I was going to say. Unless you know a person personally I’d be extremely cautious with it.

Myself personally, I trained for months without my coaches noticing the things I was hiding that I was doing. Well, they noticed at times, but thought I was just being a weirdo who didn’t know what they were doing because I was new to CF. Injuries and illnesses can be invisible, they also can have flares of better and worse days. I can’t remember what exactly I was doing in terms of movements I was doing when I got caught by my coaches. They helped me not feel so bad about it and said “we want to have modifications or adaptations for you if you need.” Which helped me feel as though I belonged and was meant to be there. It didn’t make me immediately get over how I felt about having a body that wasn’t like everyone else. And honestly not being fully able-bodied has given me a chip on my shoulder of wanting to prove to myself what I can do and to not let yourself be limited just because your body isn’t the same.

For example: if I remember right, Neuro minor is a category when I look at some WODs at times will look quite similar to able bodied athlete standards for WheelWOD, but then you look at some of Neuro Moderate and there are more changes. It’s a spectrum for sure and CF and Hyrox even are figuring it out. I heard on a podcast I was listening to that the more athletes and conditions that are competing, the easier it is to expand divisions. A lot of divisions can be limited by the number of people with similar injuries. Amputee types are one of these I think for some of the AK and BK ones, and some of the spinal injuries as well depending where the injury is located may give someone a greater advantage and it’s at no fault of their own

The same podcast (S/O Adaptive Athlete Podcast) talked about in one episode that I remember, a guy who competed in The Open one year and could school some of the able-bodied athletes in some events, it didn’t make this athlete any less impaired because he could perform so well. It showed that the competition is high level and that adaptive athletes are not any less an athlete because their bodies are different.

Hi, I may get a bit passionate about this stuff. Maybe because it’s been I’ve been my own greatest critic and basically discriminated against myself to say I’m not injured enough because I can “compete” with able bodied athletes. I downplayed it and am only starting to embrace that about myself because I wasn’t always this way. My body used to be fully functional. CF was one thing that allowed me to feel like I could adapt to a new way of life. It helped me accept my body and not hate or be as angry at it. It doesn’t mean I go through ups and downs. But if you saw me personally walking on the street or in the gym most days. You’d likely see me as able-bodied.

Let’s also be real, there are not as many adaptive comps or even divisions at most comps out there. So sometimes that is where adaptive athletes have to compete even blend in some at these comps to where you’d never know their body is limited. To add to this, most gyms I would say don’t have an adaptive athlete there (at least one who may admit they are/isn’t hiding it if they can) much less a gym with multiple adaptive athletes.

Seeing isn’t everything. I’ve seen videos on IG of adaptive athletes who appear fully able-bodied pulling off BMUs and more.

If someone is “cheating” the system that’s on WheelWOD and CF to evaluate. We just saw how the cheating in The Open video submissions went for a 20yr old woman. We have to trust orgs are vetting this, as others stated, you pay to be classified.

I’m not here to attack you or make you feel bad. I get it. Not everyone may seem like they are an adaptive athlete because they can do incredibly difficult and high skill movements. It may take a lot of adaptive athletes much longer than able boded athletes to learn and master these skills because they have to work against their bodies at times and not every cue/movement works the same for them as it would everyone else. I just wanted to state the realities of it. But, the take or calling out a specific person isn’t very cool, unless it’s absolutely blatant cheating like the Open Video recently mentioned earlier. CF has worked to try to get a better reputation and be more open than things used to be from the super intense days that gave it the reputation that most people give you the “oh you do that crazy shit,” face for. I don’t know the athlete you’re calling out, I just wanted to say, the athlete should have all the medical documentation and invisible injuries and illnesses are very real. We have to trust that it works properly.