WOD Timer
Five sessions carry a first name and get repeated everywhere, year after year. Here is exactly what is in each one, the timer format it calls for, and a link that opens the clock already set.
OPEN FRAN — FOR TIMEThe timer opens set and named. Nothing to configure, nothing to install.
What does WOD mean?
WOD is short for Workout of the Day: the session of the day, the same one for everybody, posted in the morning. It changes daily — that is the point, and it is also what makes one week impossible to compare with the next.
A few WODs are the exception. They carry a first name, their wording never moves again, and people repeat them for years to measure themselves against themselves: these are the benchmark workouts. Five turn up everywhere, and between them they need only three timer formats.
Fran
Fran — For Time
21 thrusters (43 kg) — 21 pull-ups
15 thrusters (43 kg) — 15 pull-ups
9 thrusters (43 kg) — 9 pull-ups
The prescribed barbell is 43 kg for men, 30 kg for women. Three descending sets with no prescribed rest: 21, then 15, then 9, and the clock only stops on the last pull-up.
Which timer do you use for Fran? A For Time, meaning a clock that counts up. The work is fixed in advance and the only variable is how long it takes you — three to four minutes for a very well trained athlete, ten to fifteen for most people. It is the same session: only the time differs, and that is the whole point.
OPEN FRAN — FOR TIME, 10 MIN CAPThe ten-minute cap is our suggestion, not a rule of Fran. Change it, or stretch it, before you start.
Cindy
Cindy — 20-minute AMRAP
5 pull-ups
10 push-ups
15 air squats
As many rounds as possible in twenty minutes. No load and no equipment beyond a pull-up bar: it is the most accessible of the benchmarks, and the one that exposes a badly chosen pace fastest.
Here the time is fixed and the work is what varies: an AMRAP, then, with a round counter. A trained athlete gets fifteen to twenty rounds; eight on a first attempt is perfectly normal, and it becomes the number every later attempt is measured against.
OPEN CINDY — 20-MINUTE AMRAPTwenty minutes, round counter built in.
Helen
Helen — For Time, 3 rounds
400 m run
21 kettlebell swings (24 kg)
12 pull-ups
Three identical rounds, chained with no prescribed rest. The official wording gives the load in pood, the Russian kettlebell unit: 1.5 pood for men and 1 pood for women, which is 24 kg and 16 kg.
The work is fixed, the running included: another For Time. The clock runs through the 400 m exactly as it runs through the swings — which is the only honest way to measure Helen, since the running time is part of it.
OPEN HELEN — FOR TIME, 15 MIN CAPAgain, the fifteen-minute cap is ours to offer and not a rule of Helen. Nothing obliges you to keep it.
Chelsea
Chelsea — EMOM 30 minutes
5 pull-ups
10 push-ups
15 air squats
Cindy's circuit, but at the top of every minute, for thirty minutes. Whatever is left of the minute is your rest; if the circuit overruns, the rest disappears, and that is where the session is won or lost.
Same contents as Cindy, radically different clock: an EMOM imposes the rhythm instead of leaving you to pick it. The cue at the top of the minute is enough to drive it — you do not watch the screen, you listen.
OPEN CHELSEA — EMOM 30 MINUTESOne minute, thirty times. Both values are adjustable.
Murph
Murph — For Time
1.6 km run
100 pull-ups
200 push-ups
300 air squats
1.6 km run
All of it wearing a 9 kg weighted vest. The original wording is in US units: a one-mile run, which is 1.6 km, and a 20 lb vest. The middle repetitions can be broken up however you like — many people do twenty rounds of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups and 15 squats, which is Cindy twenty times over.
It is the longest of the five by a wide margin. Another For Time, but one counted in tens of minutes: the phone stays flat on the floor for all of it, and it has to read from two metres away, out of breath, often outdoors in full sun.
OPEN MURPH — FOR TIME, 60 MIN CAPAn hour as a bound, chosen by us and not by the wording. Push it out if you know the session will run longer.
Should a For Time workout have a time cap?
It is not compulsory, and this deserves saying plainly: none of the five WODs above imposes a cap. The values offered on this page — ten minutes for Fran, fifteen for Helen, an hour for Murph — are our suggestions, there so the clock has a bound the moment it opens. They can be edited before you start.
A cap still does two useful things. It stops a session stretching out indefinitely on a day when the form simply is not there, which beats walking away halfway. And it makes attempts comparable: at equal caps, two goes at the same WOD read against each other, including when neither of them reached the end.
The For Time page covers the mechanism and what the app shows when the cap falls before the work is done.
Choosing the right format
Five sessions, three formats. The question to ask is not "which movements are in it" but what is fixed in advance — the time, or the work?
- For Time The work is fixed, you measure the time: Fran, Helen, Murph.
- AMRAP The time is fixed, you count the rounds: Cindy.
- EMOM One set at the top of every minute: Chelsea.
The answer drives the settings far more reliably than the name of the session does. An unfamiliar WOD on the board almost always falls into one of those three boxes before you have finished reading it.