2017: The Year of Benchmarks

To kick off the New Year, we are implementing a new benchmark program, which will provide everyone an opportunity to measure your fitness throughout year as well as our programming. Because of CrossFit’s constantly varied method of programming, it can be difficult to measure effective programming and for those of you who’ve been at this program a while, may find it harder to see progress on a regular bases.

During the early days of CrossFit, Greg Glassman (CrossFit’s founder) took it upon himself to define things like health, intensity, work capacity, and fitness. Most of this had never been defined before and what good is a fitness program if you’re unable to observe and measure its effectiveness? The CrossFit Journal explains it like this:

“The CrossFit program is driven by data. Using whiteboards as scoreboards, keeping accurate scores and records, running a clock, and precisely defining the rules and standards for performance, we not only motivate unprecedented output but derive both relative and absolute metrics at every workout. This data has important value well beyond motivation. Overall, the aim of CrossFit is to forge a broad, general and inclusive fitness, supported by measurable, observable, and repeatable results.”

Our 2017 Benchmark Program is designed to test and retest your fitness through a series of 9 tests, which include CrossFit benchmark WODs, weightlifting, gymnastic, and monostructural movements. We will retest each benchmark every 3 months throughout the year, which gives us the opportunity to collect 4 sets of data points for each of the 9 benchmarks. The WODs for this year are:

Fran (short in duration)

Kelly (long in duration)

DT (heavy barbell cycling)

We are also including:

1RM Snatch

3RM Deadlift

5 RM Back Squat

This gives us a variety of movements (explosive and heavy) and a variety of rep schemes that test strength and stamina strength.

Additionally, we’ve added

Max set of double unders

Max set of strict pull ups (or ring rows)

500 meter row for time

These test are included to test high skill, upper body strength, and metabolic conditioning.

Our plan is to schedule as many of these benchmarks on Mondays as possible in order to stay consistent and allow as many of you to engage in the program as possible. Below is the program schedule we will follow this year.