Elite Fitness

One of the slogans you’ll see in CrossFit is “Forging Elite Fitness.”  We’ve pretty much beat the definition of Fitness to death (increased work capacity across broad time and modal domains).  But  what do we mean by elite?  The dictionary definition of elite: selected as the best.  Does that mean that CrossFitters are the strongest or fastest people in the world?  Not at all.  I suppose you’d have to define what you meant by best, too.  In terms of fitness programs, CrossFit is among the best in that it does a great job of
balancing three things, safety, efficacy, and efficiency.

First, safety.  How high is the injury-induced wash-out rate?  How many people get seriously injured, crippled or killed?  CrossFit’s numbers in this area are really low, especially when compared to sports like soccer.  Roger did a post on this topic a few weeks back.

Efficacy.  Does it produce results?  Well, to know this, you actually have to record what the participants do and how well they do it. We’re all familiar with recording our scores and most of us can track our progress as our times get lower and loads are get heavier.  We could take it one step further and actually graph our increase in work capacity, and use programs like the Athletics Log to help us keep track of our progress.

Finally, Efficiency.  Personally, I think this is the quality that makes CrossFit among the best fitness programs out there– truly elite.  There are plenty of other programs that do work and are safe, but the intensity of our workouts make what we do particularly efficient.  You get a huge return in increased fitness for a relatively low time cost.  An average workout takes about 20 minutes.  If you add in 5-minutes to warm up and 5-minutes to stretch, you’re looking at 30-minutes per workout.  In our gym, we add skill work to get you an hour worth of training, but when you look at the type of workouts that other athletes do, we actually spend very little time training.

We may not be Olympians or Navy SEALS, but we participate in a fitness program that is truly elite.