Stretching It Out
One of the classic identifiable things that makes a workout “CrossFitty” is the whole “high intensity interval training” thing that, no matter how you brand it, is not exactly a new idea. One of the tendencies that we see a lot of though is keeping those chunks of reps shorter to keep you moving from thing to thing rapidly. The fact is that stretching out those sets has a more significant impact than you might suspect, so it’s worth doing that as well.
The single most dramatic example of this difference might be the Murph/Angie comparison. Murph is 600 reps bookended by a mile run on each side. Angie? Just 400 reps, largely the same movements. But the difference is that you can break up your Murph reps however you like… but in Angie you have to complete all 100 pullups before moving on to the 100 pushups, and same before going on to situps and squats. As a result, I’ve seen Angie times go longer than Murphs, and I think if you ask most veteran CrossFitters there won’t be much hesitation to say that Angie is a worse (or at least very different) workout than Murph.
All of this to say that, yes, these are all about double the reps you’d normally expect to see in the WOD today. And yes, if you halved these reps and kept it at AMRAP15 you would probably get more total work done than the format we’re doing today. BUT, we are consciously training across broad time and modal domains here to be able to meet all the different challenges life can throw at us. Feel free to complain about these big dumb long sets while you’re doing them, but know that you’re being asked to do them for a reason.
STRENGTH:
Front Squat
5 reps @ 65%
5 reps @ 70%
5 reps @ 75%
5 reps @ 80%
5 reps @ 85%
WOD:
AMRAP 15
1000m Row
20 Devil Press 50s/35s
10 Bar Muscle Ups