This is my third trip to the CrossFit Games. As such, I am in the experienced old-timer camp rather than the overly anxious first-time athlete category.

There was a time when Lindsey Valenzuela was not a household name in the world of functional fitness. But in 2011, she was simply “one to watch.”

Are we truly crowned the Fittest on Earth or do we merely have the winner of a contest with a bunch of arbitrary variables?

Facing the truth was a common and important theme from this past week's writing, so here are my picks for your must-read articles.

What's up with the big names not qualifying for the Games? Rocky came back to win at the end of Rocky III. But only after he STFU and got to work.

Everyone who reads this site is serious about their fitness. But both CrossFitters and triathletes are special breeds.

The NPFL ups the ante significantly. Take a sport that you and I can do, spin it into a team that we can follow, and yes, we will be there.

The road to the 2014 Games was different than in previous years, with the addition of the Masters Qualifier, a new training mindset, and being a year older.

This last week when the Masters Qualifier workouts were announced, you would have thought someone threw a bag of kittens into a river.

Serious CrossFit Games contenders are signing with the NPFL. It may be time for CrossFit to discover diplomacy.

Did you participate in the Open this year? What did you learn from making that choice?

Everyone is a coach, everyone is a strategist, but frankly, your game is your game.

Fourteen judges clicked good on a video submission that had the world-record score, which means, clearly, they did not watch this video.

From the announcement to the workout itself there were a variety of perplexing moments. Here is the definitive collection of accumulated 14.3 official "WTF?" moments.

History remembers Jackie Robinson at the man who broke through, but to be fair, it was Branch Rickey who was the visionary. CrossFit, Inc. had such a chance to be visionary, but they played it safe.

Your position on the leaderboard and in your box is completely arbitrary, based on the huge variable that is everyone else. Why would you define yourself according to variables you cannot control?

I challenge every box reading this to program workouts for one month without high-rep Olympic lifts or touch-and-go deadlifts. There are so many workout options not being utilized.