Is CrossFit For Me?

Is CrossFit for Me?

Definitely. Although not everyone may want to do CrossFit, it is a program designed to benefit everyone from an olympic athlete or high-speed military operator, as well as soccer moms and grandma down the street. Your physiological needs and the olympic athlete's differ by degree, not kind. Increasing speed and power output, cardiovascular and respiratory endurance, stamina, flexibility, coordination, agility, balance and accuracy, strength, muscle mass and bone density are each important to the worlds top level athletes and to our grandparents. What's amazing is that the same methods which elicit these optimal outcomes in athlete's will also optimize the physiology of the elderly and the normal person looking to improve their fitness.

While it's (hopefully) obvious that we can't load grandma with the same squatting weight we'd expect of an Olympic skier or track athlete, the fact remains that they both need to squat. The athlete to develop their top-end power output and strength, and grandma so that she can stay independent and out of the nursing home or worse, the hospital. In fact, squatting is essential to maintaining functional independence AND improving your fitness. It is just one example of a functional movement pattern that is universally valuable and essential, yet tragically it is rarely taught to any but the most advanced athletes. At CrossFit Mountain Island, we address that in our onboarding process and through coaching in our group classes and private training sessions.

Thanks to dedicated and professional coaches, CrossFit has been to teach anyone who will listen and learn how to safely and efficiently perform the same movements (squat, deadlift, press, clean, snatch, pull-up) the most effective exercises typically gate-kept by professional coaches for the most elite of athletes.

Who Has Benefited From CrossFit?

Many professional and elite athletes are participating in the CrossFit program. UFC fighters, cyclists, surfers, skiers, tennis players, triathletes and others competing at the highest levels are using CrossFit to advance their core strength and conditioning, but that’s not all. CrossFit has tested its methods on the sedentary, overweight, pathologically sick and elderly and found that these special populations met the same success as our highest levels of athletes. We call this “bracketing.” If our program works for Olympic skiers and overweight, sedentary homemakers, then it will work for you.

Your Current Regimen

If your current routine looks somewhat like what we’ve described before as a "typical" of the fitness magazines and gyms, don’t despair. Any exercise is better than none, and by developing a base with cardio and traditional strength training, you’ve not wasted your time. The aerobic exercise that you’ve been doing on an elliptical or stationary bike is an essential foundation to fitness, and the isolation movements have given you some degree of strength. You are in good company; we have found that some of the world’s best athletes were sorely lacking in their core strength and conditioning that we teach in CrossFit. It’s hard to believe, but many elite athletes have achieved international success and are still far from their potential because they have not had the benefit of state-of-the-art coaching methods.

What Is a “Core Strength-and-conditioning” Program?

CrossFit is a core strength-and-conditioning program in two distinct senses.

First, we are a core strength-and-conditioning program in the sense that the fitness we develop is foundational to all other athletic needs. This is the same sense in which the university courses required of a particular major are called the “core curriculum.” This is the stuff everyone needs.

Second, we are a “core” strength-and-conditioning program in the literal sense meaning the center of something. Much of our work focuses on the major functional axis of the human body: the extension and flexion of the hips and the extension, flexion and rotation of the torso or trunk. The primacy of core strength and conditioning in this sense is supported by the simple observation that powerful hip extension alone is necessary and nearly sufficient for elite athletic performance; that is, our experience has been that no one without the capacity for powerful hip extension enjoys great athletic prowess, and nearly everyone we’ve met with that capacity was a great athlete. Running, jumping, punching and throwing all originate at the core. At CrossFit we endeavor to develop our athletes from the inside out, from core to extremity, which is, by the way, how good functional movements recruit muscle — from the core to the extremities.

Can I Enjoy Optimal Health Without Being an Athlete?

No! Athletes experience a protection from the ravages of aging and disease that non-athletes never find. For instance, 80-year-old athletes are stronger than non-athletes in their prime at 25 years old. If you think strength isn’t important, consider that strength loss is what puts people in nursing homes. Athletes have greater bone density, stronger immune systems, less coronary heart disease, reduced cancer risk, fewer strokes and less depression than non-athletes. Athlete is a term used for someone who trains their physical fitness with a strength & conditioning program, not necessarily someone who participates in sport at a high-level.

What Is an Athlete?

According to “Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary,” an athlete is “a person who is trained or skilled in exercises, sports, or games requiring strength, agility, or stamina.”

The CrossFit definition of an athlete is a bit tighter. The CrossFit definition of an athlete is “a person who is trained or skilled in strength, power, balance and agility, flexibility, and endurance.” The CrossFit model holds “fitness,” “health” and “athleticism” as strongly overlapping constructs. For most purposes they can be seen as equivalents.

What if I Don’t Want to Be an Athlete; I Just Want to Be Healthy?

You’re in luck. We hear this often, but the truth is that fitness, wellness and pathology (sickness) are measures of the same entity: your health. There are a multitude of measurable parameters that can be ordered from sick (pathological) to well (normal) to fit (better than normal). These include but are not limited to blood pressure, cholesterol, heart rate, body fat, muscle mass, flexibility and strength. It seems as though all of the body functions that can go awry have states that are pathological, normal and exceptional, and that elite athletes typically show these parameters in the exceptional range. The CrossFit view is that fitness and health are the same thing. It is also interesting to notice that the health professional maintains your health with drugs and surgery, each with potentially undesirable side effects, whereas the CrossFit coach typically achieves a superior result always with “side benefit” vs. side effect. For example, a CrossFit coach will depend on activity and lifestyle nutritional changes as opposed to drugs and surgery to manage symptoms.

Next time, we'll dig into what the CrossFit method entails, and how we use it to pursue the most desirable health outcomes.