Tom Holland's Favourite CrossFit Workout Is One of 'The Girls' – Here Are 20 Others to Test Your Fitness

Tom Holland is pretty fit, and kinda jacked. This isn’t news to anyone who’s seen him swinging between buildings, boxing or backflipping his way through a press tour.

But when Men’s Health caught up with the actor last year, one of the details that really stuck was his score on one of his go-to workouts: ‘Cindy’.

The CrossFit benchmark sees you set a timer for 20 minutes and complete as many rounds as possible of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups and 15 squats. Holland told us his best score was 27 rounds – or an outrageous 810 reps – in 20 minutes.

That clip has since gone viral. But among the inevitable debates over whether Holland really is that fit, another question crops up: why does this workout have a name?

And, more specifically, who is Cindy?

The answer takes us right back to the early days of CrossFit.

Long before Hyrox was impossible to get a ticket for, CrossFit began creating standardised workouts that trainees could return to repeatedly, recording their scores and using them as a yardstick for their improving fitness.

The September 2003 issue of the CrossFit Journal introduced the first six official benchmark workouts: Angie, Barbara, Chelsea, Diane, Elizabeth and Fran. Unlike the constantly varied Workout of the Day (WOD) posted on crossfit.com, these specific sessions would reappear periodically, allowing athletes to track their performances and progress over time.

More benchmarks have been added since, but the central aim remains the same: perform the same workout, under the same standards, and see if your time or score improves.

Think of them as the difference between fitness training and fitness testing.

There is, unsurprisingly, a story behind the names.

CrossFit took inspiration from the convention of giving major storms short human names. Founder Greg Glassman cited the reasoning that distinctive names were quicker and less prone to confusion than more complicated identification systems. CrossFit applied the same principle to its benchmark workouts.

There was also a characteristically early-CrossFit joke attached.

Glassman wrote that anything powerful enough to leave you ‘flat on your back’ before somehow persuading you to come back and do it again deserved a name.

Hence Fran, Cindy, Helen, Diane et al.

Short, memorable names attached to workouts making them easy to remember and come back to regularly.

This concept would go on to be expanded into the CrossFit Hero WODs. Workouts dedicated to members of the armed forces and other services,

Benchmark workouts offer something that random training – and even well-programmed training – can occasionally lack: simple, trackable metrics.

If you performed Cindy six months ago and managed 15 rounds, then hit 18 today using exactly the same movement standards, something has improved. Your work capacity, muscular endurance, movement efficiency, pacing. Or – most likely – some combination of all four.

If you haven’t improved, well, you can clearly see where the holes in your fitness are – and begin to train them.

They also test a broad spectrum of qualities.

At one end you have workouts such as Grace and Isabel: short, explosive barbell efforts that test your ability to move moderately heavy weight quickly. At the other there’s Eva or Kelly, combining running with high-rep resistance work for a much longer conditioning hit.

Then there are workouts such as Diane and Fran, which deliberately pair movements you wouldn’t see together in traditional training methods – this works to make sure you’re not ‘specialising’ or simply training what you’re already good at. The original CrossFit Journal described this as part of their appeal: strong lifters could be undone by gymnastics, while lighter gymnastic specialists could find themselves humbled by heavy weights... all in the same workout.

You don’t necessarily need to specialise in CrossFit to benefit from doing benchmark workouts. Drop one into your programme every few months, record your score, find the holes in your fitness game – then come back and try again. They're a great diagnostic tool.

Of course you can make up your own, but by using a selection of 'The Girls', you're ensuring you're not cherry picking or avoiding your weaknesses.

Just don’t turn every training session into a test. Benchmarks work because you train between tests.

Here’s a selection of some of the original (and most infamous) benchmark workouts.

Amanda

9-7-5 reps of:
Muscle-ups
Snatches @60kg

Angie

100 pull-ups
100 push-ups
100 sit-ups
100 squats

Annie

50-40-30-20-10 reps of:
Double-unders
Sit-ups

Barbara

5 rounds of:
20 pull-ups
30 push-ups
40 sit-ups
50 squats
3 minutes rest

Chelsea

EMOM (every minute on the minute) x 30 minutes:
5 pull-ups
10 push-ups
15 squats

Cindy

AMRAP (as many rounds as possible) x 20 minutes:
5 pull-ups
10 push-ups
15 squats

Diane

21-15-9 reps of:
Deadlifts @100kg
Handstand push-ups

Elizabeth

21-15-9 reps of:
Cleans @60kg
Ring dips

Eva

5 rounds of:
Run 800 metres
30 kettlebell swings @32kg
30 pull-ups

Fran

21-15-9 reps of:
Thrusters @42.5kg
Pull-ups

Grace

30 x clean and jerk @60kg

Helen

3 rounds of:
Run 400 metres
21 kettlebell swings @24kg
12 pull-ups

Isabel

30 x snatches @60kg

Jackie

Row 1,000 metres
50 thrusters @20kg
30 pull-ups

Karen

150 wall-ball shots @9kg

Kelly

5 rounds of:
Run 400 metres
30 box jumps to 24 inch
30 wall-ball shots @9kg

Linda

10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 reps of:
Deadlifts @1.5 x bodyweight
Bench presses @bodyweight
Cleans @0.75 x bodyweight

Lynne

5 rounds of:
Max reps bench press @bodyweight
Max-reps pull-ups

Mary

AMRAP x 20 minutes
5 handstand push-ups
10 pistol squats
15 pull-ups

Nancy

5 rounds of:
Run 400 metres
15 overhead squats @42.5kg

Nicole

AMRAP x 20 minutes
Run 400 metres
Max-reps pull-ups

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Andrew Tracey

With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.    

As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.   

Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts.   

 You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.