For Time stopwatch
The work is fixed, and the clock counts up until you have finished. Your score is the time taken — the simplest format to understand and the hardest to calibrate well.
OPEN AN UNCAPPED STOPWATCHCounts up, stops on your word. Nothing to configure, nothing to install.
What does For Time mean?
For Time means against the clock. You write the work down in advance — a rep count, a distance, a sequence of movements — and you do it as fast as you can. The clock counts up, and stops when you are done.
It is the exact inverse of the AMRAP, where the time is fixed and the work varies. Here the work is fixed and the time varies, which makes progress very legible: the same work, repeated a month later, compares to the second.
A worked session
"Fran", For Time
21 thrusters — 21 pull-ups
15 thrusters — 15 pull-ups
9 thrusters — 9 pull-ups
Three to four minutes for a highly trained athlete, ten to fifteen for most people. It is the same session: only the time differs, and that is the whole point.
The time cap, and why it matters
A time cap is a limit past which you stop, finished or not. It is not a concession, it is a protection.
Without one, badly calibrated work can run three times longer than planned. Past a certain point movement quality collapses, risk climbs, and the intensity you were after disappeared long ago — you are no longer doing the session you planned, you are enduring it.
The usual rule: set the cap at one and a half times the expected time. Work estimated at ten minutes gets a fifteen-minute cap. If you hit the cap, the next attempt runs lighter, and the cap becomes an indicator instead of a failure.
OPEN A FOR TIME WITH A 20 MIN CAPThe clock counts up, and stops itself at the limit.
Why the clock counts up
The duration is not known in advance: it is the result, not the instruction. A countdown would assume an ending decided beforehand, which is the opposite of the format. That is why Round & Rest counts up in For Time, and counts down everywhere else.
When a cap is set, the screen still shows elapsed time — the number that will be your score — and stops itself at the limit.
The common mistakes
Going out too fast
The format rewards consistency, not a flying start. The first twenty reps are always easy; it is the last ones that decide the final time.
Not recording the time
A For Time whose score you do not keep loses its reason to exist — there is nothing left to compare. Round & Rest records every session you see through to the end in a local history, on your device and nowhere else.
Choosing work that is too long
Past twenty minutes intensity drops and the format drifts towards endurance work. For anything long, break it into blocks with rest built in.