Baseline
The original functional fitness benchmark test. A simple chipper to establish your fitness baseline.
- Format
- For Time
- Time cap
- 10 mins
- Level
- beginner
For Time
Be the first
/ to log it.
Free on iOS and Android. Every score gets a global rank, a place in your history, and a head-to-head against anyone you follow.
Baseline is a for-time workout by Fiz, built from 5 movements, with a 10 mins cap. It is set at beginner level.
About Baseline
Baseline is a 500 metre row, forty air squats, thirty sit-ups, twenty push-ups and ten pull-ups, done once, for time. It is not a hero workout and not really a benchmark in the competitive sense. It is a measuring stick, and it is probably the most useful five minutes in this entire catalogue.
The point is that you will do it again
Most workouts here are designed to be hard. This one is designed to be repeatable. It is short enough to do without a warm-down day afterwards, it uses equipment almost everyone has, it needs no skill that takes months to acquire, and the descending rep scheme means it stays roughly evenly weighted across the whole body. That combination is rare, and it is what makes Baseline the standard first workout for someone new and the standard re-test for someone six months in.
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Do it honestly the first time
The temptation on a first attempt is to go conservatively so the next attempt looks better. Resist that, because a soft first score makes every subsequent comparison meaningless. Row at a hard but controlled pace, aiming to come off the machine breathing heavily rather than destroyed. The squats and sit-ups should be unbroken. Push-ups and pull-ups are the two places most people stop, so break them deliberately into small sets rather than going to failure at rep fourteen and losing thirty seconds on the floor.
What's a good Baseline time
Under four minutes is a strong Baseline and very fit athletes go near three. Four to six is a good result for a regular trainee and most people starting out land between six and ten. The number matters far less than the trend: write it down, do it again in eight to twelve weeks under the same conditions, and the difference is one of the cleanest signals you will get about whether your training is working.