The 2024 CrossFit season has kicked off, with a live announcement detailing the first workout of the CrossFit Open – the yearly mass-participation event where thousands of athletes compete for a ranking on a worldwide leaderboard, hoping to secure a place in the CrossFit Games.
We speculated earlier what 24.1 – the first workout of this year’s Open – could be, based on a cryptic Instagram clue from CrossFit General Manager of Sport Dave Castro. We need guess no more, as the live announcement aired on Thursday, followed by a group of elite Crossfitters going head-to-head as the first to tackle the workout. This roster included legend Brent Fikowski, who shared his tips for The Open with us recently on the Men’s Health podcast, available ad-free for members in our app.
So, just what can you expect from the opening workout of the 2024 CrossFit season? Well, it’s very CrossFit...
What is CrossFit Open Workout 24.1?
A '21-15-9' rep scheme is a textbook CF protocol, where you perform 21 reps of each movement, followed by 15 of each, and finally 9. The result is normally a nauseating sprint where you attempt to keep your rest to an absolute minimum, powering through all 45 reps of each exercise until you collapse into a heap and/or roll around groaning. 24.1, which utilises a classic CrossFit pairing of burpees and dumbbell snatches has the potential to be a real vomit comet.
Requiring just a single dumbbell, the Rx (CrossFit nomenclature for ‘as prescribed’) weight for which is 22.5kg in the open category and 15kg in the ‘scaled’ category, you’ve only got two movements to tackle: the single armed dumbbell snatch, and the burpee. The twist is, you must complete 21 reps of snatches with one arm, followed by 21 burpees where you must jump laterally over your dumbbell, followed by 21 reps with your remaining arm, finishing with another round of 21 burpees over your dumbbell. That's all before you can move into the round of 15. After you’ve repeated the right arm/burpee/left arm/burpee protocol for 15 reps, you get to do it all again for 9 reps, bringing the rep total for the workout for a deceptively high 180 reps. Ouch.
On paper, it looks like this:
21 Dumbbell Snatches (Arm 1)
Hold one dumbbell on the ground between your legs, squatting and hinging, maintaining a flat back (A). Drive up through your hips and knees, generating momentum to pull the dumbbell up towards your chin, before punching directly overhead in one movement (B). Lower the dumbbell, returning the weight to the start position.
21 Lateral Burpees Over Dumbbell
With your dumbbell on the floor next to you, step back and hit the deck into a press-up position. Lower your body until your chest touches the floor (A). Jump your legs back towards your chest, stand back up and jump powerfully over the dumbbell to your side (B) – driving through your hips when you take off. Land and immediately drop to the floor and repeat. The dumbbell keeps you accountable for the height of each jump.
21 Dumbbell Snatches (Arm 2)
Repeat your snatches, this time with the opposite arm.
21 lateral burpees over dumbbell
15 dumbbell snatches, arm 1
15 lateral burpees over dumbbell
15 dumbbell snatches, arm 2
15 lateral burpees over dumbbell
9 dumbbell snatches, arm 1
9 lateral burpees over dumbbell
9 dumbbell snatches, arm 2
9 lateral burpees over dumbbell
How long should this workout take? Well, that depends how long you can hold your nerve for. CrossFit have time-capped the workout at 15 minutes, so whatever happens, it’ll be over quickly.
Tips to Help You Smash CrossFit Open Workout 24.1
21-15-9 may be a traditional CrossFit sprint workout, but breaking up the snatches essentially gives you a whole new round of each exercise, meaning this is more of a ‘triplet’ than a ‘couplet’. Going out too fast could spell trouble in the second half of the total reps.
2023 CrossFit Games champ Jeffery Adler was one off the first to tackle the workout in the live announcement, and in a post-WOD interview gave his take: 'If you go unbroken on the dumbbell, your grip will feel it…so if you want to break those up if grip is a limiting factor, then do so. Then just base it on the burpees.'
He then advised that athletes aim to keep it smooth on the snatches before putting their efforts into a fast showing on the burpees. He added, 'I would argue going faster on the burpees will pay off more than trying to go fast on the dumbbell and then dying on the burpees.'
Alexis Raptis, the winner of the women’s live showdown, shared a grim piece of advice that nobody tackling this workout really wants to hear: 'Go harder than you want to go.'
Coach Paul Warrior advises that whilst this is a sprint workout, and the only pace here is "go", you may still need a strategy for the snatches. 'If the dumbbell is heavy for you, take short, deliberate breaks. Use seconds or breaths as your metric, but don't take any longer than you need.' As for the question 'what if I need to break up the burpees?' Warrior's response is short and sweet: 'Absolutely NOT!' Got it?
As for our advice? It’s a maximum of 15 minutes, so go all in. If you feel your grip fatiguing early on in the snatches, drop your bell, take 2-3 deep breaths and jump straight back in – catch it early and don’t get caught unable to even pick the bell up in later rounds.
We also don't want to be wasting time between movements, so find the least comfortable pace you can maintain without blowing up, and hold on.
Our top tip: find a good breathing tempo on the burpees. Avoid bracing up and holding your breath, try to take a big deep breath at the top of each rep, then blow it out at the bottom.
Finally, keep reminding yourself: this is a sprint effort, it will be over soon. Just hold on!
With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.
As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.
Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts.
You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.
