CrossFit: every answer, checked

AMRAP (As Many Rounds/Reps As Possible) means you work continuously for a fixed time. Start at 80-85% effort, a pace you can sustain without forced breaks. Going out too hard causes early burnout. The goal is consistent rounds, not a fast first round followed by dying. Experienced athletes negative-split: slightly faster in the final minutes when the clock becomes a motivator.

EMOM means Every Minute On the Minute. You perform a set number of reps at the start of each minute, then rest for the remainder. The built-in rest rewards efficiency. Coaches use it for strength (heavy barbell EMOMs), skill (gymnastics EMOMs), and conditioning (alternating movements). If you can't finish before the minute is up, the load or volume is too high.

'For Time' means you complete a fixed amount of work as fast as possible. Your score is the elapsed time, the opposite of AMRAP (max work in fixed time). Manage effort so you don't hit a wall mid-workout. A 3-minute sprint and a 20-minute grind demand different approaches. Break reps strategically before you're forced to.

Tabata is 8 rounds of 20 seconds work, 10 seconds rest: 4 minutes total. It comes from Dr. Izumi Tabata's research on trained athletes riding cycle ergometers at 170% of VO2max, which showed improvements in both aerobic and anaerobic capacity. CrossFit applies the interval structure to bodyweight and barbell movements, where the stimulus varies by movement. Scoring is often the lowest round (the 'Tabata This' format), sometimes total reps.

A Chipper is a long 'For Time' workout with many movements performed in sequence. You chip away at a large total rep count, for example 50 wall balls, 40 box jumps, 30 pull-ups, 20 deadlifts, 10 muscle-ups. Go bigger on early sets while fresh, smaller sets later. The test is mental stamina and managing fatigue across varied movement patterns.

A Ladder increases (ascending) or decreases (descending) reps each round. Examples: 1-2-3-4-5 clean and jerks, or 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 of two movements like double-unders and burpees. The ascending format builds progressive fatigue. Descending gives psychological relief as reps drop, and many Open workouts use ladder formats.

Buy-in is mandatory work completed before the main workout begins. Cash-out is mandatory work completed after it. Example: 400m run buy-in, then a 10-minute AMRAP of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 squats, then a 400m run cash-out. They add volume without complicating the main piece, often testing aerobic capacity or punishing slow transitions. Common in competition programming.

AFAP means As Fast As Possible: sprint mentality, max effort on speed. AHAP means As Heavy As Possible: build to a max load for the rep scheme. AFAP shows up on conditioning pieces, AHAP on strength or skill days. Both demand judgment. AFAP doesn't excuse sloppy technique, and AHAP should stay within movement capacity rather than ego-driven maxes that break form.

Rx (as prescribed) means completing the workout exactly as written: prescribed weights, movements, and standards. Scale when the intended stimulus changes (a workout meant to finish in under 10 minutes takes you 25 Rx), when you cannot perform the movement safely, or when the load is too heavy to maintain mechanics. Arriving at the intended stimulus is the point. There is no shame in scaling.

A tiebreak is a designated point in a workout used to separate athletes with the same final score. In a workout capped at 12 minutes, the tiebreak might be the time you complete the first 3 rounds. If two athletes both finish all reps, the faster tiebreak time places higher. If a workout has a tiebreak, push to that point rather than pacing evenly through it.

Fran is 21-15-9 reps of thrusters (43 kg / 95 lb men, 29 kg / 65 lb women) and pull-ups, For Time. Short and brutal. It tests barbell cycling, pull-up capacity, and the ability to hold intensity through severe metabolic demand. Elite athletes go sub-2 minutes; most intermediate athletes land in the 4-7 minute range. A Fran PR is a marker of overall fitness development.

Grace is 30 clean and jerks For Time (61 kg / 135 lb men, 43 kg / 95 lb women). It tests barbell cycling efficiency, grip endurance, and the ability to keep moving under a fast-rising heart rate. Elite times run under 1:30. The key skill is the power clean plus push jerk rhythm, and choosing touch-and-go versus singles based on your efficiency. Grace rewards athletes who hold mechanics under fatigue.

Helen is 3 rounds For Time: 400m run, 21 kettlebell swings (24 kg / 53 lb men, 16 kg / 35 lb women), 12 pull-ups. The intended stimulus is a moderate-duration mixed piece, around 9-12 minutes for most athletes, with top times near 7-8 minutes. It tests your ability to move between running and kettlebell or gymnastics work without long rests. Keep the swings and pull-ups in one or two sets to hold pace.

Cindy is a 20-minute AMRAP: 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 air squats, scored by total rounds plus remaining reps. Advanced athletes target 20+ rounds. It is a pure pacing test: can you hold the same round time for 20 minutes? Push-ups are the usual limiter, and Cindy exposes aerobic base and bodyweight endurance.

Annie is 50-40-30-20-10 reps of double-unders and sit-ups, For Time. It tests jump rope efficiency and midline stamina. The big early sets of double-unders demand rope skill under fatigue. Good athletes finish under 6 minutes. The common failure point: double-under timing breaks down as the abs fatigue and breathing gets ragged.

Kelly is 5 rounds For Time: 400m run, 30 box jumps (24 inch), 30 wall balls (9 kg / 20 lb). One of the longer classic benchmarks, commonly 25-40 minutes. It tests sustained aerobic output and lower body endurance across high rep counts. Wall balls late in the workout are punishing, so pace the early runs or the box jumps and wall balls fall apart.

Elizabeth is 21-15-9 reps of cleans (61 kg / 135 lb men, 43 kg / 95 lb women) and ring dips, For Time. It tests barbell cycling and upper body gymnastics pushing. Ring dips are demanding and many athletes need to scale them. The clean load is moderate, so skilled athletes cycle touch-and-go. Ring dip capacity is usually the limiter, with intermediate times around 8-12 minutes.

Amanda is 9-7-5 reps of muscle-ups and squat snatches (61 kg / 135 lb men, 43 kg / 95 lb women), For Time. It is one of the most skill-demanding benchmarks, since both movements require technical proficiency under fatigue. The squat snatch exposes overhead stability and hip mobility, and muscle-ups demand a strong transition. Elite athletes go sub-5 minutes; most intermediate athletes scale both movements.

Karen is 150 wall balls For Time (9 kg / 20 lb to a 10-foot target for men, 6 kg / 14 lb to 9 feet for women). No mixed modality, no transitions, pure work capacity. It reveals your ability to sustain repetitive moderate-load movement. Breaking into planned sets is normal; the challenge is keeping rest short. Legs, lower back, and shoulder endurance all get exposed.

Nancy is 5 rounds For Time: 400m run plus 15 overhead squats (43 kg / 95 lb men, 29 kg / 65 lb women). It pairs aerobic demand with overhead stability and hip mobility. The OHS asks for active shoulders when you're gassed from the run. Control your breathing before picking up the bar, and aim for unbroken sets. Intermediate times run around 15-20 minutes.

Murph is a 1-mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 air squats, and a closing 1-mile run, For Time. As prescribed it is done in a 9 kg / 20 lb vest or body armor; unvested is the standard scale. Named for Navy SEAL Lt. Michael Murphy and done in many gyms every Memorial Day. Most athletes partition the middle work into 20 rounds of 5-10-15, the Cindy format. Advanced athletes finish around 35-45 minutes with the vest.

DT is 5 rounds For Time: 12 deadlifts, 9 hang power cleans, 6 push jerks, all at 70 kg / 155 lb for men and 47 kg / 105 lb for women. Named after USAF SSgt Timothy Davis. It tests barbell cycling across three movement patterns with heavy grip demand. Smart athletes break before failure, often dropping after 11 deadlifts to go straight into the hang cleans. The hang cleans are usually the limiter.

JT is 21-15-9 reps of handstand push-ups, ring dips, and push-ups, For Time. Named after Navy SEAL PO1 Jeff Taylor. Three pushing movements back-to-back make it brutally demanding on the triceps and shoulders. Most athletes hit muscular failure by round two unless they break sets early and often. HSPU capacity is the primary limiter, and this one takes far longer than the rep count suggests.

Josh is For Time: 21 overhead squats (43 kg / 95 lb), 42 pull-ups, 15 OHS, 30 pull-ups, 9 OHS, 18 pull-ups. It honors U.S. Army SSG Joshua Hager, killed in Iraq in 2007. The pull-up volume, 90 total, wrecks grip for the OHS sets that follow. Moderate load, but overhead stability under fatigue is the test. Break the pull-ups early to protect the overhead work.

Filthy Fifty is 50 reps each of: box jumps (24 in), jumping pull-ups, kettlebell swings (16 kg / 35 lb), walking lunges, knees-to-elbows, push press (20 kg / 45 lb), back extensions, wall balls, burpees, double-unders, For Time. A long chipper: 500 reps across 10 movements. Most athletes take 20-35 minutes. It tests broad conditioning across every energy system.

Badger is 3 rounds For Time: 30 squat cleans (43 kg / 95 lb), 30 pull-ups, 800m run. Named after Navy CPO Mark Carter. That's 90 squat cleans, 90 pull-ups, and 2.4 km of running, one of the longer Hero WODs. It tests aerobic capacity, barbell strength endurance, and mental fortitude. Squat clean fatigue compounds each round; singles are common by round two.

Kipping uses a hip-driven pendulum swing to generate momentum: the body swings forward, then the hips extend to drive the chest up. Butterfly uses a circular hip rotation that keeps constant momentum, giving a faster cycle rate but demanding more coordination and shoulder capacity. Learn strict, then kipping, before butterfly. Butterfly earns its keep in competition; kipping covers most training.

A bar muscle-up transitions from a pull to a push above the bar. Sequence: aggressive kip, hollow-to-arch, pull the bar toward the hips, drive the torso over, press to support. Common faults: weak kip (not enough momentum), pulling the bar to the chest instead of the hips, poor turnover, no hip drive. Prerequisites: several strict pull-ups, bar dip strength, and an efficient kip.

HSPU is an inverted press against a wall: head touches the floor, arms extend to lockout. It tests pressing strength, core stability, and shoulder endurance. Scaling from easiest to hardest: pike push-ups, box HSPU (hips on box, head between hands), band-assisted wall HSPU, kipping HSPU, strict HSPU, deficit HSPU. Build strict capacity before kipping.

T2B: hanging from a pull-up bar, bring both feet to touch the bar at the same time. It requires lat engagement, hip flexor strength, and a solid kip. Common faults: piking the legs up with no kip, swinging off rhythm, reaching only parallel. Progressions: hanging knee raises, kipping knee raises, single-leg T2B, then full T2B. Grip usually limits high-rep sets, so break before your forearms give out.

A pistol squat is a single-leg squat to full depth with the free leg extended forward. It requires single-leg strength, hip and ankle mobility, and balance. Progressions: box pistols (sit to box), assisted pistols holding a band or rig, slow negative pistols, then full pistols. Common limiters: tight hamstrings pulling the extended leg down, limited ankle dorsiflexion lifting the heel, and weak single-leg quad strength.

Ring dips demand constant shoulder stabilization because the rings move. The rings also allow natural hand rotation through the dip, which many athletes find more shoulder-friendly, but the instability makes them harder than bar dips. Standards: full arm extension at the top, shoulder below the elbow at the bottom, elbows tracking back. Scale with a band or a box. Ring dip strength feeds straight into ring muscle-up development.

Kipping increases work capacity: more total work in less time, which is how CrossFit defines power. Kipping pull-ups are a different stimulus from strict pull-ups, not a cheat. Strict work builds pulling strength; kipping serves conditioning and high-rep workouts. The kip transfers energy from the whole body to the bar, which raises the metabolic demand. Build strict capacity first to protect the shoulders.

Key snatch faults: early arm bend (arms stay passive until the bar passes the hips), bar drifting away from the body, no hip contact at extension, pressing out overhead instead of catching locked, forward lean in the catch from poor overhead mobility, and a soft core at the bottom. The snatch is the most technical lift in the sport. Patience in the pull fixes more misses than anything else.

Power clean: the bar is caught with the hip crease above parallel. Squat clean: caught in a full squat, hip crease below parallel. The power clean suits athletes whose pull outpaces their squat; the squat clean handles heavier loads because you meet the bar lower. In metcons, power cleans cycle faster, and touch-and-go is easier with them under fatigue.

Touch-and-go is faster and keeps rhythm, but demands consistent mechanics and costs more aerobically. It works when the load is light enough to hold form across all reps. Singles are slower but give a beat of recovery each rep, protecting technique under fatigue. Use singles when the load is heavy relative to your max, grip is failing, or mechanics are slipping. In competition the answer changes by round: touch-and-go early, singles late is a common plan.

Common thruster faults: cutting the front squat short before driving up, losing the front rack as elbows drop, pressing with the arms instead of driving with the legs, and a soft lockout overhead. Fix them by training front squats and push presses separately, then combining. A thruster works as one fluid movement. Any pause at the top of the squat bleeds energy.

The OHS is the most mobility-demanding lift in CrossFit. It needs thoracic extension to support the load overhead, shoulder external rotation for an active overhead position, ankle dorsiflexion for heel-down depth, hip mobility for the bottom position, and enough lat flexibility to keep the arms from drifting forward. Most athletes are limited by shoulders or a stiff upper back. Consistent overhead work plus thoracic mobility drills address it.

The clean and jerk is the Olympic lift: a clean followed by a split, push, or squat jerk, using a dip-drive-catch sequence. A push press uses leg drive but no re-dip under the bar, so the arms finish the press. In a WOD, power clean plus push jerk or split jerk is standard. The jerk wins at heavier loads because you catch the bar with bent knees under it, cutting the pressing demand.

The big jerk faults: pressing out instead of catching locked, a dip that's too deep or drifts forward and kills the drive, no vertical torso in the split, a front foot stepping wide into lateral instability, and dropping the eyes so the bar travels forward. The dip should be shallow, around a tenth of standing height, straight down, and fast. Drive like a vertical jump.

CrossFit conditioning varies movement and time domain: short sprints, moderate AMRAPs, long grinds, hitting multiple energy systems in the same week. Traditional steady-state cardio trains aerobic efficiency at a fixed intensity. CrossFit also stresses the phosphagen and glycolytic systems, arguing that broad capacity beats optimizing a single pathway. Most evidence shows high-intensity interval work improves VO2max at least as well as steady-state for many populations. Both belong in a complete program.

Most metcons sit high, around 85-100% of max HR for short pieces and 70-85% for longer ones, leaning on the glycolytic and phosphagen systems. Elite CrossFit athletes also carry a big aerobic base that speeds recovery between efforts. Without that base, athletes plateau: glycolytic output outruns aerobic recovery. That's why easy zone 2 work on the rower, bike, or road is programmed alongside metcons.

The glycolytic pathway breaks down glucose without oxygen to produce ATP fast, with lactate as a byproduct. It dominates hard efforts lasting roughly 30 seconds to 2-3 minutes, which covers most classic benchmarks: Fran, Grace, Isabel. Above threshold, hydrogen ion accumulation drives the burning sensation and drops force output. Training in this zone improves lactate clearance and buffering capacity.

Breathing drives performance. During hard work, the urge to breathe comes mainly from rising CO2, not falling O2. Nasal breathing works at moderate effort; high intensity needs the mouth. Deep diaphragmatic breaths during rest speed recovery between efforts. Bracing with a held breath (the Valsalva maneuver) stabilizes the spine on heavy lifts, but don't hold your breath through a whole set of thrusters.

Start at 80-85% perceived effort, not a sprint, and settle into a cruise pace within the first three rounds. Break movements before failure so rest stays predictable. Breathe in the transitions. Save a surge for the final three minutes. Fading comes from starting too fast and burning matches early. A metronomic approach beats hero-then-crawl.

HIIT is a training method: fixed work and rest intervals at near-maximal effort. CrossFit is a methodology and a sport that uses many methods, HIIT included. Not all CrossFit is HIIT; strength work, skill practice, easy aerobic sessions, and mobility all belong in the programming. The distinguishing idea is constantly varied functional movement at high intensity. An AMRAP isn't technically HIIT, since it's continuous work with no programmed rest.

The Open is an annual worldwide online qualifier, now three weeks long (it ran five weeks in earlier years), held in late February and March. Everyone completes the same workouts, submits scores online (video verification applies to higher placings), and gets ranked globally, regionally, and in their gym. It's the first stage of the CrossFit Games season and open to anyone. Workouts release Thursday; scores are due Monday.

In capped Open workouts, the tiebreak logs your time at a specific point, often the end of a round or movement. If two athletes post the same score, the faster tiebreak time wins. If neither finishes, total reps decide the score first. Once you know where the tiebreak sits, push hard to that moment, even if you coast after it. A slow tiebreak can drop you far down a crowded leaderboard.

A no-rep is a rep that fails the movement standard and doesn't count. Judges watch range of motion (squat depth, full extension, lockout), position standards (chest to deck on push-ups, chin over bar on pull-ups), and equipment contact (heel on target for box jumps, ball hitting the target on wall balls). In competition you redo no-repped reps. In the gym, you're expected to self-judge, and cut ROM is the most common form of cheating in the Open.

Under 10 minutes: start at 90% and accept the pain. 10-15 minutes: build through the first 2-3 minutes, then hold. 20 minutes or capped: find a sustainable gear early and surge the final two minutes. Break the workout into thirds mentally. Know your limiter, usually one specific movement, and plan breaks around it. Efficient equipment setup and transitions save more time than most athletes think.

Two to three weeks out, cut volume 20-30% while keeping intensity: a deload. The final week, stay light and sharp without accumulating fatigue. Prioritize sleep, nutrition, and hydration. Practice pacing on one or two representative workouts, but skip max testing. The goal is arriving fresh, not fatigued from last-minute PR attempts. Reviewing past Open workouts and touching your weak movements pays off.

The Open gives you a benchmark against peers and your past self, since global and gym rankings put your fitness in perspective. It gives you a goal to train toward, which drives consistency. It puts you in a high-stakes environment that builds mental performance skills. And the shared workouts create community. Even with zero Quarterfinals ambition, it's the best fitness test on the calendar and it finds your weaknesses for you.

The original path was Open, Regionals, Games. In 2019 Regionals gave way to Sanctionals and national champion spots. From 2021 the path became Open, Quarterfinals, Semifinals, Games. The 2025 season dropped Quarterfinals, sending athletes from the Open to Semifinals, and the 2026 season brought Quarterfinals back: top 25% of the Open advance, then online Quarterfinals, then Semifinals, then the Games. The format keeps shifting, so check the current season's rulebook.

The deciding factor is the intended stimulus, not the written weight. Ask: will Rx give me the stimulus this workout is meant to produce? A workout meant to finish in 5 minutes shouldn't take 15. A sprint at a strength-limiting weight becomes a max-strength test, not conditioning. If you can't do the movement safely, scale. If the workout will run double the intended time, scale the load. Good coaches prescribe the scale alongside the Rx.

Scaling should preserve the movement pattern and the intended demand. Pull-up scales from easiest to hardest: ring rows, banded pull-ups, jumping pull-ups, kipping pull-ups. Muscle-up scales: banded, jumping, low-ring transitions, full muscle-ups. HSPU scales: pike push-ups, box HSPU, strict, kipping, deficit. Pick a scale you can complete with control. If you can't do 5 unbroken, scale further.

Stimulus preservation means the scaled version produces the same training effect as the original. If Fran is meant to be a short, painful sprint, a scaled Fran should be one too: lighter thrusters, banded pull-ups, same time domain. If a workout is meant to be heavy and grinding, don't drop to an empty bar; reduce load but keep it challenging. Ask what the workout is meant to train (speed, strength, aerobic capacity, skill), then scale to keep that.

A working rule: you should complete the prescribed reps without breaking more than once per round early on. Breaking every 2-3 reps means the load is too heavy for the stimulus. Metcon weights commonly sit around 50-70% of 1RM. Some workouts, like DT, are meant to be heavy and force strategy. Test it in warm-up: if you can't do an unbroken set of the prescribed reps fresh, scale.

For athletes with cranky or rehabbing shoulders: dumbbell strict press, pike push-ups (less shoulder flexion demand), Z-press (seated overhead press with no leg assist), single-arm dumbbell press, or landmine press for its friendlier arc. The goal is pressing demand with lower impingement risk. See a physio for persistent shoulder pain before kipping HSPU; the loading at the bottom position is significant.

Rx is appropriate when you can meet every movement standard with full ROM, the workout will take roughly the intended time, and the load doesn't compromise safety. It is not appropriate when you're sacrificing form to hit the number, when you know the workout will run double the intended time, or when you're coming back from injury. The Rx badge is earned by fitness, not claimed at the whiteboard. Regular smart scaling builds fitness faster than grinding every workout at the wrong stimulus.

Options: cut total reps (half of each movement for beginners), reduce load on the barbell pieces, substitute pattern-matched movements (ring rows for pull-ups, step-ups for box jumps), or set a time cap so it doesn't become a two-hour slog. Chippers reward efficiency. Don't go unbroken on early movements even if you can. Break early and keep moving.

Unbroken means completing all prescribed reps of a movement in one continuous set, without setting the bar down or dropping off the rig. Coaches prescribe unbroken sets to test capacity or force a stimulus: '5 sets of 10 unbroken pull-ups' means each set finishes without a drop. Forced unbroken work inside a metcon is rare. Most of the time, your break strategy is your own call.

Rx+ (sometimes 'Comp' or 'Advanced') is an optional harder version of a workout: more load, more reps, or tougher movements than standard Rx. Examples: chest-to-bar instead of chin-over-bar pull-ups, or adding a weight vest to a workout that doesn't prescribe one. Not all gyms program it. It targets competitive athletes, and you should own Rx before chasing it. The '+' separates stimulus levels on leaderboards when it's offered.

Rehearse the movements before the clock starts and know your break points. Do a trial round in warm-up at target pace. On go, start at 80% effort. Track round times; if round one took 45 seconds, hold that. Reassess at halfway, and push hard in the final 2-3 minutes. Consistency beats bursts of effort followed by long rests.

A strength EMOM puts 1-3 reps at 80-90% of 1RM each minute: a few seconds of work, 50+ seconds of rest, letting you stack heavy volume with real recovery. A conditioning EMOM packs high-rep or mixed work into each minute, leaving 10-20 seconds of rest, which demands aerobic recovery and pacing. The tell: if athletes can barely catch their breath between minutes, it's conditioning. If they're bored waiting, it's strength or skill work.

A power snatch is caught with the hip crease above parallel, which demands more pulling height. A squat snatch is caught in a full overhead squat: less pulling height, more mobility and overhead stability. At max loads the squat snatch wins because you receive the bar lower. In metcons, power snatches cycle faster with less mobility demand. The pull mechanics are the same; only the catch depth differs.

In the partitioned version, the 100 pull-ups usually come as 20 rounds of 5, the Cindy format of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 squats. Some athletes run 10 rounds of 10, but that risks grip failure and dead push-ups by the midpoint. The Cindy split spreads upper body fatigue and builds a predictable rhythm. With a vest, break the pull-ups even smaller. Never go to failure on pull-ups in Murph; drop before your grip does.

The 21-15-9 scheme comes from Greg Glassman's early benchmark programming (Fran, Elizabeth, Diane). It totals 45 reps per movement. The descending structure gives a psychological light at the end of the tunnel, since each set is shorter than the last. The front-loading puts the hardest work where you're freshest, then forces a pacing decision as fatigue builds. Long enough to hurt, short enough to stay a sprint.

Barbell cycling is performing multiple reps of barbell movements efficiently, often touch-and-go. Keys: control the descent so the bar rebounds cleanly off the floor, breathe every rep instead of every five, use hook grip and chalk to save the forearms, and make every rep look the same. Practice cycling at 65-70% of 1RM in sets of 10-15. Great cycling is timing and efficiency more than raw strength.

In order: learn the nine foundational movements with correct form, train three times a week consistently before adding more, scale without ego, build an aerobic base with long easy efforts outside class, and treat sleep and nutrition as part of training. Skip PR chasing in the first three months. Technique banked now pays dividends for years.

Intended stimulus is the demand the programmer wants a workout to produce: fast and aerobic, heavy and grinding, or moderate skill work. The Rx prescription is one way to reach that stimulus for the average athlete. If Rx misses the stimulus at your fitness level (too long, too slow), scaling to hit it is the correct choice. Good coaches state the intended stimulus next to the Rx so athletes can decide well.

The big ones: always scaling the same movements without ever training them (avoidance instead of progression), under-scaling so a 15-minute workout finishes in 5 with an empty bar, parking at jumping pull-ups for three years instead of progressing the skill, ego-Rxing when you should scale, and scaling with no plan or milestones for getting back to Rx. Every scale should be a step on a path, not a hiding place.

CrossFit's nine foundational movements from the Level 1 curriculum: air squat, front squat, overhead squat, shoulder press, push press, push jerk, deadlift, sumo deadlift high pull, and medicine ball clean. They form three progressions (squatting, pressing, pulling) used to teach mechanics and safety. Everything else, from Olympic lifts to gymnastics, builds on these patterns.

Grip is a major limiter: pull-ups, barbell work, kettlebells, rope climbs, and T2B all tax the forearm flexors. Manage it with chalk, hook grip on the barbell, occasional grip-orientation changes on the rig, and breaking sets before grip failure, since recovering from a failed grip costs more than a planned rest. Train it directly with farmer carries and dead hangs. In Hero WODs, grip is often the first thing to go.

A cash-out, or finisher, is extra work after the main WOD, usually targeting a weakness or adding volume: 3 max L-sits, a 5-minute easy row, 100 banded pull-aparts. Programmers use it to hit a skill that didn't fit the main piece, add aerobic volume without raising WOD intensity, or build the habit of finishing work instead of rushing out. Skipping cash-outs is common. It also skips the adaptation they target.

Athletes raise standards questions through the CrossFit Games site, and HQ can issue movement standard updates or clarifications mid-Open; standards disputes have a long history, like the handstand push-up line standard that drew heavy criticism in 18.4. Athletes who already submitted under an older reading may or may not need to redo the workout, depending on the ruling. Watch the workout announcement and read the standards document before competing. Judging tightens at Semifinals and the Games.

Master the kipping pull-up first; butterfly uses a different motor pattern and punishes weak shoulders. Then learn the circular hip pattern on the rig without pulling, feeling the wheel motion. Add small pulls, focusing on the down-and-back path rather than a straight pull. Link 3-5 reps with a reset, then build to sets of 10+. Butterfly is a competition-efficiency tool; kipping covers most athletes' training.

Wall ball standard: squat below parallel, stand to full extension, and hit the target (10 ft for men, 9 ft for women). Common faults: missing depth (the most common no-rep), catching the ball without riding it into the next squat, releasing early so the ball lands low, and throwing with the arms instead of leg drive. Efficient technique is one connected movement: squat, drive, throw, catch, sink.

The OHS is the sport's sharpest diagnostic lift. It exposes thoracic mobility when the upper back rounds, shoulder flexibility when the arms drift forward, ankle dorsiflexion when the heels rise, hip mobility when the knees cave, and core stability when the torso sways. CrossFit has long treated it as a cornerstone test of positioning. Fixing OHS limitations carries over to the squat, snatch, and jerk.

RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion) is a 1-10 scale of subjective effort: 1 is resting, 10 is maximal. Athletes use it to self-regulate on go-by-feel days, to guide loading when no percentage is given ('build to a heavy single at RPE 8'), and to compare how the same load feels day to day, which signals readiness. RPE pairs well with objective data like readiness scores for daily load decisions.

WOD times are one metric, not the whole picture. Track benchmark history by retesting Fran, Helen, and friends every 8-12 weeks. Track strength PRs on the squat, deadlift, press, and Olympic lifts. Log gymnastics milestones: first muscle-up, first HSPU. Note efficiency, the same WOD done with better technique and less rest. Add recovery markers like resting heart rate, sleep, and readiness scores, plus Open scores year over year.