“Fran”
21-15-9
Thrusters 44/30
Pull-Ups
The story behind…
Greg Glassman created CrossFit unofficially as a teenager.
He was a gymnast (specifically a rings expert) looking for a way to condition himself to have energy for a 2 min routine. Because, if you jump off the rings after 2 minutes and have to put your hands on your knees cause you’re so gassed, the judges won’t like it much. In his experiments, he started combining weights and gymnastic movements in weird combinations. One day he stumbled upon a nasty little combo.
21 Thrusters (a front squat and overhead press combined)
21 pull ups
15 Thrusters
15 pull ups
9 and 9
Start the clock and do it for time.
As soon as he finished, he puked on the floor…Excited, he cleaned himself up and ran over to his buddy’s house and told him to try it. After his buddy had the same result, they both ran over with puke stained shirts to their third friends house and said “you gotta try this!”
He named the workout “Fran” because tropical storms were named after women, and this workout hit him like a hurricane. He went on to create tons of other workouts like this and try them on him and his friends…
But of all the workouts we do in CrossFit, Fran still stands out as the gold standard for intensity.