This year’s Battle Bunker competition consisted of a “Pipeline” that involved a virtual “Combine.” The top athletes from the combine move on to the Battle Bunker Regionals. Athletes were selected to compete at the Eastern Regionals in North Carolina or Western Regionals in Texas.

Both events took place on separate weekends but consisted of the same three workouts. Looking ahead to the Hybricon Games, which will take place on October 28th and 29th, we crunched the numbers to give us a feel for where athletes might stack up when they go head to head. We recognize a variety of factors could impact the athlete’s performance. But, given that, here is the Battle Bunker Cross-Regional Comparison: 

Event One: “Yard Work”

The first event tested the athlete’s functional capacity in a “Murph” inspired test. This was the most grueling test of the day and set the tone for the rest of the competition. The test was:

1 Mile Run

60 Sandbag Shoulder to Overhead (100 lbs)

120 Push Ups

240 Air Squats

1 Mile Run

All of the work was completed wearing a twenty-pound weight vest. Here is how all of the finalists would have ranked if they were at the same regionals:

 

 

 

 

 

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Event Two: Barbell Capacity

In the second event, the stronger competitors were able to make a big jump up the leaderboard. The event was:

60 seconds Max Reps Bench Press (185 lbs)

*3 minutes rest*

60 seconds Max Reps Deadlift (315 lbs)

The score was the combined total of reps. Mike Brown and Kaleb Yates both achieved the highest number of reps on the bench (31). Mike Brown was the sole victor on the deadlifts, with 32 reps completed. 

Event Three: “Last Athlete Standing”

The final event was pure running. The entire field of runners started together, and after each lap, the back of the pack would be eliminated until only one athlete remained. Due to the nature of this event, it was impossible to do a cross-regional comparison.

In the live competition, Jake Gibbs and Joe Hoffman ran away with this event at their regionals. It should also be noted that while Jack Driscoll has the fastest 1600m time listed, he took 10th on “Last Athlete Standing” in the East.

Final Tally:

For the final tally, we will use the same system that Battle Bunker used at Regionals (One Point for First, Two Points for Second, and so on.) Here is where the athletes shook out:

Interestingly, all of the top 5 men came out of the East Regional. We look forward to seeing how the events take place come October in Chula Vista for the 2023 Hybricon Games. 

Click here for the women’s combined results.