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Hang around a CrossFit gym long enough and you'll hear people talk about workouts by name. Fran. Cindy. Helen. Someone will say "I did Fran in eight minutes" and someone else will wince. If you're new, it sounds like an inside language you haven't been given the dictionary for.
It isn't. Benchmark workouts are simply the same workout, done the same way, more than once — so you can see whether you're getting fitter. That's the whole idea. Here's what they are and why you shouldn't be nervous about your first one.
Most days at TandEm the workout is different. That's the point of CrossFit — constant variety keeps your body adapting instead of settling. But variety makes progress hard to measure. If you never do the same thing twice, how do you know you've improved?
Benchmarks solve that. They're a small set of fixed workouts that gyms all over the world run, unchanged, year after year. When you do one today and again in six months, the difference in your score is real information about you. Not a guess, not a feeling. A number.
They have women's names because CrossFit's founder said a workout that leaves you flat on your back deserves a name like a storm does. That's the entire reason.
This is the part that matters most, so read it twice. A benchmark is a template, not a fixed weight and a fixed movement.
Can't do a pull-up? You'll use a band, or ring rows, and your score still counts. Thrusters too heavy? Your coach will pick a load that lets you keep moving, because moving is the stimulus. Push-ups from your knees are push-ups. The 400 metre run can be a shorter distance or a row. The workout is the shape — the intervals, the order, the intent. Your version of Cindy and a Games athlete's version of Cindy are the same workout done by two different bodies, and both are legitimate.
What you write on the whiteboard is your baseline. It isn't being compared to the person next to you. It's being compared to you, in six months.
You'll see workouts online that other gyms treat as an annual tradition — hundreds of pull-ups and push-ups in one session, often in a weighted vest. We don't program those at TandEm. That's a deliberate decision, not an oversight.
A benchmark is only useful if the score means something. A number you got by grinding through 200 badly executed push-ups doesn't measure anything worth knowing. We'd rather give you workouts you can repeat properly.
Turn up. Tell your coach it's your first time doing it. They'll set your weights and your scaling before the clock starts, which takes the decision out of your hands at the moment you're least able to make a good one.
Then go slower than you think you should for the first third. Almost everyone's first benchmark goes the same way — they sprint the opening minute, blow up, and spend the rest of the workout recovering. Steady beats heroic. Write down exactly what you did: the weight, the scaling, the time. In six months that note is the only way you'll know how far you've come.
Benchmarks are honest, and that honesty cuts both ways. If you train once or twice a week, the number six months from now won't have moved much — and you'll be sore for most of that time, because your body never gets the chance to adapt to the work.
Three sessions a week is the minimum we recommend, and it's where the change actually shows up. Members who train three or more times weekly are the ones who come back to Cindy in the new year and find they've added four rounds. That's not talent. That's frequency.
Everyone at TandEm starts with Fundamentals: three one-hour sessions, one-on-one with a coach, for $220. We schedule them around you, outside regular class times, so you learn the movements properly before you ever set foot in a class. By the time you meet your first benchmark, you'll know what a squat should feel like.
Classes run at 5am and 6am on weekdays, 9:30am Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 5pm Monday to Friday, 6pm Monday to Wednesday, and 7:30am Saturday. We're at 2/76 Erindale Rd, Balcatta, and The Wooden Spoon Café is right here on the premises if you want a proper feed afterwards.
If you've been curious about CrossFit but weren't sure where a beginner fits in — this is where. Come and have a chat with us first, no pressure and no obligation. Book your free fitness consultation, or call us on 0402 324 368.
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