CrossFit

Crossfit is a foundational core and conditioning program that seeks to obtain as broad as possible adaptation response utilizing training formats derived from Gymnastics, Olympic Weightlifting, Sprinting, Kettlebells, and Combat disciplines. We focus on instructing the importance of proper movement through full ranges of motion and functional strength exercises. This produces what we believe to be a fitness level that is highly transferable to all athletic pursuits as well as daily functional physical tasks. The CrossFit method seeks to condition the key aspects of all round fitness with maximum results in minimum time!

 The general public both in opinion and in media holds endurance athletes as exemplars of fitness. We do not, because we believe in challenging all aspects of the human body to ensure the broadest and most general fitness possible. Our model evaluates our efforts against a full range of general physical adaptations, with focus on breadth and depth of performance, and measuring time and or power and consequently energy systems. It should be fairly clear that the fitness that CrossFit advocates and develops is deliberately broad, general, and inclusive. Our specialty is not specializing. Many sports, combat, and life reward this kind of fitness and, on average, punish the specialist.

Scalability and Applicability

The question regularly arises as to the applicability of a regimen like CrossFit’s to older and deconditioned or detrained populations. The needs of an Olympic athlete and our grandparents differ by degree not kind. One is looking for functional dominance the other for functional competence. Competence and dominance manifest through identical physiological mechanisms. We’ve used our same routines for elderly individuals with heart disease and cage fighters one month out from televised bouts. We scale load and intensity; we don’t change programs.

We get requests from athletes from every sport looking for strength and conditioning programs for their sport. Firemen, soccer, players, triathletes, boxers, and surfers all want programs that conform to the specificity of their needs. While admitting that there are needs specific to any sport, the need for specificity is nearly completely met by regular practice and training within the sport not in the strength and conditioning environment. Our military, sports stars and housewives have found their best fitness from the same regimen.

The CrossFit Method

The great folks at CrossFit post a workout for each day known as “WOD” (Workout of the Day). This is posted on their main website www.crossfit.com and they use a 3-day on 1-day off training cycle. Each day CrossFit@Sassom also posts a workout on our website www.crossfit.net.au we use a 5-day on 2-day off training cycle. The benefits of training with the group is that you are supervised by a trainer that will coach you to ensure good technique, not to mention the atmosphere and intensity that just can’t be created any other way.

CrossFit@SASSOM has two WOD’s, one is called Met Con (Metabolic Conditioning) the other is Strength. The Met Con workout utilizes many varied exercises to create a workout that will condition the energy systems of human body, Aerobic, Lactic Acid and Phosphocreatine, while placing the muscle & skeletal system under enough stress to cause a positive adaptation. The Strength workout uses, Olympic weightlifting techniques, and other exercises to build base strength needed in all walks of life. The best thing about the WOD is you never know what is going to be in today’s workout.

So you ask, why do we squat, press, deadlift? Because these lifts work all the muscle and joints in the body, they simulate normal body movement patterns, and they produce strength appropriate to all uses of the muscle and joints. They can be trained fast or slow, done with minimal equipment, and form important components of quick (i.e., Olympic) lifts. They affect the body in a systemic way, producing sufficient stress that a hormonal response is produced to facilitate recovery and adaptation. They are very hard. They produce psychological toughness when trained correctly. And absolutely no one has ever gotten brutally, ungodly strong without doing them. 

CrossFit’s First Fitness Standard

There are ten recognized general physical skills. They are cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy. You are as fit as you are competent in each of these ten skills. A regimen develops fitness to the extent that it improves each of these ten skills. Importantly, improvements in endurance, stamina, strength, and flexibility come about through training. Training refers to activity that improves performance through a measurable organic change in the body. By contrast improvements in coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy come about through practice. Practice refers to activity that improves performance through changes in the nervous system. Power and speed are adaptations of both training and practice.

CrossFit’s Second Fitness Standard

The essence of this model is the view that fitness is about performing well at any and every task imaginable. Picture a hopper loaded with an infinite number of physical challenges where no selective mechanism is operative, and being asked to perform fetes randomly drawn from the hopper. This model suggests that your fitness can be measured by your capacity to perform well at these tasks in relation to other individuals. The implication here is that fitness requires an ability to perform well at all tasks, even unfamiliar tasks, tasks combined in infinitely varying combinations. In practice this encourages the athlete to disinvest in any set notions of sets, rest periods, reps, exercises, order of exercises, routines, periodization, etc. Nature frequently provides largely unforeseeable challenges; train for that by striving to keep the training stimulus broad and constantly varied.

CrossFit’s Third Fitness Standard

There are three metabolic pathways that provide the energy for all human action. These “metabolic engines” are known as the phosphagen pathway, the glycolytic pathway, and the oxidative pathway. The first, the phosphagen, dominates the highest-powered activities, those that last less than about ten seconds. The second pathway, the glycolytic, dominates moderate-powered activities, those that last up to several minutes. The third pathway, the oxidative, dominates low-powered activities, those that last in excess of several minutes. Total fitness, the fitness that CrossFit promotes and develops, requires competency and training in each of these three pathways or engines. Balancing the effects of these three pathways largely determines the how and why of the metabolic conditioning or “cardio” that we do at CrossFit. Favouring one or two to the exclusion of the others and not recognizing the impact of excessive training in the oxidative pathway are arguably the two most common faults in fitness training.

The CrossFit Journal
We also publish the CrossFit Journal, designed to support the CrossFit community detailing the theory, techniques, and practiced by our coaches in our gym, in essence bringing your garage or gym into ours, making you a part of the CrossFit family.

Send mail to info@sassom.com.au with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2008 SASSOM
Last modified: August 25, 2008