A few weeks ago I got to share my fascination with fitness with a good sized group of Empower members who seemed to share my interest.  We enjoyed a lively conversation that ran to two hours without me even noticing the time speeding by.  Our audience had great questions and shared good insights as we travelled through the history of fitness, unravelled some fitness industry mysteries and revealed the principles for optimizing human health and performance.  Some of the questions we addressed included: How is wellness different from fitness?  What is the pec deck for?  How does CrossFit make you harder to kill?  How can we accurately predict your risk of all-cause mortality with just a beer keg and a flight of stairs?

But the question we started with was “What is CrossFit?”

This one is dear to me because while most people think they have an idea of what CrossFit is, very few people really do.  Including CrossFitters themselves.  In fact, I find even most CrossFit coaches and CrossFit gym owners have a hard time answering this fully and completely.

Yes, CrossFit is a worldwide community of fitness enthusiasts.  Yes, it is the sport of fitness.  Yes, it is a group based, high intensity training program proven to produce elite level fitness.  Yes, it is a constantly varied functional fitness methodology.  CrossFit is all these things but this is not what separates it from everything that came before CrossFit or from all the high intensity functional training competitors that have emerged since CrossFit’s rise in popularity.
 
What sets CrossFit apart is that it is an open source, results-driven methodology for deriving the most effective training protocols. 

What does that mean? 

CrossFit, at its core, is not a bunch of movements or a specific style of training.  Unlike its copycat competitors, CrossFit is not attached to any particular method or approach.  CrossFit’s only commitment is to results.  Measurable, quantifiable results.  CrossFit is not theory-driven.  The programming is built upon what works in the real world to make athletes fitter.  CrossFit programming does not simply promise results, CrossFit’s programming is informed by and evolves based on results.

The importance of this is that unlike an F45 or Orange Theory that are committed to a commercially derived training program designed to optimize use of space and equipment to achieve commercial success, CrossFit programming is completely focused on the training benefits derived by the athlete.  It also means that Crossfit continues to evolve as we get more and better data on what produces the best fitness results for our members.

Having started CrossFit in 2005 I’ve watched the programming adapt over the years and experienced my fitness results accelerating as the programming gets better.   CrossFit never claimed to have the most effective training program possible, just the most effective training program currently available.  And this will remain true because CrossFit is not committed to or attached to a particular style of training.  CrossFit has simply taken the most effective training methodologies from various sports.  When new and better training protocols such as Tabata intervals are discovered, they simply get incorporated into the CrossFit training methodology.  If you can show us a way to produce better fitness outcomes, we will adopt it.

Where do these inputs come from?  Everywhere!  In the beginning CrossFit founder Greg Glassman drew from the world of athletics where performances are rigorously measured but as the CrossFit community grew worldwide we could begin to compare against each other.  Since 2007 the CrossFit Games has become the proving ground for who has the most effective training.  Legends like Ben Bergeron transformed the way we all train by the results their unique training approach produced in those early days.  The CrossFit Open with as many as 400,000 participants worldwide is a treasure trove of data on who is producing the best results.  Because each CrossFit gym is free to program their own way, we see trial and error and collectively reap the benefits of this fitness exploration.

It is one of the reasons as a coach and affiliate owner that I prefer to follow the official CrossFit programming.  Gyms that do their own programming can often get stuck in the past and their programming may not evolve as quickly. 

Very few people understand the power of CrossFit is based on its open source, results-driven methodology for deriving the most effective fitness protocols.  You and I continue to benefit from the evolution of CrossFit.

Of course, we only know it works if we can quantify it.  How do you quantify fitness?  First you have to define what fitness is.  Until we have agreement on that word, the rest of it is rather meaningless.  And this is where CrossFit really changed the fitness industry because before CrossFit no one had developed a quantifiable working definition of the product they were purporting to deliver. 

Therefore our second question Saturday delved into answering the most critical question in our industry:  What is Fitness?
 
Friday Make Up Day

1) Empower Reset #38
1 min Breathing
30/30 sec Head Nods/Rotations

2 rounds (1 min each)
Deadbugs
Shoulder Bridges
Windshield Wipers
Hip Escapes
Rocking Chair
Back Breakfalls
Side Breakfalls
Upper Body Half Rolls
Lower Body Half Rolls
Shin Box Side-to-side
Shin Box get ups
Get Ups

3x Each:
Forward Rolls
Forward Rolls over horse
Backward breakfalls from horse
Side Breakfalls from standing

2) Kelly
5 Rounds for time:
400 meter run
30 box jumps
30 Wallball shots

3) Back Squat 5-3-1a
Back Squat
5-3-3-3-1-1-1-1-1
100 Weighted Sit ups

4) 2007
1000m Row
Then 5 rounds:
25 pull ups
7 push jerks