Have you ever stared at your phone looking at the WOD and seeing something like “The Salamander Of Cleveland” and wondered where the heck that name came from?

Well, here’s how we come up with our names for WODs and how you can tell what is in store for that day!!

First, let’s cover WODs that were made by coaches outside of Vegvisir, the “Girl” and “Hero” WODs:

Girl WODs

The original named workouts of CrossFit, these workouts were named after members who trained at the first CrossFit Box, CrossFit Santa Cruz.

Some of these workouts are:

Annie

50-40-30-20-10

Double Unders

Sit-Ups

Fran

21-15-9

Barbell Thrusters @ 95/65 Rx

Pull-Ups

Jackie

1000m Row

50 Barbell Thrusters @ 45/35 Rx

30 Pull-Ups

Workouts like these are built to be tests that are repeatable and work very specific time domains when done correctly to test very specific uses of energy in our body.

This is actually where we get the term “MetCon” as these workouts condition or metabolic pathways (or how we use energy stored in our bodies to produce energy during workouts).

The shorter and more intense the workout, the more carbs we burn. The longer a workout gets, the more fat we tend to use to stay moving!

To further drive home the point:

Workouts like Jackie, Fran, and Dianne are short and sweet carb burners.

Workouts like Linda, Angie, and Eva are more fat burners.

On top of this, these WODs usually use reciprocating muscle groups to illicit huge lactate output through reciprocal inhibition.

This basically means that you’re gonna burn out your biceps and triceps or quads and hamstrings in the workout, leaving your muscles pumped up and filled with lactate.

Hero WODs

These are the workouts that CrossFit HQ has put out to remember fallen service members of the United Started and its’ allies. For example: “Murph” is named after LT. Michael Murphy, who’s story is made famous by the movie “Lone Survivor.” 

These WODs are generally heavy, long, and will test you mentally to finish. While a Girl WOD will have an end point that is just within reach that will force you to push to finish. Hero WODs typically have you wishing you were done 12 minutes ago.

At Vegvisir we do 3 of these typically and it is due to the fact that they are community workouts and very good tests of things that our athletes love to work on:

JT

21-15-9

Handstand Push-Ups

Ring Dips

Push-Ups

DT

5 Rounds For Time

12 Deadlifts

9 Hang Power Cleans

6 Shoulder to Overhead

Rx: 155/105 Barbell

Murph

1 Mile Run

100 Pull-Ups

200 Push-Ups

300 Air Squats

1 Mile Run

Rx: 20/14# Weighted Vest

Vegvisir Originals

These are the workouts that you see every day and make up about 97% of all the WODs we program here!

The workouts are designed to follow the principles of CrossFit and Classical Strength and Conditioning to make sure your workouts are always different every time you come in!

Each cycle we focus on different aspects of our fitness based on what y’all say you want to work on in goal reviews. When a good chunk of athletes say “I want to get to Loki on the CrossFit Total” you bet we are gonna be doing tons of squats, deadlifts, and shoulder presses in the upcoming cycle!!

While the names don’t give away the workout like seeing the name of a person, the names are designed to be related to the workout in some weird way.

For instance, a salamander is hard to grip and this workout sucks (like the city of Cleveland) and so “The Salamander Of Cleveland” was born as this workout is a constant workout of grip.

Either that bursts a lot of bubbles or excites y’all even more, but that is how many of the names happen.

Why not, “Grip Destroyer?”

There are 2 reasons:

1. If I make it creative, it is WAY easier for me to remember when we reuse it as a test later on, rather than searching for half an hour through the workout catalogue I’ve made.
2. Way less athletes will show up to a workout called “Grip Destroyer.” It’d be like saying “I’m gonna hurt you today” in a workout. Yeah we all know the WODs will hurt, but even I gotta pretend like they won’t when I come in to give it my all on a WOD.

I hope that this helps everyone with understanding the weird names that CrossFit names are given. From Annie to Archduke Ferdinand’s Pet Porcupine, you can either look at the names and guess what is in-store or not look until you show up. Either way, you’re gonna have a great workout and feel better than ya did when you came in!

To talk with a coach today, click the link found HERE to schedule your No Sweat Intro