For you newbies out there I would like to welcome you to a girl named “Karen”. She is one of the “Benchmark Girls”, a series of workouts created to be used as repetitive tests of our fitness.

I know repetitive isn’t a word we really associate with CrossFit as we battle the norms of fitness routines that are built on doing the same thing consistently. Constantly varied is our ethos, giving our body something different every day to break through our physical threshold and plateaus. Even my sales pitch for new people is “you could come her every day for 2 months and not do the same workout twice”.

There comes a time, however, where we need repeat workouts to test if this whole fitness thing is working. What is less talked about in CrossFit popularity is that the greatness of it lies in the ability to test and retest to explicitly show if we are improving in our fitness. By performing workouts repetitively over 3-6 month periods of time we have real time evidence of our program working, or not.

The “Girls” as these benchmarks are often referred to are named after OG CrossFit girls who were there from the beginning. “Karen” is as OG as OG can get. For some of you, this is beauty, this is that WOD that you dream about coming out in the Opens. For others, this is hell on Earth. There really isn’t an in between. Wall Ball are just one of those movements that is split down the middle with polarizing positions no different than the families in Romeo and Juliet.

For you newbies out there fear not, we have many ways to scale this workout and will show you all of them. For you veterans let’s see who is going to set the biggest PR!

FRIDAY = PR DAY

Core Conditioning (Woburn Only)

Core : 2 rounds For Time
30 Ring V Outs
30 Plank Pushups
30 Situps

Conditioning : 12m AMRAP
5 Burpees
5 Thruster 45/35
5 Broad Jumps
Run 50m (75′ down and back)

CrossFit

Strength : Jerk (Split)
Find a 1 rep max

WOD : “Karen”
150 Wall Ball for time, 20/14 to 10′ target

S: scaled WB to 9′ target
L1 : scaled WB to 10′ target

Rx+ : Heavy Wall Ball ONLY if you have done Karen UNBROKEN

The Program

1. Strength : Jerk
Find a 1 rep max

2. WOD : “Karen”
150 Wall Ball for time 20/14

3a. Power Clean, sets of 12, 8, 5, 3, @ 185/135, 205/145, 225/155, 245/165, rest 90s
3b. Strict HSPU, 4×10, rest 90s

4. Good Morning
5-5-5-5-5