The Best Long CrossFit WODs (And How to Actually Survive Them)
The best long CrossFit WODs — from Hero workouts like Murph and Holleyman to the Girls, classic chippers, and proven pacing strategies for 30+ minute sessions.
The best long CrossFit WODs — from Hero workouts like Murph and Holleyman to the Girls, classic chippers, and proven pacing strategies for 30+ minute sessions.
CrossFit is built on variety: short, brutal sprint workouts that leave you gasping in two minutes, and long, grinding sessions that test every layer of your fitness. While most programming leans toward the 10–20 minute range for efficiency, the 30-minute-and-beyond WODs are where real endurance is forged. Long CrossFit workouts train the metabolic, mental, and strategic dimensions of the sport that short pieces simply can't touch.
In this guide, we're covering the best long CrossFit WODs: Hero WODs, the Girls, community classics, and some of our own favourites from The Mash (along with the strategies you need to approach them intelligently.)
A long CrossFit WOD is generally any workout lasting 30 minutes or more. These sessions go well beyond the typical metabolic conditioning window and demand a fundamentally different approach than a 7-minute AMRAP. The physiological demand shifts toward aerobic capacity, lactate management, and pacing; skills that take deliberate practice to develop.
Long WODs are less about peaking intensity and more about sustaining output. The athletes who excel at them share two traits: they've put in the aerobic base work, and they've learned to read their own body under fatigue. If you're only ever chasing short, spicy workouts, you're leaving a critical piece of your fitness on the table.
Hero WODs are CrossFit workouts created to honour fallen military personnel, law enforcement officers, and first responders who gave their lives in the line of duty. CrossFit has published Hero WODs since 2005, and they're among the most challenging and recognised workouts in the sport. Most share a common trait: they're long, heavy, and relentless, designed to reflect the sacrifice they represent.
For time:
Run 1 mile
100 Pull-ups
200 Push-ups
300 Air Squats
Run 1 mile
(RX: wear a 20/14 lb weight vest)
Murph is named after Navy Lieutenant Michael Murphy, who was killed in action in Afghanistan in 2005. It's performed annually on Memorial Day across thousands of CrossFit boxes worldwide, making it one of the most widely completed Hero WODs in history.
Two execution options:
The partitioned approach is typically faster but requires more mental tracking. The strict order is a real test of upper body endurance. Whichever version you choose, the vest is non-negotiable at RX.
For full technique breakdowns and strategy, read our Murph Workout guide.
30 rounds for time:
5 Wall Ball Shots (20/14 lb)
3 Handstand Push-Ups
1 Power Clean (100/70 kg)
Named after Staff Sergeant Aaron Holleyman, Holleyman is a deceptively heavy workout. With 30 rounds to complete, the goal is smooth, consistent transitions, not blazing through the early rounds and unravelling by round 15.
The power clean weight is significant, and the handstand push-ups compound upper body fatigue quickly. Your pacing in the first ten rounds will define your last ten. This is a workout that rewards patience and punishes ego.
The Girls are some of the oldest named workouts in CrossFit, introduced as benchmarks to track fitness over time. They span a wide range of time domains, modalities, and demands. The long-duration Girls listed here are particularly useful for identifying weaknesses in endurance, strategy, and movement efficiency.
10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 reps, for time:
Deadlift (1.5x bodyweight)
Bench Press (bodyweight)
Clean (0.75x bodyweight)
Linda is the lifting WOD, simple structure, punishing volume. Because the loads are relative to bodyweight, this workout will feel different for every athlete. Someone with a strong strength-to-bodyweight ratio will move quickly; someone who doesn't train barbell work regularly will feel every rep by round 6.
The descending rep scheme creates natural mental checkpoints. Don't fall into the trap of treating it as a race in the early rounds. The back half of Linda rewards those who stayed controlled early.
EMOM for 30 minutes:
5 Pull-ups
10 Push-ups
15 Squats
The pull-up / push-up / squat triplet is the most repeated bodyweight combination in CrossFit programming. Chelsea takes that combination and stretches it across 30 minutes with an EMOM structure that creates a very specific challenge: you must complete each round inside 60 seconds, every minute, for half an hour.
Rule: If you fail to complete a round within the minute, rest the full following minute before resuming.
The total volume — 150 pull-ups, 300 push-ups, 450 squats — is substantial. What separates a clean Chelsea from a messy one is grip and push-up efficiency. Break early and break strategically. Trying to go unbroken into minute 20 is usually a mistake.
5 rounds for time (3:00 rest between rounds):
20 Pull-ups
30 Push-ups
40 Sit-ups
50 Squats
Barbara can also be done as 5 rounds for time with no prescribed rest, but the rest-between-rounds format is the classic version. The rest period doesn't make this easy, it gives you just enough recovery to maintain output, not to fully restore it.
The key with Barbara is consistency across rounds. If round 1 takes 7 minutes and round 5 takes 14, your pacing was off from the start. Aim for splits that feel controlled in round 1. The workout punishes those who go out too hot.
5 rounds for time:
Run 800m
30 Kettlebell Swings (32/24 kg)
30 Pull-ups
Eva is a long, lung-burning workout that lives and dies by pull-up efficiency. The 150 total pull-ups paired with five 800m runs is a significant aerobic and grip demand. Athletes who can string large sets of pull-ups unbroken will have a major advantage.
For most athletes, a strategic break point, say, sets of 10 across all five rounds, beats trying to go unbroken early and burning out by round 3. Use the runs as active recovery where possible: keep them at a controlled, sustainable pace rather than sprinting out of the gate.
The Mash has been a cornerstone of The Progrm's weekly programming for years. The premise is simple: a long, challenging, community-driven workout released every weekend that anyone, whether part of our programme or not, can do together.
Each Mash has a theme. We share it across our social channels with specific cues, pacing strategies, and coaching notes. The goal isn't just fitness, it's building the habit of showing up together, pushing through something hard, and coming out the other side.
Below are some of our favourite Mash sessions we've programmed over the years.
30 rounds for time:
3 Burpees
2 Power Cleans
1 Ring Muscle-Up
— 5 minute rest —
20 rounds for time:
3 Burpee Box Jumps
2 Thrusters
1 Strict Handstand Push-Up
— 5 minute rest —
10 rounds for time:
3 Box Jumps
2 Snatches
1 Bar Muscle-Up
Three descending chipper blocks, each demanding a different set of skills. The gymnastics element in each block changes the stimulus and forces athletes to manage fatigue across multiple movement patterns. Pacing the first block conservatively is essential, there are still 30 rounds of work ahead after it ends.
Part 1 – For time:
1 round of King Kong
80/60 cal Assault Bike
*Every 30 seconds: 4 DB Box Step-Overs
— 3-5 min rest —
Part 2 – For time:
1 round of King Kong
80 Burpees to Target
*Every 30 seconds: 4 Toes-to-Bar
— 3-5 min rest —
Part 3 – For time:
1 round of King Kong
80 Box Jumps
*Every 30 seconds: 4 Burpees
King Kong (RX): 1 Deadlift @ 205/145 kg | 2 Ring Muscle-Ups | 3 Squat Cleans @ 115/80 kg | 4 Handstand Push-Ups
One of the more demanding Mash sessions we've run. King Kong is a brutal single-round complex in its own right, when combined with high-volume monostructural work and an every-30-second penalty movement, the time pressure becomes relentless. This workout teaches athletes to stay composed under accumulating fatigue.
Programmed at the start of the March 2020 lockdown, our first Mash when the boxes closed.
Odd Object Complex (ground to overhead × 10, swings × 10, ground to shoulder × 10, shoulder to overhead × 10)
Straight into:
6-9-12-9-6:
Burpee over object / Object squat / Object bent over row
— 3 min rest —
Odd Object Complex
Straight into: 4 rounds of 20 sit-ups + 4 wall walks
— 3 min rest —
Odd Object Complex
Straight into: 4 rounds of 20 jumping lunges + 10 object jumps
This one holds a special place for us. We weren't willing to let the Mash tradition die because gyms were closed — so we adapted it to whatever people had at home. The response from the community was extraordinary. When everything else felt uncertain, a shared hard workout was one of the few constants we could offer.
Follow us on Instagram for every new Mash session: @theprogrm
For time:
50 Box Jumps (24/20 in)
50 Jumping Pull-Ups
50 Kettlebell Swings (24/16 kg)
50 Walking Lunge Steps
50 Knees-to-Elbows
50 Push Presses (30/25 kg)
50 Back Extensions
50 Wall Balls (9/6 kg)
50 Burpees
50 Double-Unders
The Filthy Fifty is a full-body chipper that touches nearly every movement pattern in the sport. Ten exercises, 50 reps each, 500 total reps. The sequencing is intentional: movements alternate between lower, upper, and full-body demand to allow partial recovery. For beginners, this is a formidable challenge. For experienced athletes, it's a useful benchmark for overall work capacity.
EMOM for 40 minutes:
Min 1: X calories Row
Min 2: X calories SkiErg
Min 3: X calories Assault Bike
Min 4: Rest
Named after Finnish CrossFit athlete Mikko Salo, this 40-minute EMOM uses three machines and a built-in rest minute to create a repeating triangle of aerobic work. There's no prescribed calorie target, your score is total calories accumulated, which means you control the intensity.
This is one of the best conditioning benchmarks we've seen for tracking aerobic progress over months of training. The strategic element is real: you can distribute effort evenly, push on your strongest machine, or adjust week to week based on what you're testing. Learn more about building the engine it tests in our evidence-based conditioning programme.
Long workouts have a higher number of variables than short ones, more exercises, more opportunities to redline early, more decisions to make mid-workout. The athletes who perform well in this time domain aren't always the fittest. They're the most strategic.
Steady-state: Pick a sustainable pace and hold it for the entire workout. Works well for workouts with consistent movement patterns and moderate loads.
Push-and-pull: Go harder on your stronger movements, pull back on your weaker ones. Useful when a workout mixes your strengths with your weaknesses and you can pre-plan where to spend energy.
Negative split: Start conservative, build through the middle, finish strong. Requires discipline early but often produces the best results in workouts with no natural rest built in.
In a long workout, especially one with competitors around you, it's tempting to race out of the gate. A fast start can apply psychological pressure to others, but it has to be backed by the fitness to sustain it. If your round 1 pace isn't something you can hold for round 15, you will pay for it.
Evaluate the workout for where your energy should peak: sometimes that's the beginning (to build a lead), sometimes it's the end (for a strong finish), and sometimes it's evenly distributed. Be honest about which version of yourself shows up on a given day.
Going into any 30-minute workout without a rep scheme, a split strategy, or a pace target is a mistake. Write it down beforehand if that helps. But a plan is only as good as your ability to adjust it in real time.
The best long-workout athletes develop a calibrated internal sense of where they are relative to their limits. They know when to push, when to hold, and when a small slowdown now prevents a complete shutdown later. That calibration comes from experience, the more long WODs you log and debrief, the sharper it gets.
Looking for a structured programme that includes long-domain conditioning alongside strength and gymnastics work? Train with The Progrm — the same coaching standards trusted by some of Europe's top CrossFit Games competitors.
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