FRAGO #3: Victoria

5 power snatches
5 rope climbs to 15 feet
12 power snatches
4 rope climbs
9 power snatches
3 rope climbs
6 power snatches
2 rope climbs
3 power snatches
1 rope climb

Front squat 3-3-3-3-3 reps

Stimulus and Strategy:
Today you’ll build to a 3-rep-max front squat, heavy relative to your capacity. Check Jan. 20 for your most recent 3-rep effort as a reference. Let your jumps in load be guided by effort, feel, and movement quality — make larger jumps when things feel smooth, smaller jumps with longer rests if you’re struggling early. Newer athletes should keep loads lighter and prioritize sound mechanics. Heavy is the goal, but movement quality always comes first.

5 rounds for time of:
15 push presses
20 toes-to-bars

♀ 105-lb barbell
♂ 155-lb barbell

Post time to comments.

Stimulus and Strategy:
Today’s workout is a couplet of heavy weightlifting and high-rep gymnastics. Don’t let the two movements fool you; both will tax your upper and lower body. Aim to finish between 10-15 minutes, with some of you pushing closer to 8.

Expect to break the push presses into 2-3 sets. If you can go unbroken, go heavier. The 100 total toes-to-bars make this a high-volume workout that will drain intensity if not scaled properly — reduce reps first to allow for 2-4 sets across all 5 rounds. Scaling range of motion is secondary to maintaining volume if you can cycle reps efficiently.

What This Means for You

Understanding this list changes how you think about the workouts you least enjoy. The movements that feel awkward or neurologically demanding, the ones that require coordination and precision and practice, are exactly the ones you need most if you tend to avoid them. That discomfort is usually a signal that a skill is underdeveloped.

It also reframes what “weakness” means in CrossFit. When the program pushes you toward something uncomfortable, it is not randomness. It is the program finding gaps along this list and filling them. That is the design.

One more thing worth knowing: As you get older, the instinct is often to simplify. To drop the complex movements. To stick with machines or low-skill alternatives that feel safer. But pulling the neurological component out of your training does not preserve your capacity; it erodes it. Power and speed require practicing the skills that produce them. There is no shortcut around that.

Fitness That Shows Up in Real Life

A 75-year-old client who was 2 miles into a hike when he came across another hiker who had fallen and couldn’t get up. He deadlifted the person off the ground using strength and technique built over years of consistent training. Then, he helped them walk back to the parking lot, a task that required the endurance he had also developed. There was no cell service. There was no other option. His fitness was the plan.

That is what this list is building toward. Not the fastest marathon time. Not the biggest squat. Something harder to measure and more broadly useful: the capacity to do real work, across a wide range of demands, whenever it is required.

Developing all 10 skills will not make you elite in any single one. It will make you capable across all of them. In most situations that actually matter, that is the better deal.

Stimulus and Strategy:
Today’s workout is an ascending-rep couplet of burpee box jump-overs and deadlifts. Aim to make it into the round of 15, keeping deadlifts unbroken through the round of 9 and maintaining a consistent pace on the burpee box jump-overs. Getting over the box is key to the stimulus

Complete as many reps as possible in 10 minutes of:
3 burpee box jump-overs
3 deadlifts
6 burpee box jump-overs
6 deadlifts
9 burpee box jump-overs
9 deadlifts
Etc.

The List That Explains Everything You Do in the Gym

If you have ever wondered why CrossFit looks the way it does — why you run and lift and flip and jump all in the same program — the 10 general physical skills are your answer. Originally developed by Jim Cawley and Bruce Evans, founders of Dynamax Med Balls, the list appears in the CrossFit article, “What Is Fitness?” and defines exactly what a complete fitness program should develop.

The 10 skills break into three tiers. 

The top four — cardiorespiratory endurance, stamina, flexibility, and strength — are developed primarily through training.

The middle two — power and speed — require both training and practice in equal measure, drawing heavily on neurological capacity as well as physical development.

The bottom four — coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy — are developed almost entirely through practice.

The tiers are not rigid walls. All 10 skills are deeply interrelated. Better coordination improves the strength you can express. Better balance unlocks more power. Missing one skill creates gaps in the others, whether you notice it or not.

Why You Train Everything

CrossFit pursues all 10 skills because the world does not announce which ones it will demand of you.

An elite marathon runner has made a deliberate trade-off. Strength, flexibility, power, and speed have been sacrificed to get to a sub-two-hour finish. That is an extraordinary achievement, but it is built around a single goal. Your goal is different. You are training for the full range of what life might ask of you.

A friend invites you to go paddleboarding. A family member needs help moving heavy furniture. A storm rolls through, and there is unexpected physical work to do. These situations call on different combinations of skills in ways you cannot predict. The broader your fitness, the better your odds of meeting the moment.

Open Workout 20.5

For time, partitioned any way:
40 muscle-ups
80-calorie row
120 wall-ball shots

Time cap: 20 minutes

15 kettlebell swings
10 box jumps

300 meter Run

5 rounds

4 rounds

15 Bench Press

15 Calorie Row

45 Double Unders

Ned

5 rounds for time of:
11 back squats
800-meter row

Bodyweight barbell
Stimulus and Strategy:
Today, we honor Special Agent Nathan “Ned” Schuldheiss, 27, of Newport, Rhode Island, a civilian assigned to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Detachment 204 Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska.