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Why CrossFit?
By Keith | November 20, 2009
What evidence is there that CrossFit is any better than any other fitness craze? It can’t be just about feeling better. There is many things that make you feel better: A long walk at the beach, a puppy, sex. P90X makes you feel good and has benefits. You can get a high from running. Swimming in the ocean is relaxing and invigorating. Why do you exercise and why is CrossFitting the best!
You can’t just take what people tell you as the truth. You have to see some evidence. The strength of Crossfit is that it is based on the scientific method: we identify what fitness is, form an idea of how to get better at it and try to duplicate it through experiments. Scientifically there is nothing else around that encompasses the world of fitness like Crossfit. There is not even a close second. This and the community that provides it is the reason CrossFitting is the best that I have found.
When identifying fitness all we need to do is recognize what the 10 domains of fitness are: endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, agility, balance, coordination, and accuracy. These are relatively well known to everyone as the components of fitness. After recognizing this, we need to find a way that we can successful try to get better at all of them. Trying to be the best at all of these with out sacrificing some of them is a very difficult task. Some say that to get more strength, you have to give up some speed and endurance. To go faster sacrifices accuracy. There are many examples of this. Once we get to a point of succeeding at these 10 domains, we have to be able to replicate the results, over and over and over again through experimentation. The results of these successes have to work for more than just some of us.
Crossfit is the only application of fitness that requires the use of constantly varied movements at high intensity in all of these 10 domains. Even a decathlete, an Olympic event that requires you to compete in 10 different events, doesn’t use all of the domains of fitness.
The largest part of this scientific method is that it works for everyone. All Crossfitters do the same workouts. No matter where you are in your life, you can CrossFit. Therefore there are standards of how fit a person is. You can replicate these results over and over again. Everyone who CrossFits has a ‘Fran’ time. With this standard it is easily identifiable with people where they are in their fitness.
For example, take someone on a 5 K run, try to get a CrossFit total from them and then see how they do on 30 muscle ups for time. Unless you are a Crossfitter and have been working on all of these domains you will have only marginal success. Even if you were a gymnast by trade with a knack for running and had a hobby of power lifting, you would not fair as well as a Crossfitter who was actively CrossFitting. Furthermore, if 2 athletes were at the same skill level within a sport, and 1 Crossfitted and the other didn’t. The Crossfitter would be the better athlete.
Once we all agree that Crossfit is the best functional way to get in great, if not elite shape, then we all can agree that the CrossFit community is another reason it is the best. Willing participants who give back to a community is what makes the camaraderie so strong in organizations like Crossfit. When you give back to something, you become vested. You care more deeply for others when vested because we all are realizing the fruits of our collective contribution. You also empathize with fellow contributors when you share a mutual distress and completion of a well-deserved goal. Many of us have a strong void in our life: a place to give and receive, to work towards a common end. Some of us find dogmatic groups (religious ones) or cultural communities (fantasy football, or poker night), but as we learn more, these become unacceptable because we are smarter and they only make us feel better. We are really not better from them. Not that everything needs to have proof, but evidence makes it real!
True fitness is not a one-time thing and requires investment and time, Having CrossFit and a scientifically proven system which has a strong community gives us all a reason to stick with it and become our fittest self.
CrossFitting at it's Best!
Topics: Cynergy Central | 4 Comments »
November 20th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Many of us have a strong void in our life: a place to give and receive, to work towards a common end.
Very Nice Keith.
November 20th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Keith, I really want to post a word of appreciation for these articles..the “what motivates” one still rattles in my head and I feel like the kid standing at the end of the high diving board looking down into the pool which is Paleo each time I read one of the Paleo posts…and the journaling article has provoked me to look at kicking it up a big notch to begin documenting more than pounds reps and minutes but examining a far more important dimension of fitness… this journey needs to be understood in a more intentional, deliberate and reflective manner.
People ask me many times “So did you join a gym?”…..Answering “Yes” just doesnt do it……but when I try and explain “but its more than that” I meet the same glazed, skeptical and perplexed faces over and over. But I know it is more…and I see and sense what it has done for me and for others in the CrossFit community and it deserves more than just a scribble of dates, pounds, reps and minutes…Of course I will have to set another time to take on the discipline of journaling since its hard to write when your arms are trembling, hands bleeding and the sweat is dripping from your nose.
Thanks, again.
November 20th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
I love to read the articles also, keep them coming. Mari (another 5am crossfitter)tried many times to get me to join. I thought just another gym, more money down the drain. I was a working wife and mom happy with life. Then the turning point, I tried crossfit. Tried and succeed beyond what I could ever imagined, That working wife and mom can now kick some ass! Mentally and physically I crave that hour at the box with my “other family”! Crossfit has filled the void I didn’t realize I was missing! Thank you!
November 20th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Crossfit definately filled the huge void in my life. I always loved working out, however, over the past 7 years I’ve tried countless times to get the results that I am getting with Crossfit within the past few months. Trying to do it by myself I always ended up at the same results, bored and deflated. I eventually reached a point in my life where I knew I had to do something. Those feelings I felt in the past I feel no longer. The Crossfit workouts are amazing, the people are amazing, the energy of the box is amazing, Crossfit is amazing.
As many of you know, CrossFit is a hard thing to explain to people who havent experienced it. There are so many aspects to Crossfit aside from the WODs. I found that the easiest thing to say, of which I truly believe, is that Crossfit is an experience that CHANGED MY LIFE!
Thanks Jamie and Jess for introducing me to Crossfit and a special thanks to all the trainers and athletes who helped me throughout this journey, you know who you are. Many more miles to go.