There's a question that almost always comes up before the first class, and almost never out loud: “so what exactly am I going to have to do?”. Everyone has seen a video of someone throwing a barbell overhead or doing upside-down push-ups against the wall, and the conclusion is always the same: that's not for me.
The truth is far less dramatic. CrossFit exercises aren't dozens of exotic things: they're three families of movement you already know, combined in different ways every day. And in a normal class, on any old Tuesday, most of what you do is squats, jumps, rows and lifting things off the floor.
This article is the missing map. You'll find out which exercises exist, what the abbreviations written on the whiteboard mean, and how many of them you need to know before you turn up for the first time. The answer to that last one is zero, but it's worth understanding why.
The three families of CrossFit exercises
All training comes out of three boxes. Once you understand the boxes, you understand ninety per cent of what you see in a box.
Gymnastics: your own body is the load
Here there's no weight except you. This is the family that includes the air squat, push-ups, pull-ups, box jumps, planks and, further down the line, things like handstands or rope climbs.
It's the most democratic family and the most underrated. Nobody needs special equipment, and progress shows quickly: someone who can't do a single pull-up in September does three in January, with the right work in between.
Weightlifting: the barbell, kettlebells and dumbbells
This is the family that looks scary from the outside and gives the most results per hour invested. Here you'll find the classic strength movements, the deadlift, the back squat, the overhead press, and the two Olympic lifts, the snatch and the clean and jerk, which come straight from weightlifting.
Load is always relative. An empty 15 kilo bar is a perfectly legitimate workout, and that's where everyone starts, including people who arrive already strong from another sport.
Metabolic conditioning: where your heart rate goes up
The third box is the engine: running, rowing, the assault bike, the SkiErg, the skipping rope and burpees. It's the part that makes a twenty-minute workout feel harder than an hour on the treadmill, because there isn't a single dead moment.
The exercises you'll actually see written on the board
This is the short, honest list of what comes up week after week. It's not every movement that exists in CrossFit, it's the ones that make up most real workouts.
| Exercise | What it is, in two lines | Family |
|---|---|---|
| Air squat | Bodyweight squat, hips below the knee | Gymnastics |
| Burpee | Drop to the floor, get up and jump with your hands above your head | Conditioning |
| Box jump | Jump onto a box, with the option to step up one foot at a time | Gymnastics |
| Pull-up | Pull-up on the bar, with a band for as long as you need it | Gymnastics |
| Toes to bar | Hanging from the bar, bring your feet up to touch it | Gymnastics |
| Push-up | Push-up, with the trunk going up and down as one block | Gymnastics |
| Deadlift | Deadlift: lifting the bar off the floor with a straight back | Lifting |
| Front squat | Squat with the bar in front, resting on the shoulders | Lifting |
| Shoulder to overhead | Taking the bar from the shoulders to overhead, arms locked out | Lifting |
| Clean | Bringing the bar from the floor to your shoulders in a single movement | Lifting |
| Snatch | Snatch: from the floor to overhead, without stopping on the way | Lifting |
| Thruster | Front squat followed by pushing the bar overhead | Lifting |
| Wall ball | Squatting with a ball and throwing it at a target on the wall | Conditioning |
| Kettlebell swing | Swinging the kettlebell in front of the body, with power coming from the hips | Lifting |
| Double under | Rope passing twice per jump | Conditioning |
| Row, bike, SkiErg | Rower, assault bike and ski, measured in metres or calories | Conditioning |
Sixteen lines. That's pretty much it. A member who understands these sixteen movements can read any workout written on the board at any box in the world.
The whiteboard vocabulary, translated
The second barrier isn't the exercises, it's the acronyms. They're written in English because that's how they arrived, and nobody translated them in time.
| Abbreviation | Meaning | In practice |
|---|---|---|
| WOD | Workout of the Day | The workout of the day, the same for everyone in that class |
| AMRAP | As Many Rounds As Possible | You have X minutes, do as many rounds as you can |
| EMOM | Every Minute On the Minute | Every minute on the minute you start a task, whatever's left is rest |
| For time | Against the clock | You have a list of work and do it as fast as you can |
| RX | As prescribed | You did the workout with the original loads and movements |
| Scaled | Adapted to you | The same class, with a lighter load or a simpler movement |
| PR | Personal record | Your all-time best in that exercise or that workout |
| Box | The gym | The name for a CrossFit gym |
The difference between AMRAP and EMOM is worth remembering, because it changes everything you feel. In an AMRAP you set the pace, and the temptation is to start too fast. In an EMOM the clock is in charge, which is why it's the format used when what matters is movement quality, not speed.
How these exercises come together in an hour
A class isn't a random list of exercises. It always has the same structure, and knowing it takes away half the nerves of the first time.
- Warm-up, about ten minutes, raising your temperature and moving the joints the workout will call on.
- Technical or strength part, where a movement is worked slowly and carefully, often with the barbell.
- WOD, the workout of the day itself, which usually lasts between eight and twenty minutes.
- Cool-down and stretching, the part everyone feels like skipping and nobody should.
At Revolution CrossFit classes run Monday to Friday, from 06h30 to 19h40, and there's also the Community WOD on Saturday morning at 10h00, the most social workout of the week. The full schedule is in the timetable.
“What if I can't do any of these exercises?”
That's exactly the normal situation on day one, and the system was designed with it in mind.
Every movement has a ladder of versions, from the bottom up. The pull-up starts with a band, or in a row position. The burpee can be done without the jump at the end. The box jump can be done stepping up one foot at a time, which is actually how many experienced people still do it in long workouts. The snatch is learnt with a PVC pipe before you ever see a barbell.
Scaling isn't the consolation version of the workout. It's the workout, adjusted to the person doing it, and that's why the same class can fit someone who competes and someone who started training again at 58 after twenty years off. We wrote about this in detail in Is CrossFit for everyone?.
How many you need to know before you show up
None. And that's not us being nice, it's how the method works.
The first class is coached: the coach explains each movement before the workout starts, and the weight they give you is the one you can move well. Nobody learns the deadlift by reading about the deadlift, and nobody is going to ask you to do a snatch on day one.
What really helps, if you want to arrive prepared, is knowing these three things: the class lasts about an hour, you don't need any kit apart from training clothes and a water bottle, and the trainers you already have at home are perfectly fine to start with. When it's time to think about proper footwear, we have an article just on that, shoes for CrossFit.
If you want to go deeper into one side
CrossFit exercises are the way in, and some people discover along the way that they particularly enjoy one of the three families.
Those who fall in love with the barbell have dedicated weightlifting classes, where the snatch and the clean and jerk are worked on with time and without the clock running, and the way in is explained in weightlifting for beginners. Those who prefer the engine and machine side usually end up in HYROX. And anyone who wants to understand the philosophy behind it all will find it in what CrossFit is all about.
Try it before you decide
You can read this list ten times and still not know if it's for you, because this isn't decided by reading, it's decided by doing. One class is enough to find out if you like the atmosphere, the pace and the way things are explained to you.
Your first class at Revolution, in Buarcos, is free and needs no experience at all. You turn up, say it's your first time, and the workout is built around you. Check the timetable, pick the time that suits you and book on the contact page. If you'd like to see the plans and what it costs to train with us first, it's all in prices, with no small print.
The snatch and the clean and jerk you see on the board are the two weightlifting movements. We explain them phase by phase in the article on the snatch and the clean and jerk.
Some days the whiteboard doesn't show exercises, it shows a name. Meet Fran, Grace, Cindy and Murph, and find out why they come back from time to time.
