Students will have an opportunity to show off their athletic ability at UREC’s third annual Palouse Throwdown today, a CrossFit competition at the Valley Road Playfields.

Event coordinator Matthew Atwell said fitness competitions have really taken off in the past few years, and he wanted to provide a similar event for the Pullman area.

“We have all the equipment that we need, the infrastructure and the recourses that make this a significant event,” Atwell said. “I feel like there are a lot of CrossFit competitions that are not run properly. They’ve stopped testing fitness a long time ago, but we are getting back to the basics of what CrossFit is.”

Palouse Throwdown participants will compete as teams of two in five events: Metabolic Meltdown, Thrust ‘em If you Got ‘em, I Heart Lunges, Cannonball Run and a championship event that has yet to be announced.

The Metabolic Meltdown is made up of 12 sumo-deadlift high pulls, nine calories on the rower and six burpee box jump overs. Teammates will tag in their partner when they finish their portion of the competition. This event will last 20 minutes as teams try to get as many reps in as possible.

Thrust ‘em If you Got ‘em consists of completing three rep max thrusters. Each teammate will do this sequence once. Together, the team will have a total of six minutes to complete the event.

For the I Heart Lunges event, participants will have to lunge with a barbell in an overhead position in between three stations.

The first station calls for 50 sit-ups, while the second station consists of 40 box jumps. The third station requires participants to complete 30 kettlebell swings.

After completing all three stations, the competitor must lunge back with the barbell in a front rack position to the starting point before the second teammate can begin the same procedure.

The time cap for this event is 18 minutes.

The fourth event, the Cannonball Run, is broken into two parts. The first portion is a relay where one teammate runs to a marker and back to tag the other teammate. This trip is 350 meters.

Teams have to complete this relay four times in under seven minutes.

The second part of the Cannonball Run is the same as the first part, but participants must also carry kettlebells. This trip will be a shorter distance of 200 meters.

Teams have to complete the second part of this event four times in less than nine minutes.

Since Palouse Throwdown’s beginning back in 2015, registration has always filled up. Participants have traveled from as far as Seattle to take part. The participants range from 18 years old to people in their mid-40s.

“I think it’s interesting because we get a wide variety of individuals who do CrossFit,” Atwell said. “You will see elite athletes to recreational fitness enthusiasts who are trying to improve themselves for many reasons.”

One elite individual is senior exercise physiology major Dylan Pettit.

He finished the event in first place last year with teammate Haakon Lande, a junior pursuing a degree in criminal justice.

“My partner Haakon, who I’m doing the event again with this year, is a really good friend of mine, so it’s really fun,” Pettit said. “I also know quite a bit of people doing it this year so it’s always fun to joke around but still be competitive at the same time.”

Pettit hopes to compete at a professional level after he graduates, so he engages in CrossFit training every day.

Even though the Palouse Throwdown sounds like an intimidating event, Atwell said, not all participants are there to win first place; some are there just for the sake of competing.

“At the end of the day, a lot of people just want to do it to do it,” he said. “It’s like when someone wants to run a marathon; they’re not trying to do it to win the marathon, they just want to say that they did it.”