The CrossFit Benchmark WODs: Fran, Cindy, Helen — and How to Scale Them

If you’ve been to a CrossFit class or spent ten minutes on the internet, you’ve seen a workout with a woman’s name on it. Fran. Cindy. Helen. New people always ask me the same thing: who are these women, and why does everyone talk about them like they’re old enemies?

Short version — the named workouts are benchmarks. They don’t change. That’s the whole point. When the workout stays fixed, your time on it becomes a measuring stick. You do Fran today, you do it again in four months, and the clock tells you the truth about whether you actually got fitter or just felt like you did. We build “test, then retest” into our programming at ESTLR for exactly this reason, and the classic benchmarks are the cleanest version of it there is.

Here’s what the main ones are, what each is testing, and — the part people actually need — how a coach scales them so you get the right workout instead of the wrong one.

Fran — the one everybody’s scared of

21-15-9 of thrusters (95/65 lb) and pull-ups.

Fran is short. A fit person finishes in under 4 minutes, and plenty of people go sub-3. That’s what makes her nasty: there’s nowhere to hide. It’s a sprint that touches every energy system you’ve got, and the barbell plus the pull-ups gas your grip and lungs at the same time.

How I scale it: the mistake is keeping the prescribed weight and turning a 4-minute sprint into a 12-minute grind — now it’s a completely different workout and you’ve missed the stimulus. Drop the thruster to a weight you can cycle in sets of at least 7–10 unbroken. Swap pull-ups for jumping pull-ups or ring rows if you don’t have them yet. The goal is that it stays *fast and awful*, not slow and awful. Fran should be over before your brain catches up.

Cindy — 20 minutes, bodyweight, deceptively brutal

As many rounds as possible in 20 minutes: 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 air squats.

No barbell, all gymnastics and bodyweight, and it’s a totally different beast than Fran. Cindy is an engine test. Twenty minutes of steady work where the challenge is pacing — everyone comes out hot and blows up, then spends the back half falling apart.

How I scale it: this one’s beautiful because it scales to almost anyone. Pull-ups become ring rows or jumping pull-ups, push-ups go to the knees or a box, and the squats stay honest to full depth. A strong athlete does 18–20+ rounds; a newer athlete might do 8–10 and get a fantastic workout. The number of rounds barely matters — moving smart for 20 straight minutes is the skill.

Helen — the three-round classic

3 rounds for time: 400m run, 21 kettlebell swings (53/35 lb), 12 pull-ups.

Helen mixes a monostructural piece (the run), a weighted movement, and gymnastics — a little of everything, three times through. Good athletes are in the 8–12 minute range. It teaches you to come off a run and immediately do work, which is harder than it sounds.

How I scale it: shorten the run to 200–300m if a 400 blows up your rounds, drop the kettlebell to a weight you can swing 21 unbroken when fresh, and scale pull-ups the same as always. If you’re at a box, we can sub a row or bike for the run when the weather or the space calls for it.

Grace and Diane — the barbell benchmarks

Grace: 30 clean & jerks for time (135/95 lb). Diane: 21-15-9 of deadlifts (225/155 lb) and handstand push-ups.

These two are for when you want to test strength under fatigue. Grace is one movement, done 30 times, as fast as you can safely cycle a barbell — it exposes your technique the second you get tired. Diane pairs a heavy deadlift with an inverted pressing skill, so it’s testing your posterior chain and your gymnastics at once.

How I scale them: load is everything here. For Grace, pick a weight you could do 5+ touch-and-go reps with fresh — if the bar feels heavy on rep one, it’s wrong. For Diane, scale the deadlift to a moderate load you keep crisp, and swap handstand push-ups for pike push-ups or a dumbbell strict press until you’ve earned the real thing. Nobody should be doing a heavy benchmark deadlift with a rounding back to chase a time. Ever.

Why we actually use these

A benchmark isn’t about the leaderboard. It’s about honesty. You can convince yourself you’re getting fitter for a long time before the truth catches up with you — until you redo Fran and the clock says the same number it did four months ago. Then you know something in your training needs to change, and we go fix it.

That’s how good programming works. You test, you train with intent for a block, you retest, and you steer based on what actually happened — not on how the sessions felt. It’s the difference between doing random hard workouts and actually building something.

If you’ve been training somewhere and you have no idea what your Fran time is — or you’ve never had a coach show you how to scale one properly — come see us. ESTLR is in the DTLA Arts District, 431 S Hewitt St, and your first class is on us. Bring a benchmark. We’ll get you a real number to chase.