Bench Marks

no rep, bro.

      Last week we talked about how CrossFit defines fitness.  Today we'll take a look at quantifying those fitness standards to see how we rack and stack against the rest of the CrossFit community.  Remember that fitness should be measurable, observable, and repeatable; meaning that we can test ourselves, see the changes we have made, and retest to see if we have gotten better. 
     The standards presented below are by no means all inclusive.  They do not reflect the opinion of CrossFit, INC, CrossFit Huachuca, or any other group or organizations opinion other than myself.  To reach these conclusions, I borrowed a template seen commonly across many other CrossFit gyms that you can find on the internet.  From there, I modified the criteria based off of my experience as well as results seen during the CrossFit Games. 
     You'll notice that the standards don't take into account age or years of experience doing CrossFit.  Based on what your background is in fitness or sports, it's not really applicable.  Over the age of 40, a case can be made that weights and times might not be feasible for standards quite as listed.  This is the reason there is a Master's division for the CrossFit games.  However, fitness is still fitness, whether you are 15 or 50, if you strive for these standards you'll be considered fit.  You can also tailor the criteria to your own opinion, and set your own goals.  The idea is to get you thinking about what is fit and how that is measured. 
     In order to identify where you fall on the chart in terms of fitness, you should be able to meet or exceed the criteria in that column to about 90% of the movements listed.  Understand that everyone has goats (things that we really really suck at), but as stated last week - we are as fit as we are competent in the 10 General Physical Skills.  The aim of this chart is to help guide the blind in developing some goals to work towards.  So if you are the person in the gym whose goal is to "be more fit" then this is a good place to gain some focus.  If you are ready for anything, then you are ready for everything.  When you finally find your calling, you'll be physically ready to run a marathon, climb Denali, rock climb Joshua Tree, or catch the perfect wave in Hawaii (you get the idea). 
     With that said, you'll see four categories that the movements are broken up into.  These categories are what CrossFit is built behind.  It's called the heirarchy of fitness:

      CrossFit finds that like all pyramids, a structure is only as sound as the foundation laid beneath it.  This means that if we have crappy nutrition, it's going to effect our fitness overall.  Additionally, if we are stupid strong, but run like a turtle, the zombies will kill you.  But also you won't be too awesome when you apply your strength to sports. 
     As you are testing yourself against these standards, think about the top picture.  Make sure your reps count and that you are doing the movements correctly.  If you don't have an accurate representation of your current level of fitness, you'll never get to where you want to be.  So don't count that wall ball that was just a little too low, or that ring dip that you didn't quite lock out on. 

Click here for the standards------->>CrossFit Standards Chart<<--------- p="">
Post questions comments or suggetions below.