What is Fitness?
(as defined by CrossFit)
Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.
Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean, squat, presses, C&J (clean and jerk), and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips,r ope climbs, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstands, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc.hard and fast.
Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense.
Regularly learn and play new sports.
CrossFit 4 Models defining fitness:
CrossFit 1st Fitness Model: the 10 General Physical Skills
- 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 body’s center of gravity in relation to its support base.
- Accuracy - The ability to control movement in a given direction or at a given intensity.
CrossFit 2nd Fitness Model: the Hopper
Picture a hopper loaded with an infinite number of physical challenges, where no selective mechanism is operative, and being asked to perform feats randomly drawn from the hopper.
The implication here is that fitness requires an ability to perform well at all tasks, even unfamiliar tasks and tasks combined in infinitely varying combinations. Nature frequently provides largely unforeseeable challenges; train for that by striving to keep the training stimulus broad and constantly varied.
CrossFit 3rd Fitness Model: Metabolic Pathways
There are three metabolic pathways that provide the energy for all human action.
- Phosphagen - dominates the highest-powered activities, those that last less than about 10 seconds.
- Glycolytic - dominates moderate-powered activities, those that last up to several minutes.
- Oxidative - dominates low-powered activities, those that last inexcess of several minutes.
Total fitness, the fitness that CrossFit promotes and develops, requires competency and training in each of these three pathways or engines. Balancing the effects of these three pathways largely determines the how and why of the metabolic conditioning or “cardio” that we do at CrossFit.
CrossFit 4th Fitness Model: Sickness-Wellness-Fitness Continuum
We have observed that nearly every measurable value of health can be placed on a continuum that ranges from sickness to wellness to fitness. Done right, fitness provides a great margin against the ravages of time and disease.
Our specialty is not specializing.
