Watch Top CrossFit Athletes Step Back In Time And Tackle The Nasty Girls Workout

A woman performing a ring muscle-up in a CrossFit gym
(Image credit: Getty Images / Arsenii Palivoda)

The original Nasty Girls video is the reason many people started CrossFit, inspired by the sight of athletes grinding through their final few ring muscle-ups to finish a grueling workout.

It features a trio of CrossFit’s OGs—Nicole Carroll, Annie Sakamoto and Eva Twardokens—completing three rounds of 50 squats, seven ring muscle-ups and 10 hang power cleans. 

More than a decade on, CrossFit has revisited this workout as part of its new Rogue Fitness Golden Barbell competition, which sees four top-level athletes go head-to-head in three workouts, the third of which will be the first CrossFit Open workout of 2024. 

The cream of CrossFit’s current crop, fittest man on earth Jeffrey Adler, alongside Brent Fikowski, Alexis Raptis and Alex Gazan, all blitzed through the workout in less than six-and-a-half minutes, with Gazan recording the fastest time of five minutes 22 seconds. 

Watch them duke it out below. 

CrossFit pays homage to the original by recreating the conditions the athletes faced in 2005. That means the gymnastic rings are set low—very low—forcing athletes like 6ft 2in Brent Fikowski to complete them strict from an awkward bent-knee starting position.

The only thing missing from the 2024 edition was the need to touch a medicine ball with your butt at the bottom of each squat, as perennial CrossFit Games podium athlete Pat Vellner pointed out on the company’s Instagram post

Watch the original video below, or scroll on to find out how you can try the Nasty Girl CrossFit workout for yourself. 

How To Do The Nasty Girl CrossFit Workout  

Three rounds for time:

  • Air squat x 50
  • Ring muscle-up x 7
  • Power clean x 10 (135lb/60kg for men, 95lb/43kg for women)
Harry Bullmore
Staff writer

Harry covers news, reviews and features for Coach, Fit&Well and Live Science. With over a decade of training experience, he has tried everything from powerlifting to gymnastics, cardio to CrossFit, all in a bid to find fun ways of building a healthy, functional body.