CrossTraining glossary

The workout of the day: the WOD is the session on today, different from yesterday’s and from tomorrow’s.

Every Minute On the Minute: you start a movement at the top of each minute and rest whatever is left until the next one. The faster you move, the more you rest.

As Many Rounds (or Reps) As Possible: complete as many rounds or reps as you can in a fixed time. Whoever tallies the most wins, not whoever finishes first.

Against the clock: a fixed amount of work has to be completed in the shortest time possible. Whoever finishes first wins.

Time Cap: the maximum time given to finish a block. If you don’t make it, you stop wherever you are.

As prescribed: doing the workout exactly as written, with the intended weight and version of each movement. It is not compulsory or better, just one of the three scales.

Rep max: the heaviest weight you can lift once with good technique in a given movement. Loads in a workout are often given as a percentage of your RM.

Rate of Perceived Exertion: how hard something feels on a scale of 1 to 10, rather than a fixed number of kilos. An RPE 8 is hard but controlled; an RPE 10 is to failure.

Hanging from the bar, bringing your feet up to touch it. It demands core strength and coordination with the body’s swing.

Lifting the bar from the floor to the shoulders in one explosive movement, catching it in a quarter squat rather than a full squat, which would make it a squat clean.

A full squat with the bar held overhead, arms locked out. It demands shoulder, hip and ankle mobility in equal measure.

Handstand Push-Up: a push-up done in a handstand against the wall. The most demanding version of a shoulder press.

A squat with a medicine ball followed by a throw at a target on the wall. It combines legs, core and shoulder in a single movement.

A jump rope skip where the rope passes under the feet twice in a single jump. It is about timing and wrist speed, not jumping higher.

A squat with the bar resting on the upper back, across the traps. The base movement of leg strength.

From the floor, walking your hands towards the wall while your feet climb up it, until you end up in a handstand. A common step before the handstand push-up.

Walking while carrying a heavy weight in each hand, like carrying the shopping but much heavier. It works grip and core isometrically.

Lifting the bar from the floor to standing, with a flat back the whole way up. The deadlift carries the heaviest load of the five basic lifts.

The position where the bar rests on the shoulders, in front of the neck, elbows high. It is where a front squat, a push press or a thruster begins.

With your back against a bench, driving the hips upward with weight across the abdomen. The lift that isolates the glutes the most out of everything seen at the box.

From the floor to standing with a jump, passing through a push-up. The BRP OTB variant (burpee over the bar) adds jumping over the bar at the end of every rep.