Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. the simultaneous sacking or dismissal of a large number of a firm’s workers.

1937–84

Partridge DSUE (1984) 1351/2: —1935.

2. (US) a beating.

1930		E.H. Lavine Third Degree (1931) 5: It is remarkable that the same gangster who would kick a stranger in the abdomen [...] will either whimper or scream with fear when the ‘workout’ begins.
1940		S. Longstreet Decade 317: He’s slug-nutty from a work-out the boys gave him in stir.
1954		C. Chessman Cell 2455 49: The punk is going to die of fright before I get the chance to give him a little workout.
1981		H. Gould Fort Apache, The Bronx 114: Man, the things they used to do to collars in those days [...] Everybody got a workout.

3. an act of sexual intercourse.

1969		C. Brown Mr Jive-Ass Nigger 148: [I]f a chick wants a workout, I mean a freakout, that’s where they go. These Greeks work in teams, man. They fuck the chick between the toes, in the nose, and shit like that.
1989		M. Amis London Fields 154: Keith launched into a squalid decameron of recent gallops and tumbles, instant liaisons, valiant cuckoldries, eagerly requited grabbings and gropings, quickies and workouts.