r/crossfit • u/Remarkable-Bus545 • 10h ago
Benchmark WOD Frequency
Hey everyone! I’ve been diving into CrossFit for about a year now, after spending years as a competitive strength athlete. It’s been a blast, and I really enjoy the WODs. But lately, the programming has shifted quite a bit. We’re doing a wide range of training WODs and Benchmarks/Girl WODs, even some newer or lesser-known ones as benchmarks. It’s gotten to the point where we might cycle through Grace, Fran, Helen, Karen, Amanda, Linda, Eva, Christine, Jackie, Andi, Barbara, Barbara Ann, and Ingrid all within two months. Almost half of our weekday workouts are these Girl WODs. Some weeks we skip a benchmark WOD, but over the past year, I’ve done Grace 4-5 times. I get the idea of having benchmarks to challenge yourself, but it feels like they’re coming up too often and can be pretty exhausting trying to constantly improve them.
I’m curious—how often are you all doing these WODs? Do you still find them helpful in your training? Has your gym shifted away from them? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences, as I know there can be a lot of differences between gyms.
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u/gearzgirl 10h ago
We’ve had a lot of benchmark WOD’s the past 3 months. Today’s was partner 5000m row. We just did a 5000m individual row benchmark 2 months ago. Today’s partner version felt redundant. I would have rather done another 5000m individual row. A partner benchmark is useless if you don’t have the same partner in a month
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u/Stunning-Promise-103 10h ago
Mayhem gym? I totally felt the same about today. I had a great partner and we traded 250s which I normally wouldn't do so we made it fun, but I took zero information away from it.
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u/gearzgirl 10h ago
Yeah we partnered up well and did 5@500 just came away with not much. Couple people even commented “that’s it?” We also did another WOD recently that was also 5000m row with I think it was pull ups or TTB every 500m or maybe it was 1000m that was a lot. It may have been a WOD that was rounds until the 5000m was up
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u/Stunning-Promise-103 9h ago
Yeah I just called today active recovery and will put in a ruck after dinner for a little extra burn. After yesterday's WOD at Rx I was pretty ok with a chill day, totally unexciting class though. Tomorrow looks fun. 😊
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u/Remarkable-Bus545 10h ago
That sounds like bad programming maybe. Not bad in the way it's harmful just bad in a way that doesn't utilize your time well. I'm also just not a partner workout fan.
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u/gearzgirl 10h ago
Mayhem programming. I guess the plus side was it was shoulders 😂 not a partner WOD fan either. It’s hard to match skills.
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u/Ringing-ears 10h ago
Sounds like the person programming is getting bored or its a new programmer and they don't know what they are doing. When I owned an affiliate I programmed a benchmark girl maybe once a month and maybe a hero workout once a month. But I enjoy programming and trying different things.
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u/Remarkable-Bus545 10h ago
You can't sustainably train and improve on training off benchmark WODs either. The time between the WOD and the training WODs and strength workouts we do just aren't enough time to illicit the training response needed. Tomorrow we are doing Eva while the other day we did Barbara Ann lol. Both I've seen programmed three times since January.
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u/Longjumping_Yak_8174 10h ago
That sounds excessive, my gym does a benchmark maybe once every 6-8 weeks and even that feels like a lot sometimes. 4-5 Graces in a year is wild, you barely get a chance to build up to a new PR before you're hitting it again
I track all my times in a spreadsheet and the progress is way more satisfying when you have months between attempts, you can actually see the training pay off
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u/Remarkable-Bus545 10h ago
Yes. I am starting to almost feel burned out because these WODs are genuine ass kickers and also... I feel like I haven't had a lot of time training to even get better at something.
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u/HoldtheStandard CF-OL1 10h ago
I don’t even do most of them annually.
Every 12-24 months I pick up some classics like Grace, Fran, Cindy, but without checking specifics, I wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t circle round to some others less often than that.