Whitten
A Hero WOD honoring Army Captain Dan Whitten, killed in Afghanistan in 2010. A five-movement chipper repeated for five punishing rounds.
- Format
- For Time
- Level
- elite
For Time
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Whitten is a for-time workout by Fiz, built from 5 movements. It is set at elite level.
About Whitten
Whitten is five rounds of twenty-two kettlebell swings, twenty-two box jumps, a 400 metre run, twenty-two burpees and twenty-two wall balls. It honours U.S. Army Captain Dan Whitten, killed in Afghanistan in 2010.
Eighty-eight reps and a run, five times over
This is one of the longest hero workouts in the catalogue and the reason is arithmetic: four movements at twenty-two reps plus a 400, five times over, is four hundred and forty reps with two kilometres of running threaded through them. Nothing in it is technically hard. What makes it difficult is that every movement is a hip movement, so there is no point in any round where your legs and lower back are not being asked for something.
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Pick a pace you would be embarrassed by
The correct opening pace for Whitten feels far too slow, and athletes who ignore that finish twenty minutes behind athletes who accepted it. Because the workout is long and the movements are simple, the only real variable is whether you stop, so the goal is a rhythm on every movement that you never need to break. Unbroken twenty-twos at a modest speed will beat fast fifteens followed by a stand-around. The wall balls at the end of each round are where fatigue shows first: if you are missing the target, you have gone out too hard, not developed a technique problem.
What's a good Whitten time
Thirty minutes is a strong Whitten, twenty-four is elite, and forty to fifty-five is where most people who complete it honestly finish. Very little of that spread is fitness and most of it is pacing, because nothing in this workout is technically difficult and everything in it is long. Scale by load and never by reps. Lighter kettlebells and a lighter ball keep the shape of the thing intact; cutting the twenty-twos removes the accumulation that is the entire point of a workout this size.