Everyone is first somewhere
Short answer
On OpenContest every take is ranked on many boards at the same time: your gym, city, country and the world, split by age group, sex and weight class, over all time, this year, this month and this week. That means an ordinary result can lead a board somewhere, which is what makes entering worth it if you are not a professional.
Every take on OpenContest is ranked on many boards at the same time: your gym, your city, your country and the world, each split by age group, sex and weight class, and each looked at over all time, this year, this month and this week. One video, dozens of rankings. That is why an ordinary result can still put you at the top of a board, and why the contests are worth entering if you will never hold a world record.
The problem with one big leaderboard
A single world leaderboard tells almost everyone the same thing: you are not on it. If the top of the strict pull up board is a professional athlete, a person doing their first eight reps has no reason to film them. The board exists, but it is not for them.
Most people stop at that point, and the contest ends up being a contest between a handful of people who were always going to win.
How one take lands on many boards
When you submit a take, you choose which boards it is ranked on, and it goes onto all of them at once. There are three layers.
Where you are
Every contest has boards for the world, your country, your city, your gym and your friends. Your city and gym come from your profile, and you can tag your gym on each take. A result that is nowhere on the world board can be near the top of a gym board, because the people you are ranked against are the people you train next to.
Who you are
Boards are split into brackets by age group, sex and weight class. Your date of birth sets your age group, and body weight is optional: you only add it if you want weight classes. A 45-year-old is ranked against other people in their age group as well as against everyone. A lighter lifter is ranked against people of a similar weight.
When
Each board can be viewed over all time, this year, this month and this week. A board that resets every week gives someone a fresh chance to lead it every week.
Put those together and a single take sits in many places at once: the world board, your country’s men’s or women’s board for your age, your city’s board for this month, your gym’s board for this week, and so on.
What this looks like in practice
Say you run a 5K in a time that is respectable but nothing special. On the world board you are far down the list. On your city’s board for your age group this month, you might be in the top ten. On your gym’s board this week, you might be first, because you were the only one who ran it.
That is the point of the line we keep coming back to: everyone is first somewhere. It is not a participation medal. It is an honest ranking against a smaller, more relevant group, with the size and scope of the group shown on the board.
Your row is always on screen
On every board, your own row is pinned and highlighted, with the gap to the next place. Instead of scrolling past hundreds of names to find yourself, you see where you are and what it would take to move: “2 reps to 8th”. A gap of two reps is something you can train for. A gap of forty is not.
The record holder sits at the top of each board with their take, so you can watch exactly what the best result on that board looked like.
Why it is still fair
More boards would be meaningless if the results on them were loose. They are not. Every take is checked the same way whichever board it lands on: an automatic check on every take, flags from anyone who thinks a take is wrong, and a referee review for every take in a top 10 and every new record. A first place on your gym’s weekly board gets the same referee as a first place on the world board.
The videos on ranked boards stay public, so anyone can watch the take behind any result. There is more on that in how referees check takes.
Why that makes contests worth entering
For most people, the reason to film a take is not to beat the best in the world. It is to beat the person who trains on the bar next to you, to hold the record at your gym for a month, or to see your own number go up. Many boards make those goals visible.
They also make the next step obvious. Your profile shows your best result in each contest with its current rank on every board, and how it has changed over time. When someone beats your record, you get told, and you can go and take it back.
If you are not sure where to start, how to do your first pull up gets you to a first rep, and how to film a take that counts makes sure that rep is ranked.
Questions
Do I have to choose which board my take goes on?
When you submit, you choose which boards it is ranked on. Your take then appears on every one of those boards at once, in every bracket you fit.
Do I need to enter my weight?
No. Body weight is optional. You only need it if you want to be ranked in weight classes.
Are weekly records real records?
They are real results on a real board, checked the same way as any other. The board shows which time window it covers, so a weekly first place is clearly labelled as one.