Editorial: The State of Judging at Local Competitions

I’ve been involved with a number of CrossFit competitions of different sizes – from small, in-house events to massive, dub-step-dominated Throwdowns.  Regardless of the size or the success of the event, one complaint always arises after the competition dust settles: judging.

The topic of judging is hardly unique to our sport.  Referees in professional and collegiate sports are consistently blamed for poor game calling, ignorant decisions, and ethical violations.  As the sport of CrossFit grows, we’re seeing an increase in local and regional competitions, so much so that my Saturdays have been hi-jacked by the CrossFit community for the past 12 weeks now.  With more competitions comes a greater need for judges, and as the intensity of the sport increases so does the focus on judging standards and performance.  So how do we remedy the community’s complaints about bad judging?

The issue of judging is a difficult issue to resolve in part because most of the staffing of competitions is by volunteers.  While it can be difficult to secure enough volunteers for an event, it’s even more difficult to wrangle enough judges - let alone judges who are Level 1 certified and/or have judged before.  Often times judges are snagged last-minute and are people who initially said they’d volunteer to help, thinking they’d be checking-off athletes at registration or handing-out t-shirts.
While I commend these individuals for stepping up to the plate and judging for the day, as a community I think we can agree that the person who’s only been CrossFitting 4 months and still needs to be reminded what constitutes a squat clean thruster is hardly the optimal choice to judge elite, Games-experienced athletes.  In all fairness, most competitions I’ve seen take the experienced judges and have them judge the elite athletes, but my point is that there are people who are unsure of the movements/standards deciding the fate of athletes who’ve paid good money to compete and who deserve as fair as a competition as possible.

Now I’ve tried to schedule judges weeks in advance of a competition.  Asking the CrossFitters I feel have enough experience with the sport, are certified, and/or are currently coaching, I get a handful of responses, most of which fall into the following categories:

-I want to compete at that comp

-I’m out of town that weekend/already have plans

-(laughs in my face)

So if all the ‘good’ judges can’t judge or refuse to judge, we as a community must accept those warm bodies who are brave enough to assume the responsibility.  Seeing as how this is the state of judging in our current CrossFit community, I have three ideas/suggestions I’d like to share.

1.  Paid Judges

Paying judges hardly assures good judging – after all, let’s admit, no matter how solid the judging is there will ALWAYS be judging complaints.  That being said, would medium to large competitions be willing to budget for good judges?  This could only work if someone assumes responsibility for training the judges and testing the judges, but I’ve seen this method have potential at a larger competition in which I was involved.  The event organizers held judging clinics where they weeded out the worst judges right off the bat.  One test was pull-ups; an athlete did a handful of butterfly pull-ups and the potential judge was asked to count how many good reps were in the set.  You’d be surprised at some of the results.  One potential judge, who was excused from the judging pool, missed ten reps altogether, counting out loud “1, 2, 3, 4, 14, 15, 16…”.  The event judging pool ended up being a solid group of judges, but there were still failures of a different kind that caused poor judging to occur during the event.  See idea/issue number two below (“Event Programming”).

And in case you’ve never judged, let’s be clear about why they truly deserve to be paid for an event.  The least amount of time I’ve spent at an event for judging has been 9 hours.  Other events have sucked 10-14 hours out of my weekend.  Yes, that’s one of my only days off IN THE MONTH and I just donated it all to a local competition.  I walk away with no voice, a massive headache from the loud music, and I often have to take a full rest day the next day just to recover from judging.  Talk about screwing up my own athletic programming!  And judging is hard.  Depending on the programming, it can be ridiculously hard.  Try judging a team competition with burpee box jump overs; you have four athletes alternating sides of burpees then box jump overs, and you have to ensure the first athlete lands with two feet then whip your head around to the next athlete to make sure they didn’t start their burpee too soon and that their chest hits the ground.  I swear I was dizzy for days after that event.

I think the case for paying judges is well understood so long as they perform well.  How to ensure they perform well?  Let’s continue on to my next thought.

2.  Event Programming

How do you ensure poor judging?  Don’t release the workouts until just before the event, or even worse, just before the athletes compete for that WOD.  Now if you want to keep these a secret from the athletes that’s fine, but I feel judges need to be prepped for movements and standards ahead of time.  Best case scenario would be a few days before the event, but the night before is fine as well.  I don’t feel telling them what the workouts are the morning of the event provides enough time for the judge to internalize what the workout will look like and what to expect from different levels of athletes.  When I’m set to judge, I learn the workouts and study the movement standards videos that are often available.  I find myself visualizing the workouts while washing my hair, thinking about how I’d want to do them and how one could shave off precious second of time here or there.  This allows me plenty of time to talk with the event programmers or head judges to understand what they will and will not allow.

One example is the classic burpee movement.  Athletes tend to save time by “sharking” their burpees where their backs are rounded and their hips are not extended (they don’t jump/stand fully erect but instead stay hunched over for the jump/clap).  Some competitions allow this, others do not.  But these are movement considerations I as a judge need to think about so I’m prepared when I see them happen in competition (prepped to rep or no rep the athlete).  The worse thing that can happen as a judge is seeing something an athlete does that you’ve never seen before but that you think might be considered cheating the rep.  This happened to me at a recent competition with kettlebell presses (kettlebell shoulder-to-overhead).  At the judges meeting we hadn’t discussed “cradling” the kettlebell; catching the bell on the descent with a second hand, then releasing the second hand before pressing the next rep.  I had to make a split second decision about if I’d count that, and I chose to count it since we didn’t tell the athletes they couldn’t and I knew the rep wasn’t about negative strength.  But understand the mental power it took to keep track of the count I was on then process this decision all while communicating to the athlete was very difficult.  And what’s sad is I think other judges no-repped their athletes for cradling, creating an inconsistency in judging standards. 

Not only is releasing the workouts to the judges ahead of time important but the programmers need to communicate precise standards for all aspects of the workouts.  Every single little tweak an athlete can do, either on purpose to save time or not on purpose and as just a freak of movement, needs to be addressed with the judging staff ahead of time.  Clarity of what the judges need to look for to count the rep needs to be over-communicated to ensure consistent and good judging.  For example, a head judge once described ring pushups to me and told me to look for a greater than 90 degree angle in the elbows AND contact of rings with arms.  I had to get him to clarify this as I know I can ring pushup and achieve a greater than 90 degree angle without having the rings touch my arms.  So as a judging staff we came to the agreement that the greater than 90 degree arm angle was the deciding factor of a good rep.  Event programmers and/or head judges need to think hard about what judges could see in competition and address these issues ahead of time.  It also helps to have a Q&A with the judging staff as this allows judges to possibly bring up issues not addressed by the head judges and not understood by fellow judges.

These considerations also need to be addressed with athletes ahead of time as the judges and the athletes need to be on the EXACT same page.  I personally feel trying to keep workouts a secret until just before the event creates more issues with regards to misunderstanding of movements and standards by both judges and athletes, but if you must keep it a secret from the athletes, you better have one hell of a good athlete briefing to discuss what’s allowed and what’s not allowed, and have the judges present and on the same page at that time.

In summation, even the best judges can present poor judging given poor event programming and judge preparation.  The solid set of judges that I discussed in the “Paid Judges” section above ended up having various bad judging situations because the event organizers kept changing the workouts just hours before the workout was set to begin.  The judges, while good/solid judges, were not properly educated as to the event standards and thus didn’t perform as well as a cohesive unit.  Lesson to be learned – even the best judge can conduct poor judging if they are not given the proper tools with which to do their job.

3.  Better Athlete Standards

So what do we do as a community when we can’t ensure we have the best judges or are given judges that weren’t properly prepped for the competition?  This is when the hate mail starts to get sent my way.  I vote to put greater responsibility on the athlete for maintaining the standards.  Yes, athletes, I challenge you to make every rep count without question.

In our typical daily WODs at our home box we are rarely given a judge.  It’s up to us to do full reps and hold the integrity that is CrossFit.  We report our scores/weights/times without being questioned as it’s a trust factor ingrained in the notion of CrossFit.  Yes, we all saw Billy short his squats, and yes, you better believe I called-out Susie when her pull-ups were way short of chin above bar, but for the most part, each athlete is tasked with holding a certain level of movement standards.  And why do we hold such standards?  It’s for when we do report our scores we know everyone performed on a level playing field.  It’s so when I walk away from a workout I feel good about doing the full reps and not cheating so as to appear to be stronger or faster than I really am.  It’s because it’s the right thing to do.

So why should this change in competition?  Why would an athlete feel it’s okay to short reps to win?  Is it okay because the judge still counted the rep?  Do we suddenly throw the integrity of CrossFit out the window in order to take a podium position at a local competition that, in all honesty, really means nothing?  I understand some feel it’s part of the game, to see just how creative one can get to shave seconds off a workout.  I get that as an athlete and as a competitor I want to win and that I’ll try my hardest to do so.  But in all the competitions I’ve seen, including multiple years of Regionals and Games, I feel it rarely comes down to enough of a split second to justify shorting a rep.  What I mean is that shorting that rep really won’t help you win because you’re going to end up finishing 25 seconds after the leader anyways.  Rarely, so rarely does it come down to 2 seconds or less.

I’ve spent tons of time trying to brainstorm to remedy our judging situations at local and regional competitions.  The only solution that seems feasible at this point in time is to put the responsibility back on the athletes.  The community as a whole needs to shine a spotlight on those athletes that try to intentionally short their reps.  I understand there will always be “gaming” it to shave time – like if the standards don’t call for full hip extension with burpees, then yes, I too would shark the shit out of every rep.  But there’s a fine line with gaming and with cheating, and until we publicize criticism for athletes intentionally shorting reps in competition, our judging situation will get no better.

Integrity is not a concept left behind at your home box when competing for prize money.  Integrity is vital to fair competition.  Integrity is CrossFit.  And that’s my judging solution.