CrossFit Online Semifinals Recap

June 24, 2026•7 min read

CrossFit Online Semifinals Recap

If you don't know me or haven't seen me around the clinic, hi, I am Cass! I compete for CrossFit and work for the loveliest of PT Clinics and have since we opened full time in our current location! If you see me always feel free to say hello! I am friendly.

The Setup

Without boring you with all the details I will just touch on a few. To be able to compete in the Online Semifinals you have to do what is called the Open, then score high enough to advance to Quarterfinals, and then from there you can qualify for Semifinals. You also have to provide your own judges that have to have very specific credentials and you need two of them to make sure that you are adhering to standards and doing things by the book. The workouts were released on Monday and we could not perform them for record until Thursday at 2pm CST. This is obviously something we want to be physically prepared for so my coach and I set up a little peak to get me feeling good but that was interrupted by some nerve entrapment I had.

The week leading up to Semifinals the nerves in my left leg got very agitated to the point where it was painful to walk the Tuesday before the workouts were released. Thirteen needles later from Josh and we got things to calm down. The day the workouts were released Dylan did a tune up with more needles and Tecar. This got me set up for what we were about to do.

The Weekend

It's starts off with nerves and wondering if you can even complete the workouts in the prescribed time. So I hop on a call with my coach to decide the first workout we will do and a rough order the sounds plausible leaving room for redos. Yes we do the workouts more than once a lot of the times. If you are like me you smash your initial expectations then go, wait I can do better.

Workouts and Day 1

We were starting with the heavy snatch workout. I wasn't sure if I could snatch 155 for 15 reps much less do it fast and well with shuttle runs in between. Yet, I warmed up and surprised myself and really got a good first attempt on that workout. Next was the thruster, ring muscle up workout. Yes, I did those two in the same day in a matter of hours. This is all well within what I train for so it doesn't feel as out of pocket as it may sound. This workout did not go well, I got buried by the weight of the barbell and it was one of the hottest days to date which made it about 110 degrees in the gym. At one point in this workout I thought I would pass out on the rings but somehow we made it out and got a time. That concludes day one and two workouts done.

Day 2

This started with basically 21 rope climbs for time and some light weight hang cleans, I was most excited about this one. Performance went okay, not my best work. I was hesitant on the rope climbs and just wasn't being confident throughout the workout. Then later that day I needed to hit another workout. to stay on track to keep time in the weekend to redo some of these. We decided to do the one that had burpee box jumps, rowing, and moderate deadlifts. On paper I really liked this one but couldn't really figure out how to fully express my aerobic potential on it. Nonetheless we finished day 2 and had 4 workouts completed.

Day 3

I kicked this off with the long doosey workout, as I like to call it. It consisted of heavy and high wall balls, a good bit of handstand walking, and a lot of double unders. We tried to hit this one early in the morning to beat the heat but it was still almost unbearable. Needless to say we got this one done and I still felt like I wasn't doing my absolute best as an athlete. I knew I had more and the thoughts of not being worthy of competing and why am I even doing this, only seven go to the games. After chats with. a few key friends and them adding fuel to my fire, I decided to redo the rope climb workout and just go for broke. The vibes were good in the gym, my warm up was flawless, everything felt awesome. My judge even said you are going. to do so good, I can feel it. And that we did, we smashed that redo and got over a minute better time on it. I was starting to rally, starting to see myself come alive.

Sunday

I was tired, beat up and wanted to redo two workouts. I went and warmed up to the work weight of the snatch workout which was 155. My knee was not happy and just dropping my hips into the position of pulling the barbell off the ground was very painful. I tried to hit the workout but when I missed my third snatch in the first set we knew today it was not happening. So I went home and ate and rested and did all I could to get the swelling in my knee down. At this point I was worried I wouldn't get to redo any more workouts and thought my weekend was over.

Monday

Here we are, the day we have to submit, and I slept great. My plan was to test movements and see what my knee would tolerate and hit the workouts that I could. We started the day with redoing the burpee box jump, row, deadlift workout. I felt good, head was in a good place and when we finished the workout I was at my same score as the first time that I did the workout, so this redo did not go better. My organs cramped up and I had to lay and calm my body down for about 15 minutes. Truly it was just pain from over exertion and lactate in my body from what I just did.

I wanted to redo one more, to throw up what we call. a hail mary. And the workout I thought best for that was the thruster, ring muscle up one. I knew I could possible squat well enough to feel strong and that workout was shorter than the other squatting one. So I set a goal to do all. the thrusters unbroken. 12-9-6 was the reps at 125lbs. I warmed everything up well and got my brain locked in on what I wanted to do. I knew if I put the barbell down I wouldn't want to pick it back up. This was for me. For my potential. And showing myself I was capable and strong. Ring muscle ups aren't a bad movement for me so why not just see what happens, I had nothing to lose. I finished. the12 and had a great strategy for the ring muscle ups 4-3-3-2 this would set me up to go unbroken again on the barbell for the set of 9. We finished the thrusters and got back to the rings we went 3-3-3 and got read for the last set on the barbell 6 reps. Knocked that out and got back to the rings, I was going to do 3 and then 3, Reilly counted me in so I would stop resting. I did 3 and as I was locking out the third rep I could hear my gym screaming and Reilly saying "why not" "yeah" so I did another, everyone yelled more, realizing I was going for it. Reilly scoots in and screams louder "why not" and I was basically at failure. We went for the 6th rep and we didn't fail; and that was the best feeling in the world, I did what I didn't think I could.

We then have to submit video and our scores to the leaderboard so I made sure all that was in and updated my scores to the redo's I was able to complete. When the leaderboard posted (unofficially) I found myself sitting 88th in the world. That is my highest placing worldwide ever. I am proud I didn't give up. I am proud of every ounce of energy, and thankful for those who cheered and got my body right to be able to showcase that fitness. Now we rest with a happy and hungry heart.

Happy running,

R2S Team