Lynne

31 Aug 2018

CrossFit Girl WOD “Lynne”

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

Good score to beat Lynne: </p>

75 reps – Beginner athlete
125 reps – Average athlete
200 reps – Advanced athlete
400 reps – Regional athlete

What is Lynne?

Lynne is one of the strangest CrossFit girl workouts (WODs) ever introduced on the CrossFit’s main site.

Lynne is not limited by the time like we are used with other WODs. You can rest as much as you want.

Your goal is to find out how many reps you can do of unbroken bench press with bodyweight and unbroken pull-ups. In a total of five round while alternating movements after every set.

What is a good score to beat for Lynne?

Unfortunately, our app WOD Time Calculator can’t calculate best-unbroken sets including fatigue in each round. At least, I will give you my best guess of what a good score to beat should be.

In my opinion, Regional athletes will be able to crush the workout with an average of ~30 bench presses and ~50 pull-ups per round, finishing with a total score of 400 reps.

Advanced athletes will hit much smaller numbers, averaging ~15 bench presses and ~25 pull-ups per round, finishing with a total score of 200 reps.

Average athletes will have a hard time on the bench, but they should be able to average ~10 bench presses and ~15 pull-ups per round, finishing with a total score of 125 reps.

Beginner athletes will probably have a hard time with both movements but they should be able to do at least ~5 bench presses and ~10 pull-ups each round, finishing with a total score of 75 reps.

How to get a good score in Lynne?

Easily, go all out in every round. Rest is optional so make it as long as you need to recover fully. You can do the Lynne for a full hour if you need to.

Bench Press

As CrossFitter, you are probably doing a bench press just about once a year or less. Your bench press probably sucks unless you have bodybuilding or powerlifting background.

Before you attempt the first round, warm-up with a simple bench press ladder. Start with small weights and higher reps and try to work to up to 1×90%. This should make your bench press bodyweight weight feel easier.

Also, try to use bridge bench press technique (not so crazy as the guy on the video below) and bump the barbell against your chest to overcome bottom position easily. It will help you to shorten the range of motion and finish more reps faster while not getting fatigued so much.

Don’t forget to have a spotter who will lift the weight from you in case you will fail a rep. It will probably happen as you are going to do five rounds for max reps.

In my opinion, it is best to try to finish as many reps as quickly as possible from the beginning then stop for a few seconds, rest with a barbell on the top and finishing a few remaining reps 1 by 1 with longer rest in the top position.

For example, you may do quick 12 reps and then finish with five singles with longer rest.

Pull-ups

You have two choices. Do butterfly pull-ups, finish as much as you can as quickly as possible or do kipping pull-ups and hold to the bar as long as you can.

When doing butterfly pull-ups, you can easily string a higher number of pull-ups without losing a grip. It is harder to recover from them and continue with more butterfly pull-ups under fatigue. You will probably jump down, instead of trying to recover in hang as you are going to be tired after max effort butterfly pull-ups.

On another hand, kipping pull-ups are slower, but they won’t fatigue you so much. Holding for more kipping pull-ups compared to butterfly pull-ups is possible. The reason is that you can do a decent set of kipping pull-ups, recover by alternating hang on the left/right arm and doing a few reps when you feel recovered. This technique is much more demanding, and you will probably hang 5 to 10 times longer compared to butterfly pull-ups.

You can even try to combine those two approaches. Start by doing about 80% of your max rep butterfly pull-ups, recover in the hang and then continue alternating small sets of kipping pull-ups with hang.

No matter what strategy you choose, trying to hold onto the bar as long as you can is going to be highly physically demanding and will give you a great workout.

Rest

Rest as much as you can. There is no reason to rush between the sets, and if you have done each set to your maximum, then you will probably need at least four to five minutes rest between movements.

Shorten the rest only if one of the movements is your weakness and you have done only a single digit of reps.