Constantly varied, functional movements executed at high intensity. Huh?
One of the great things about CrossFit is all you do is have to show up, get coached during the workout, and the results will come. You don’t have to know anything at all about the behind the scenes work the goes into making CrossFit such great a fitness program. Just to address one of the biggest misconceptions of CrossFit, anybody can do it! Our program is scalable to you no matter how out of shape or old you may feel. We aren’t filtering to let in only the fit people. We take you and coach you to be fit! For those that would like to dive deeper into the nuts and bolts of CrossFit, check out the info below.
So you really want to know more?
You’ve might have heard some stuff about CrossFit, but you’re not completely clear what exactly it is. By the very founding principles, CrossFit is an open source technology that leverages the Internet to spread methods and information.
By this very nature, it started as underground movements against the conventional wisdoms of fitness being spread by corporations and government agencies being shaped by the corporation lobbyists. As a result of it being a grassroots, Internet driven movement – there’s a lot of information fragmented floating around the Internet. Some good, some bad, just like pretty much any industry or movement since the advent of the Internet.
Here, I’m going to try to put some of the pieces together for those of you starting your journey into the exploration of a theory that is likely completely inverse to everything you learned at your 24 Hour Fitness.
The Concept
CrossFit is the result of a compilation of research into achieving the most optimal and well balanced level of fitness possible. To do this, CrossFit actually became the first fitness organization to define fitness (the definition is on the next page), for they needed a definition to fitness before they could measure how to achieve it best.
CrossFit is an open source. None of the ideas are under protection. All of the concepts are freely distributed via CrossFit.com as well as any affiliate, or person who wishes to question the accepted norms and discuss it. Every movement CrossFit does is available to learn, via video, images or text at CrossFit.com.
CrossFit strives to achieve physical competency across the board. We feel that in the overall game of life, someone who specializes too much creates weaknesses too great to overlook. These weaknesses actually take the overall fitness level of that person lower. By focusing on staying unfocused, you are able to hone all of your skills and become a better all around athlete who can be physically up to par with substantially more activities (known or unknown) than any specialist can.
CrossFit is adaptable. CrossFitters tend to look at fitness the same way a Nascar team looks at racing. If a Nascar driver all of a sudden shaves 1 second off his average lap time, every other Nascar team will find out what that team changed, test it in their own environment, and if it works, adopt it.
CrossFit is NOT married to any one concept or idea. We do what we currently have validated as the optimal process to achieve fitness today. If for any reason, someone can prove that a method they have devised works better, it will immediately be scrutinized by hundreds (if not thousands) or CrossFitters for validity. If results are seen that prove the validity, then the new method will work its way into the CrossFit curriculum.
What is CrossFit?
CONSTANTLY VARIED
Our bodies adapt to the stimulus we put on them very quickly. If you only do 30 minute, low intensity runs 5 days a week, your body will not be prepared if you need to do a 800m max effort run or lift something heavy. Since the only stimulus you trained your body for is a 30 minute jog, your body has adapted to the stresses it encounters there. It will then begin to give you diminishing returns on your 30 minute investment, as once it’s achieved a semi comfortable balance, it has no need to adjust at a rapid rate.
By constantly varying our workouts, we never let our bodies get comfortable with any set time, movement, intensity level, metabolic pathway, elevation, etc. We programmatically attempt to change as many environmental and exercise related variables as possible to keep our body working hard to achieve homeostasis.
FUNCTIONAL MOVEMENT
Humans were anatomically engineered to perform certain movements at high efficiency. Remarkably enough, these movements are all those we have done to survive since the beginning of mankind. Lifting things from the ground, getting them to our chest and then overhead, squattng, jumping, rowing, lunging. Basic movements that allowed man to survive the perils of nature and recreate. Never once did doing an isolated lat pull over do anything functional for a caveman. If he was scaling something, surely he would have used his hips and core in conjunction with his entire upper body to pop himself over the object as well.
These multi joint, full body movements are called functional movements and they are the crux of our fitness program. We never call for an isolated body movement, as its’ simply not natural nor efficient.
HIGH INTENSITY
Going back to the argument for why we constantly vary – if you are not pushing yourself to the peak capacity you have on a daily basis, you will never provide your body with the environment needed to achieve maximum growth in minimum time. By performing for as long as as intense as we can, we set the stage for the body to attempt to adapt to perform well under those conditions.
Once we have slowly adapted to perform well at that duration and intensity, guess what? It’s no longer relatively intense for you. Naturally you’ll begin to operate at an even higher level of intensity, and the old “high intensity” is becoming more and more normal work to you.
By pushing the envelope of intensity you give yourself the environment to achieve the biggest gains, and that’s what CrossFit is about.
What is Fitness?
Below are the standards we use to determine what fitness is, we can apply them to determine which exercise regimen yields a “fitter” fitness. To find this, we would just perform a series of A/B tests against our own performance and chart those results against the population in general.
Over time, what was found was in general, regardless of exercise, the human body adapted to stimulus the greatest when taken to the thresholds. Meaning, if you put your body through high intensity over different time modalities, across the broadest spectrum of movements possible, the nature of your body will cause it to adapt to those conditions. This will simultaneously positively impact all the above standards.
- Cardiovascular/respiratory endurance – The ability of body systems to gather, process, and deliver oxygen.
- Stamina– The ability of body systems to process, deliver, store, and utilize energy.
- Strength– The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply force.
- Flexibility– the ability to maximize the range of motion at a given joint.
- Power– The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply maximum force in minimum time.
- Speed– The ability to minimize the time cycle of a repeated movement.
- Coordination– The ability to combine several distinct movement patterns into a singular distinct movement.
- Agility– The ability to minimize transition time from one movement pattern to another.
- Balance– The ability to control the placement of the bodies center of gravity in relation to its support.
- Accuracy– The ability to control movement in a given direction or at a given intensity.
Imagine every conceivable physical activity (or hardship) was placed in a giant hopper. Without bias, in a completely random manner, activities are drawn from the hopper one by one. A fit person could perform at a level of competence any activity drawn out of this hopper. Having competence (or mastery) of the entire spectrum of physical activities, whether known or unknown is the second standard of fitness.
Humans operate on three energy pathways: Phosphagen, Glycolytic, and Oxidative. The phosphagen pathway dominates high-powered activities and lasts about 10 seconds. The glycolytic pathway dominates moderate-powered activities and lasts for a few minutes. The oxidative pathway dominates low-powered activities and can last (almost) for a long while as it’s converting stored energy as it needs it. The third standard of fitness maintains a fit person has training and competence when working in all three of these energy pathways.
We made it to the end!
First congrats if you made it all the way through that! Hopefully, you learned something and don’t let all the technical definitions get in the way of you achieving your goals. You don’t need to know any of that to stat getting results. Just come in and try an Intro Class and see what the talk is about. Finally in true CrossFit Community style our friends at CFLAX have let us use their “What is CrossFit?” and “What is Fitness?” section from their site. Thanks guys!
