Grace

26 Jul 2018

CrossFit Girl WOD “Grace”

For Time
30 Power Clean and Jerks 135/95 lbs

Good time to beat for Grace:
06 min 40 sec – Fitness Level 0 – Beginner athlete
06 min 00 sec – Fitness Level 25 – Beginner athlete
05 min 14 sec – Fitness Level 50 – Average athlete
04 min 05 sec – Fitness Level 75 – Average athlete
03 min 24 sec – Fitness Level 90 – Advanced athlete
03 min 00 sec – Fitness Level 95 – Advanced athlete
02 min 34 sec – Fitness Level 98 – Elite athlete
02 min 11 sec – Fitness Level 100 – Regional athlete

What is Grace?

Grace is a CrossFit Girl benchmark workout (WOD). Grace is also one of the best known CrossFit workouts. It is just 30 cleans and jerks for time with 135 lbs for men and 95 lbs for women.

Grace may sound easy and maybe even not worth doing as it looks pretty short to be the workout of the day. Don’t be fooled Grace won’t be an easy task to handle unless you are an elite athlete.

What is a good time for Grace?

According to the WOD Time Calculator, good time for grace for Regional athletes is 2:11, for advanced athletes 3:24 and for beginners 6:40.

If you are a beginner, you should aim for time faster than 8 minutes. Scale down a weight if you are sure that you can’t hold EMOM of 4 reps per minute. Grace should be an aggressive workout with semi-heavy weight.

For average and advanced athletes there are two milestones. First is to finish Grace under 5 minutes which is exactly 6 reps each minute and the second milestone is under 3 minutes which is exactly 10 reps each minute.

If you are top athletes you should have no problem finishing Grace in under 2 minutes. By the way, there are even a few people who have finished Grace in around 60 seconds. One of them is Dan Bailey, check the video below to see that blazing fast Grace!

How to get a good time for Grace?

2-minute, 4-minute, and 6-minute Grace are totally different workouts and you have to adjust strategy according to your target time.

Anyway, no matter how fast you wanna go, there are still a few similarities.

First 10 reps are easy. You have probably started too quickly or used too heavyweight if you feel tired after 10th rep.

Second 10 reps hurt. You should find yourself fighting for next reps but still being able to manage the pace you had for first 10 reps. You are on a good way for new PR if you feel like you wanna die during the 20th rep.

Don’t think about last 10 reps. You just started last 10 reps and you probably want to give up. Now it is time to keep pushing, tell yourself it is only 10 reps and count them down. There is no need for an extra rest, just keep going, 1 rep at a time, and you are done in no time.

Target time 5-8 minutes

Do only singles, there is no need for larger sets.

Find out how many reps you need to do each minute. For example, 30/5=6 reps per minute. This means you should do 1 rep every 10 seconds.

Start clock and hold that pace for first 20 reps. After that, speed up if you still feel ok or try to hold the pace if you are tired.

Target Time 3-5 minutes

There is still no need for larger sets, you can still finish in about 2:30 if you do only singles.

The only difference in this strategy compared to 5-8 minutes is that you no longer watch the clock. Your goal is to do fast singles at the fastest manageable pace.

Your goal should be 1 rep every 6 seconds.

Target time 2-3 minutes

You are already serious CrossFitter if you thinking about finishing Grace in 2 minutes.

There are 2 ways on how to approach this.

You may go for multiple sets of the same reps, for example, 6 sets of 5 but your rest have to be short.

Fast unbroken Grace takes about a minute so your rest to work ration can’t be higher than 1.

Or you can try to do one very large set and finish with quick singles. In this case, I am talking about at least 15-20 reps in unbroken sets and finishing with a few singles.

Target time under 2 minutes

There is no strategy involved, just go unbroken and if you drop the bar before 30 reps, take it back up and finish as fast as you can.