What is Fit?

Patrick Makau
World Record Marathoner



                                   

               Žydrūnas Savickas
                 Strongman World Champion

Rich Froning
Crossfit's Fittest Man on Earth

     




In a Zombie Apocolypse who would you pick to be on your team?

       What does it mean to be fit these days?  This question is likely to be a hot topic within the fitness community.  From marathon runners, to gymnasts, and strongmen, the definition becomes quite varied.  CrossFit defines this as a person’s work capacity across broad time and modal domains.  As you might have heard before, CrossFit specializes in not specializing.  That is to mean that a CrossFitter strives to be good at many things – Neither the best or the worst at any skill or event.  CrossFit identifies 3 fitness standards to define fitness; 10 General Physical Skills, The hopper model, and competency in metabolic pathways.

Crossfit's First Fitness Standard

 

     The 10 General Physical Skills listed above are what the programming we follow strives to achieve.  We are as fit as we are competent in these skills.

First annual Crossfit Games - The Hopper was used to dictate the workouts

     The hopper model suggests that your fitness can be measured by your capacity to perform a task in relation to other people.  A fit person is able to perform well at any task, even unfamiliar tasks, in multiple varying combinations. 

CrossFit's Third Fitness Standard

     Finally, a fit athlete is competent in all metabolic pathways.  A marathon runner is probably excellent at the oxidative, average at the glycolytic, and terrible in the phosphagen pathway.  Meaning he can run long and far, but probably has a hard time squatting his bodyweight for reps.  Conversely, a strongman competitor can lift enormous amounts of weight, but his capacity to run long distance and be efficient in the oxidative pathway is probably terrible.  CrossFitters strive to be good at all of these pathways, while excelling at neither.  So while Crossfitter's won’t win a marathon or a strongman competition, we probably won’t be embarrassed at the end of events either. 

      Regardless of what you believe, the important aspect of defining fitness is applying standards to your definition.  In CrossFit, this is addressed in 1 rep maxes and benchmark workouts.  They are designed to test a person's competency in each of the 10 General Physical Skills.  Next week’s post will identify some hard numbers so you guys can get an idea of just how fit you are and hopefully develop some new goals as a result.