Open 14.5
The infamous Open finale: 21-18-15-12-9-6-3 of thrusters and bar-facing burpees. No time cap - just finish.
- Format
- Ladder
- Level
- advanced
Ladder
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Open 14.5 is a ladder workout by Fiz, built from 2 movements. It is set at advanced level.
About Open 14.5
Open 14.5 is a descending ladder of thrusters and bar-facing burpees: twenty-one of each, then eighteen, fifteen, twelve, nine, six and three. It was released as the closing workout of the 2014 online qualifying season and it is famous for one detail. There is no time cap.
No cap means no strategy but forward
Every other competition workout gives you a clock to hide behind: pace badly and the buzzer eventually rescues you. This one does not. Eighty-four thrusters and eighty-four bar-facing burpees have to be completed however long that takes, which for a large number of athletes meant well over thirty minutes of continuous work. Removing the cap changes the psychology completely, because slowing down does not reduce the amount of work, it only extends the time you spend doing it.
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The burpees are where the time actually goes
Most athletes think of this as a thruster workout and finish it knowing it was a burpee workout. Eighty-four bar-facing burpees at a fading pace is comfortably the larger share of the total time, so the discipline that matters is maintaining a burpee rhythm rather than protecting the barbell. Pick a cadence you could hold for the whole workout, stand up, jump over, and go straight back down without pausing. On the thrusters, break the big sets early into halves rather than going unbroken at twenty-one and paying for it at fifteen and twelve.
What's a good Open 14.5 time
Twelve minutes is an excellent 14.5 and the very best went near nine, though eighteen to thirty is the realistic range for most people. What makes this one different is what those numbers mean. With no cap, a bad time is not a workout that ended early, it is a workout that went on longer, and the athletes who suffer most are always the ones who stopped. For a first attempt the useful goal is not a time at all: it is to never stand still, because standing still here never ends anything.