FIVE Minute Fran
21-15-9 (95/65)
Thrusters
Pullups
Choose a weight or rep scheme to achieve a Fran time of 5:00 or less.
Rep schemes are:
21-15-9
15-12-9
12-9-6
Fran. She's a dreaded bitch, ain't she? In my previous gym, we only programmed Fran 2-3 times a year. Our hope was that as our athletes strive for peak performance across different time and modal domains, the crossover effect into Fran would be achieved. In other words, Fran was only coming around 2-3 times a year, but you'd be ready when it's programmed. Most of our athletes had success w/ this model as 3-5 months between Frans provided enough time to make significant gains.
Here's at CrossFit Yongsan, we program Fran more frequently. While that provides numerous opportunities to know where your Fran time stands, that tends to reinforce bad strategy...BADLY. The conventional thought goes: I need to be able to do this WOD at Rx'd weights as soon as possible. Then, I'll focus my efforts on cutting down that time until I achieve sub 5-minutes - with this time, I'll be up there with the best. All I need to do is cut down on all that rest time, right??
But unfortunately, it's highly unlikely you'll achieve a significant time reduction if you did Fran say once a month or every several weeks. For example, say you've been crossfitting here at CFY for 6 months, did Fran 4 times, and always did it around 7-8 minutes. The last time you did Fran six weeks ago, you did it 6:45. So what are the chances you'll break 5-minutes tomorrow? Probably not that great.
But it doesn't have to be this way. Bottom line: you may have to give up going RX'd or scale even more and consider two other approaches:
Get to the RX'd weight, but cut down the reps to the point where the WOD can be done unbroken. For example instead of doing (7,7,7), (5,5,5), (3,3,3) on the thrusters, consider doing a "60% Fran," 12, 9, 6 on pull-ups and thrusters. But do it UNBROKEN! Learn what it feels like not to rest. The first thing you may find is that a "60% Fran" does not take 60% of the time; in fact, it may take as little as 40% the time. Much of the time on a full RX'd "Fran" is typically spent resting. The transition from doing each round in three sets to doing each round unbroken eliminates 12 breaks! Once you learn that you can do a "60% Fran" unbroken in, say, 3 minutes, your entire attitude towards the WOD may change. If you can do 60% in 3 minutes, then your goal should be raised to 70% in 3:30, then 80% in 4:00, until you're at 100% in 5:00.
The second approach is to do the full number of reps, but cut the weight until the reps can all be done unbroken. Instead of doing 95 lbs in 3 sets per round, cut to a weight that allows you to do each round UNBROKEN. If that means going to 45 lbs, so be it. If your "Fran" RX'd is, say, 7:30, what would it be with a 45 lb bar? 5:00? Less? Find out, and then make that time your goal as you steadily increase the weight back up to 95 lbs.
We're conditioned to think that when we do a WOD like Fran as RX'd, we're not scaling. Here's how to change that perspective: Expand the definition of RX'd to include a time limit, say 5 minutes (or pick your own time). Now, with three dimensions defining the WOD (weight, reps, and time) it's easy to see that most of us are always scaling.
When the WOD is done as traditionally thought to be "RX'd" but in more than, say, 5 minutes, we're scaling time. When the WOD is done in 5 minutes but with less than 95 lbs (or with band pull-ups) we're scaling force. And when the WOD is done in 5 minutes with 95 lbs but less than 21-15-9 reps (or less than full ROM) we're scaling distance. So really, we're always scaling. (If you've got a 5-minute "Fran" just redefine your standard to be a 4-minute "Fran")
It's all just a question of which dimension we scale. CrossFit is about constant variation. Considered varying your dimensions.
