The first in a series of many CrossFit benchmark workout guides, Angie is one of the original CrossFit girl workouts.
Angie can be summed up as a test of your muscular endurance and proficiency with pull-ups and push-ups. It’s a unique workout in that there are no rounds or rest periods to allow your muscles to recover.
You do all 100 pull-ups before moving onto the next section of the WOD.
Here’s the Angie WOD, 3 tips for getting a great score on Angie, and how to scale it if it’s your first time.
What Is The Angie Wod?
For time:
- 100 Pull-ups
- 100 Push-ups
- 100 Sit-Ups
- 100 Squats
Here’s legendary CrossFitter Chris Spealler crush Angie with a blistering score of 10:11:
The Angie WOD Strategy
Here’s what to do to get a great score on Angie.
1. Warm-Up
Before doing Angie, warm up your shoulders, legs and core. Because you’ll dive right into the WOD with pull-ups, pay special attention to your grip, biceps, and shoulders.
And while we’re on the subject of grip, use hand grips on this workout. 100 pull-ups is a lot and you’ll probably rip a callous without them.
2. Have A Strategy For Pull-ups and Push-ups
The best way to get ready for Angie is to know your strategy for pull-ups going into the work out.
Obviously, 100 pull-ups is quite a lot. Unless you’re a beast, you won’t be able to do them all in one set.
Your next best option is strategizing how you’ll chunk down your sets so you limit the number of times you fail a pull-up or have to come down from the bar.
Popular ways to break up pull-ups:
- 5 sets of 20
- 10 sets of 10
- 2 or 3 big sets (20 to 30 per set) then sets of 5 and 7 until you get to 100
Whatever you do, don’t burn out on pull-ups. If you blow your shoulders and back out early, push-ups and the rest of the WOD will be more difficult.
Apply the same strategy to the other exercises. How many push-ups can you do?
If you can do 30 to 40 push-ups fresh, you should try to do about 80% of that on your first set.
This will ensure you do not fail early or get stuck around 60 push-ups doing small sets.
Sit-ups and squats are easier than pull ups or push-ups but you don’t want to fail early on set ups or squats either. Partition as needed.
3. Shake Your Arms—A Lot!
If you watch Chris Spealler do Angie, you’ll see him shake his arms out multiple times between push-ups and pull-ups. Do this to remove lactic acid from your arm in the later parts of your set of 100. It will help you recover faster.
Scaling Angie
The easiest way to scale Angie is to modify the number of pull-ups and push-ups you do. 100 is a lot of reps, so don’t feel bad about scaling if this is your first time. The other option you have is to change the exercise.
For pull-ups, the obvious sub are ring rows. Set your feet in the same spot for each rep.
For push-ups, use bench push-ups or kneeling push-ups. If you can do more than 10 push-ups, just reduce the total number of push-ups you do for the workout to 50 or 75.
What’s A Good Time For The Angie WOD?
For mere mortals not named Speal, a great time on Angie is going under 20 minutes RX’d. If pull-ups take you more than 10 or 15 minutes to get through, you should probably scale the workout.
It is a frontloaded workout, so don’t worry too much if you get through pull-ups and push-ups at the 20 minutes mark. There’s still work to do, but you’ve passed the hard part.
Who Was Angie?
Angie is 1 of 6 “OG CrossFit benchmark workouts. The others are Barbara, Cindy, Diane, Elizabeth, and Fran.
Angie was first released by Coach Glassman in September 2003.
Angie WOD—Wrapping Up
Angie will test your muscular endurance and ability to perform a lot of bodyweight exercises in a row. If you can’t do any pull-ups or many push-ups, you can still scale this workout and get a great session in.
Check out Athletic Muscle’s fitness blog for more WOD guides, equipment reviews, and CrossFit benchmark workout strategy guides. Good luck!
