today, our Tube of the Week Crossfit Special looks at the best performances from weeks two and three, workouts 14.2 and 14.3. Why? Well, first of all, at the time of writing, these were the two most recently completed (at the time of publication the fifth and last week will be coming to a close). And secondly, it just so happens that the best in the world for those workouts were two of FMS' favourite CrossFitters.


14.2 CAMILLE LE BLANC-BAZINET

Last seen on FMS in our Hot and Hard 100 Countdown (see #53), the very gorgeous Camille had already lost out to Talayna Fortunato in a head-to-head workout battle earlier in the week, her defeat blamed on her feeling a little under the weather. However, Camille recovered and, as the clips shows, returned to record not just a better time, but the best time in the world for 14.2 with her second attempt.

You can check the exact specifications for each workout, including this one, on The Games website, but essentially it's squats followed by pull-ups. Two rounds of 10 reps for each in the first three minutes, then 12 reps for the next three, 14 for the three after that and so on until the athlete fails to do two rounds of each exercise in a three-minute period. Camille performs a world-beating 404 reps by the time she fails.

Just watching will probably leave you breathless...




14.3 DANIELLE SIDELL

FMS' Crossfit correspondent dubbed ex-figure competitor Danielle his 'One to Watch in 2014', and clearly he knows what he's talking about. She premiered on FMS in January (see Swells Digs) where we noted it would be our pleasure to take our correspondent's advice and "watch" Danielle, who at 5'10" (1.78m) is a proper power Amazon.

14.3 was a combination of deadlifts and box jumps with an eight-minute time limit. 15 box jumps every time, but the deadlifts not only increase in number by five for each new set, the weight ALSO increases each time. So in set one Danielle is deadlifting 95lbs (43kg) for ten reps, but by the fourth set she's lifting 185lbs (84kg) for 25.




Phew!

And in case you're wondering who was the world's best for 14.1, and also, incidentally, the number 1 ranked CrossFitter overall at the time of writing (ie. after the first three workouts had all been completed), here is a clue.



Follow the Leaderboard on The Games Website

Enjoy!

Dedicated with thanks to Aiden

What's (Been) Going On: Samantha Briggs, The Fittest Woman on Earth

Back in June, at the end of CrossFit Week, our guest editor and resident CrossFit authority Aiden wrote in his Games preview that his prediction to win is Britain's own Sam Briggs. Well, I bet you wish you'd listened to him now and put some money on her, because at the end of that month, that is precisely what happened.

After finishing 19th at the Games in Sweden in 2010, when she prepared for the first day of competition by eating and drinking 'a bambi burger and a Carlsberg', Samantha had made the CrossFit world sit up and take notice in 2011 when she was a standout performer despite missing out on the podium and finishing 4th. Due to a knee injury she missed the entire 2012 season. Her comeback has been spectacular. She qualified for the Games by winning the European Regional with performances that must have been truly scary to her fellow competitors and earmarked her as one of the favourites for the whole thing. And then at the Games themselves, she didn't disappoint.



Pleasingly, Sam's incredible achievement did not go unnoticed by the British media, and she appeared on BBC Breakfast, which is about as high profile as it gets at that time in the morning. 'I'm just looking at you absolutely amazed!' female presenter Louise Minchin, who has completed triathlons herself, gushed. Whether Louise was amazed by the typically understated way Sam had just explained what the competition involved, or whether she was amazed by the sight of Sam's shoulders and arms you can decide for yourself by watching a recording of the clip here.



Despite having got the kind of winner's cheque that would be unimaginable in female bodybuilding, she is not about to give up her day job as a firefighter in West Yorkshire. And after the BBC interview she celebrated her success by spending three hours getting a new tattoo. You've got to love her!

And Sam is by no means finished now she has reached the top. Her mantra of 'Lift, run, swing, pull, push, jump, row, throw, swim, hit, cycle, recover & repeat!' still applies.  'It'd be stupid for me to think I could go back to the Games and win being the same athlete then that I am now. I think I need to constantly evolve and there's certain areas we need to work on and hopefully I'll go back a stronger athlete next year,' she has said.



You can follow Sam on Twitter, via the CrossFit Games website, or its youtube channel.
For a much longer interview with Sam post-Games, visit BoxRox.
Or, for the brave only perhaps, the Train Manchester website.

Enjoy!