Christmas Crackers: Twelve Workouts, Twelve Days, One Medal

The notification hits your phone at 7pm Sunday night.

Tomorrow's workout is revealed. You screenshot it, send it to your training partner, maybe feel your stomach flip a little. By morning, you'll be ready.

This is how Christmas Crackers works at CrossFit 1864. And starting Monday, November 25th, we're doing it for the tenth year running.

Twelve Days That Separate December from "December"

Here's what happens every year around this time.

Good intentions meet holiday parties. Training plans meet family commitments. Consistency meets the convenient excuse that "everyone takes December off anyway."

Most gyms see their attendance drop. Most people tell themselves they'll restart in January with everyone else.

We do the opposite.

For ten years, Christmas Crackers has been our answer to the question: what if you didn't wait until January?

Twelve benchmark workouts. Twelve days between November 24th and December 6th. Every evening at 7pm, we reveal tomorrow's workout. You won't know what's coming until the night before. No time to overthink it. No opportunity to cherry pick the workouts you like and skip the ones that make you nervous.

You'll know at 7pm. You'll show up the next day. You'll do the work.

Complete all twelve workouts and you earn your finisher medal. Not for being fastest. Not for posting the best score. For finishing what you started when most people are finding reasons not to start at all.

What You're Actually Signing Up For

A benchmark workout is fitness under examination.

These are the workouts with names. Fran. Helen. Murph. Cindy. They're standardised tests that CrossFit gyms worldwide use to measure progress. Do Fran in January, do it again in June, and the difference tells you everything about where you've been and where you're going.

Take Fran: 21-15-9 repetitions of thrusters and pull ups. Elite athletes finish in under three minutes. Most people take six to ten. Everyone, regardless of time, finishes with chalk on their hands, sweat on the floor, and a number they'll remember next time.

The bar hits the ground after rep 21. Your hands are already slipping. The clock keeps running. Fifteen more thrusters, fifteen more pull ups, then nine of each. Your legs are questioning your choices. Your grip is failing. But the workout is short enough that you can see the finish line even when you're suffering.

That's the point of a benchmark. It's a moment of truth you can't negotiate with.

During Christmas Crackers, we'll programme a mix of classic benchmarks(the girls, the new girls, Heroes and more), CrossFit Open Workouts and some of our ownbenchmarks. You'll see old friends. You'll see workouts that test your engine, your strength, your mental game. Twelve different challenges across twelve days, each one revealing something about your fitness.

Why Taking the Challenge Changes Everything

Structure when everything else is chaos. That's what a challenge like this gives you.

December doesn't care about your fitness goals. It throws office parties at you. Family dinners. Travel plans. Shopping lists. A thousand small reasons to skip today's workout and promise yourself you'll go tomorrow.

Christmas Crackers gives you something stronger than motivation: commitment with a deadline.

You'll maintain your fitness through the season when most people backslide. Not just maintain it actually, you'll likely improve. Twelve benchmark workouts means twelve opportunities to push harder than you would on a random Tuesday. While your colleagues are planning their January comeback, you'll already be ahead.

You'll discover what you're capable of when the pressure is on. It's easy to show up when you feel great. Christmas Crackers asks you to show up when you're tired, when it's dark outside, when you'd rather stay home. That's where you learn what you're actually made of.

The accountability becomes real. Miss a workout and you're not just skipping class, you're actively choosing to not finish something you started. That's a different calculation. It makes you honest with yourself in ways that "I'll go to the gym more" never does.

You'll have twelve data points about your fitness. Twelve opportunities to see where you've improved and where you need to focus. Better than any vague sense that you're "getting fitter." Next year when these benchmarks come around again, you'll know exactly what you're chasing.

The community intensity multiplies. Everyone's doing the same workout. Everyone's chasing the same goal. The person next to you at 6am and the person who comes in at 7:30 pm are both grinding through the same challenge. That shared suffering creates something you can't manufacture in regular training.

During these twelve days, everyone at CrossFit 1864 gets an unlimited membership. Come to every class if you want. Take rest days when you need them. The only requirement is finishing all twelve benchmark workouts before December 6th.

And you'll build the kind of discipline that transfers beyond the gym. The ability to do hard things when you don't feel like it. The capacity to honour commitments when easier options are everywhere. Those skills show up in your work, your relationships, your ability to tackle any goal that matters to you.

Why 67 People Started Last Year and 25 Finished

Last year, 67 people signed up for Christmas Crackers. 25 earned their finisher medal.

The ones who didn't finish weren't less capable. They just let one missed day become two, then three, then "I'll definitely do it next year."

The ones who finished showed up when their alarm went off early. They came in after work when they were tired. They did the workout that scared them and the one that didn't.

But here's what really matters: they proved to themselves that when everything around them is screaming that it's okay to let things slide, they can commit to something difficult and see it through.

That's worth more than a medal. Though the medal is pretty good too.

What Happens Next

Sunday night at 7pm, we drop the first workout.

Monday, November 24th, we start. Twelve workouts across twelve days. The clock runs until Saturday, December 6th.

You can join any class, any time, as long as you complete all twelve benchmarks before the deadline. Miss one and you can make it up. Miss two and you'll need to be strategic. Miss three and you're racing the calendar.

Ten years of this tradition. Hundreds of finisher medals earned by people who weren't sure they could do it until they did.

Last year, 25 people finished. This year, that number could include you.

The first workout drops Sunday at 7pm.

Monday, we'll see you there.