What CrossFit looks like
The CrossFit prescription is, “constantly varied, high intensity, functional movement”. Functional movements are natural, effective, and efficient locomotors of body and external objects. We take functional movements like pushing, pulling, lifting, throwing, etc. (Olympic lifting, power lifting, gymnastics, and sprinting) combine them in an endless variety of combinations, and do them at high intensity. Functional movements have the capacity to move large loads relatively long distances quickly making them unique in their ability to produce power, or intensity (force x distance / time). Intensity is the independent variable most commonly associated with maximizing favorable adaptation to exercise. The prescription of functionality, intensity, and varied create a program that delivers measurable, observable, and repeatable facts as evidence to its efficacy.
CrossFit is unique in that our workouts, by definition are sport – the “sport of fitness.” The natural camaraderie, competition, and fun of sport that is found in the CrossFit community yields an intensity that cannot be matched. Every workout is measured or scored. We use whiteboards and timers to keep score and accurate records. This precisely defines rules and standards for performance and has re-introduced personal athletic achievement and performance to training.
We call all this evidence based fitness. There are records and standards that show improvement in all areas of training. This has allowed us to not only to measure our performance, but learn from it as well. What we have found is that CrossFit increases work capacity across broad time and modal domain. Increase work capacity is the cornerstone of our broad general and inclusive fitness program. Increased work capacity is the holy grail of performance improvement and all other common metrics like VO2 max, lactate threshold, and even strength and flexibility as being correlates—derivatives, even. The fitness community from trainers to the magazines has the exercising public believing that lateral raises, curls, leg extensions, sit-ups and the like combined with 20-40 minute stints on the stationary bike or treadmill are going to lead to some kind of great fitness. Training using compound or functional movements and high intensity or anaerobic cardio is radically more effective at eliciting nearly any desired fitness result. Startlingly, this is not a matter of opinion but solid irrefutable scientific fact and yet the
marginally effective old ways persist and are nearly universal.
Since its start in 2000 CrossFit has evolved into a community where human performance is measured and publicly recorded against multiple, diverse, and fixed workloads. CrossFit is an open-source engine where inputs from any quarter can be publicly given to demonstrate fitness and fitness programming, and where coaches, trainer, and athletes can collectively advance the art and science of optimizing human performance.
CrossFit’s 10 standards of fitness
1. Cardiovascular/respiratory endurance- The ability of body systems to gather, process, and deliver oxygen.
2. Stamina - The ability of body systems to process, deliver, store, and utilize energy.
3. Strength - The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply force.
4. Flexibility - The ability to maximize the range of motion at a given joint.
5. Power - The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply maximum force in minimum time.
6. Speed - The ability to minimize the time cycle of a repeated movement.
7. Coordination - The ability to combine several distinct movement patterns into a singular distinct movement.
8. Agility - The ability to minimize transition time from one movement pattern to another.
9. Balance - The ability to control the placement of the body's center of gravity in relation to its support base.
10. Accuracy - The ability to control movement in a given direction or at a given intensity.
