WOD
AMRAP In 10 Minutes:
2 Legless Rope Climbs,
5 Deadlifts 275/185.
Add 1 rep to your deadlift each round.
Tuesday Night Musings with Coach Manny.
What is Fitness?
Before CrossFit came along, there was no clear definition of what fitness is or what it meant to be fit. In fact, prior to CrossFit, Mark Allen (a six-time IronMan Triathlon winner) was considered by many to be the fittest man on earth. He was deemed such, even though other athletes could outperform him in strength, power, speed and coordination. So the question arose, if other athletes could beat him in so many other physical skills how could Mark Allen be the fittest? Instead, was a heptathlete (a person who competes in 7 events in the Olympics) a better example of fitness, or a decathlete, or a multi sport professional athlete perhaps? There seemed a lot of debate.
Then in 2002, CrossFit published an article defining fitness. While this article goes over many things, I’m going to touch on the 10 general physical skills that CrossFit and Greg Glassman proposed should be considered when trying to find optimum physical competence. Those general skills include: 1. Cardiovascular/respiratory endurance; 2. Stamina; 3. Strength; 4. Flexibility; 5. Power; 6. Speed; 7. Coordination; 8. Agility; 9. Balance; and 10. Accuracy. The article goes in depth on each skill. It also goes on to explain how you are only as fit as you are competent in each of the 10 skills. In short, you’re as fit as your weakest link.
Further, the definition that CrossFit then gives for “Fitness” is: “Work capacity across broad time and modal domains.” This definition can be difficult to interpret, so I’m going to break it down a little bit. Work capacity: how much work can be completed. Broad time: from seconds to hours. Modal domains: every physical skill in any aspect possible. To me this means how much work are you capable of doing in whatever task and time given. The work completed across all the tasks and times equals a person’s fitness level.
And one of the things that has arisen with CrossFit is that every summer the Fittest Man and Woman on earth are crowned during the CrossFit Games and the beauty is that everyone is welcome to try and compete.
So, to conclude, the next time you are wanting to improve your fitness, look for the low points in your fitness. Are you strong with lifts but not that good at gymnastics? Well, work on that weakness and your overall fitness will shoot up!
As always, thanks for reading!
Sincerely,
Coach MANNY G.
