You can’t reap the benefits of CrossFit without doing CrossFit.

CrossFit was developed in 2000 by Greg Glassman with the aim to forge broad, general, and inclusive fitness that prepares you for the unknown and unknowable. It is the single most influential fitness methodology to put kettlebells, sandbags, and barbells in the hands of the most unsuspecting people to give them elite fitness and health. The simple fact is that something profoundly magical happens when you pair constantly varied, functional movement performed across broad times and modal domains with a diet of meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar. You produce elite fitness, elite health, and the strongest hedge against chronic disease imaginable (diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, sarcopenia, osteoporosis, orthopedic injury, etc.).

In order to obtain these strengths, you must seek improvement in the 10 General Physical Skills (one of the four models that outline and define fitness in CrossFit). The others include The Hopper, The Metabolic Pathways, and The Sickness-Wellness-Fitness Continuum. 

The 10 General Physical Skills include:

1.           Cardiovascular/respiratory endurance—The ability of body systems to gather, process, and deliver oxygen.

2.           Stamina—The ability of body systems to process, deliver, store, and utilize energy.

3.           Strength—The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply force.

4.           Flexibility—The ability to maximize the range of motion at a given joint.

5.           Power—The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply maximum force in minimum time.

6.           Speed—The ability to minimize the time cycle of a repeated movement.

7.           Coordination—The ability to combine several distinct movement patterns into a singular distinct movement.

8.           Agility—The ability to minimize transition time from one movement pattern to another.

9.           Balance—The ability to control the placement of the body’s center of gravity in relation to its support base.

10.      Accuracy—The ability to control movement in a given direction or at a given intensity.

Since CrossFit’s inception and wild success to improve fitness, many knockoff fitness programs have emerged. Orange Theory, F45, Hyrox, Spartan Race, and the many private studios that try to swing kettlebells. None of these programs address all 10 general physical skills. They may focus on one, two, three, or even four skills but you will struggle to find a program that even focuses on half of them.

 This is one of the many reasons why CrossFit is magical and the outcomes are irreplicable under different models and fitness methodologies. Some people want to solely become better runners and running programs are just fine. Likewise, some people want to solely get stronger at Olympic weightlifting and isolate those lifts. Just fine. CrossFit is for the everyday person that wants to be really good at all the 10 General Physical Skills because that is what life will ask of us and it’s the ultimate solution to chronic disease and forging elite fitness.

So whether you follow crossfit.com programming in your garage or are part of an affiliate, keep it up. You can’t reap the benefits of CrossFit without doing CrossFit. Everything else is short change.