You walk into a box, look at the whiteboard and instead of a list of exercises there's just a name: Fran. People who've been training for a while pull a serious face. Someone who arrived two weeks ago asks who Fran is.
Fran isn't a person. She's a workout, and one of the best known in the world. She belongs to a group of fixed workouts that CrossFit calls benchmarks, or reference WODs: always the same exercises, the same reps and the same loads, so you can repeat them six months later and see, in black and white, how much you've progressed.
In this article you'll see what these workouts are, what each of the most famous ones demands, how they're adapted for beginners and why they're worth doing even if you never want to compete.
What a WOD is, and what makes a WOD a benchmark
WOD stands for workout of the day. On most days the WOD changes: the programming combines strength, gymnastics and cardiovascular work in different ways, so your body doesn't get used to just one thing. If you don't know the exercises that usually come up yet, the article on the CrossFit exercises you'll see on the whiteboard is a good place to start.
A benchmark is the opposite: a workout that never changes. It's written down, it has a name and it has rules. That repetition is what gives it value, because it turns the workout into a test. You do Cindy today, log your score, and when she comes back on the board you have a number to compare yourself with. Not with the person next to you: with yourself.
There are two main families:
- The “Girls”, workouts with women's names, published by CrossFit in the early 2000s. The idea was to name them the way hurricanes are named: something that leaves you lying on the floor at the end deserves a name of its own.
- The “Hero WODs”, workouts that honour military personnel, firefighters and law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty. They're usually longer and tougher, and the most famous is Murph.
The best-known benchmark WODs
This table brings together the workouts you'll most often see written on a box's whiteboard. The loads are the reference ones for men and women (the so-called Rx), rounded to the nearest kilo. Nobody starts here, and you'll soon see how they're scaled.
| Name | The training | Reference weight | What it tests |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fran | 21, 15 and 9 reps of thrusters and pull-ups, against the clock | 43 kg / 29 kg bar | Power and the ability to suffer through a short effort |
| Grace | 30 clean and jerks, against the clock | 61 kg / 43 kg barbell | Barbell technique under fatigue |
| Isabel | 30 snatches, against the clock | 61 kg / 43 kg barbell | Snatch technique and speed |
| Cindy | 20 minutes: as many rounds as possible of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups and 15 squats | Bodyweight only | Muscular endurance and pace |
| Helen | 3 rounds of 400 m run, 21 kettlebell swings and 12 pull-ups | 24 kg / 16 kg kettlebell | Aerobic capacity with strength work |
| Karen | 150 wall balls, against the clock | 9 kg / 6 kg ball | Legs, lungs and head |
| Annie | 50, 40, 30, 20 and 10 reps of double unders and sit-ups | Just rope and bodyweight | Coordination and core |
| Murph | 1.6 km run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats and another 1.6 km run | 9 kg / 6 kg vest | Long endurance |
Fran: short, intense and famous for it
Fran looks like nothing much: 45 thrusters and 45 pull-ups in total. It's precisely because it's short that it's hard. The fastest athletes finish it in under three minutes, which means there's no room for pacing at all: it's all-out effort from start to finish. For many people it's the first workout where they understand what intensity means in CrossFit.
Grace and Isabel: the bar gets heavier when you're tired
Thirty reps of a single Olympic movement. Grace uses the clean and jerk and Isabel the snatch. What these two workouts measure isn't just strength: it's your ability to hold your technique when your heart is racing. If you're interested in the technical side of these movements, the article on the snatch and the clean and jerk in weightlifting explains each phase.
You'll also hear people talk about Heavy Grace. It's a variation made up by boxes and athletes, with a heavier barbell and the same number of reps. It isn't an official benchmark: it's a way of taking Grace further once it stops being a challenge.
Cindy: the benchmark almost everyone can do
Cindy has no load at all. Pull-ups, push-ups and squats, for 20 minutes, counting how many full rounds you complete. Because the exercises are easy to scale, it's one of the best benchmarks for beginners: in your first month you do Cindy with bands on the pull-ups and push-ups from your knees, and a few months later you see the rounds going up.
Murph: the Hero WOD you do once a year
Murph honours Lieutenant Michael Murphy, a US Navy SEAL killed in Afghanistan in 2005 and posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. It was his favourite workout, which he called Body Armor because he did it wearing a vest.
It's the longest workout on this list. Even well-trained athletes take over 40 minutes, and many people take more than an hour. That's why it isn't a weekly workout: in many boxes it's done once a year, almost like an event.
What if I can't do any of these workouts?
Nobody manages it on day one, and you're not supposed to. The weights in the table are where people who've trained for years end up, not where they start.
Every benchmark has a version for you, and the coach decides it, looking at your experience, your mobility and how you are that day. The workout keeps its structure (the same movements, the same order, the same kind of effort), and the load, reps or exercise variation change. Like this:
| Benchmark | Beginner version (example) |
|---|---|
| Fran | Thrusters with an empty bar or light dumbbells; pull-ups with a band or ring rows; 15, 12 and 9 reps |
| Grace | Clean and jerk with a light barbell or dumbbells, working on technique |
| Cindy | Band-assisted pull-ups, push-ups with knees on the floor or on a box, squats down to a bench |
| Helen | 200 m run or row, light kettlebell, ring row |
| Murph | Half the reps, no vest, and running swapped for rowing or the bike if needed |
What makes this a fair test is logging the version you did. If today you did Cindy with a green band and push-ups on the box, three months from now you repeat the same version and compare. When that version gets easy, you go up a step. That's how CrossFit works for anyone, not just athletes: the same class, the same workout, different intensities.
Why it's worth repeating the same workouts
In a traditional gym it's easy to spend months training without knowing whether you're improving. The scales barely move, the mirror lies, and your motivation goes with them. Benchmarks solve this in three ways.
They give you a number that's yours alone. It doesn't matter if the person next to you did more rounds of Cindy. What matters is whether you did more rounds than last time.
They show what the scales don't. You can weigh the same as six months ago and do Helen two minutes faster. That's better fitness, more strength and more engine, and it counts as much as the kilos.
They help the coach programme. When a benchmark result stalls, the coach can see where the difficulty is: pull-ups, running, barbell technique. From there they know what to work on with you.
How often a benchmark is done
There's no fixed rule, but there is a principle: enough time between attempts for your progress to show. Doing Fran every week measures nothing, it just wears you out. Doing it every few months shows how far you've come.
If you're just starting out, the most important thing isn't even your first result. It's having one. Your first benchmark score is your starting line, and it's what you'll compare yourself against for a long time.
Three tips for your first benchmark
- Choose the right version, not the heaviest one. A benchmark done with technique falling apart isn't a test, it's a risk. Talk to the coach before you start.
- Write down your result and the version. Time or rounds, load, bands, everything. Without a record, the benchmark loses its reason to exist.
- Don't compare yourself with the whiteboard. Other people's times are there for motivation, not as a yardstick. Your yardstick is your last attempt.
Want to know what your Cindy is?
At Revolution, in Buarcos, CrossFit classes in Figueira da Foz are led by coaches who adapt every workout to your level, from day one to the benchmark a year from now. If you've never trained, the article on how to start CrossFit with no experience shows what the first class is like.
Your first class is free and you don't need any experience. See the class timetable, the prices and, if you have any questions, get in touch.
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