WOD:  “The Chief”

Max Rounds in 3 Minutes of:

3 Power Cleans (135#/95#)
6 Push-ups
9 Squats

Repeat for a total of 5 cycles. Rest 1 minute between cycles.

Post total number of completed rounds for each cycle.

Hal & Caroline rocking the KBs during "Open House Gone Bad"

How WODs Get Their Names

There is a great deal of confusion among non-CrossFitters regarding how benchmark WODs get named. I remember reading a letter from a fairly high ranking military official that viewed the use of female names for WODs as a sign of disrespect. He clearly knew nothing about how our workouts are named. Here’s a little enlightenment:

The Girls -
The original girls were WODs that stood out as particularly brutal and effective WODs that didn’t even have names. If you go through the .com archives you will see the original posting of “Helen” (scroll down to June 22nd) just written out as a WOD. No name, just 3 rounds of 400m run, 21 KB swings and 12 pull-ups for time. The naming convention developed as a means to remember these particularly gnarly WODs so they could be used as benchmarks. Much like a hurricane is fast and furious and usually with a short memorable name, so were these new WODs. A few of the girls are actually named after well known CrossFit ladies (Nicole, Eva T, and Annie) who displayed amazing work capacity, so they earned the right to have a WOD named after them. It’s kind of like their “Hall of Fame” if you will.

The Heroes
These WODs are named after America’s bravest military members/fire fighters/law enforcement officers who were dedicated CrossFitters and made the ultimate sacrifice. Paul (aka Strike FO) does a great job of explaining the reasoning behind the Hero WODs on his blog.

There are also the WODs that aren’t named after people, but were deserving of a name in their own right. Filthy Fifty is composed of 50 reps of 10 different movements, yes it sucks! And Fight Gone Bad was developed for and named by UFC stud BJ “The Prodigy” Penn. Story is, upon completion of the WOD they asked him what he thought and he said “That was like a fight gone bad.” and hence a WOD was named.

So, there you have it. The naming process isn’t that mysterious. It’s not some grand marketing scheme, nor is it a way to demean or exploit women. It started off as a way to remember particularly effective WODs and has grown into a way of memorializing dedicated CrossFitters who truly are worthy of the honor. It also serves as a warning to those checking the site “Lookout, today is gonna get nasty!”