Thursday Feb 19 2009 CrossFit The Woodlands WOD

10 Comments »

1. Comment by Dylan

   I think everyone’s Defintion is different, Being in Shape for one guy might be losing 75 Lbs and looking decent on the beach, whereas a Football player, or Athlete might want to bench a certain number, run a certain time, do a certain number of squats.

2. Comment by Jeff D - m/36/5'10"/205

   “The ability to do a task” I think is a pretty good start, regardless of what the task is (pushing, pulling, squating, hoisting, throwing, running, jumping, etc.). It takes a lot of full time preparation to have the “ability” to do any of those things at any given time.

   The fact that there are many jobs which have “physical capability” tests associated with an interview speaks to the unprepared nature of our society. The reason “everyone’s definition is different” is because we are the fattest, laziest, dietarily poorest people who ever lived (no hyperbole here). We eat crud all day and night, we watch hours and hours of TV per day, we drive to work, we sit at desks while at work then we want to go home and “relax”. We are mentally superior to any generation before us, but we are physically light years behind any generation before us. We’ve made a trade and our “being in shape” has suffered. To the point that many “regular people” in our society think people who crossfit are obsessed or freaks about their fitness… we’re the ones who are wrong! Go figure!!

3. Comment by Adam Drake

   I’ve thought about this question a lot in the past, have had a couple conversations with Greg Glassman about it, and we both reached the same conclusion. Fitness is the ability to perform any random task. Measuring fitness between two people involves simply determining who performs best, on average, at a large number of random tasks.

   Everyone’s GOALS are different, but that doesn’t change what FITNESS is. That’s a key point. If your goal is to run a really fast marathon, you will not be fit. You will be good at running a fast marathon and nothing more. If your goal is to be able to squat a bunch of weight, you will not be fit, you will be good at squatting. Lance Armstrong isn’t fit, but he’s a great cyclist. You get the idea.

   Fitness is the ability to perform any random task. If your average performance is better than your peers on many random tasks then you are fitter than they are. Likewise if you perform better on average than you have previously then your fitness is improving. Every other explanation people come up with for what fitness is a subcategory of this definition and therefore adds unnecessary details that complicate the issue.

4. Comment by Adam Hughes

   I think fitness is the amount of beer you can drink and still look good. The more beer the harder your working

5. Comment by Brandon B

   No offense Adam, but anyone who doesn’t think Lance Armstrong is “fit” is crazy. I have no idea how much he lifts, but he does lift weight regularly (i have seen pictures of him doing KB swings), ran 3 sub 3 hour marathons within the past year, before cycling he was a top triathlete, and is a 7 time winner of the worlds hardest race. If that isn’t considered “fit”, then I might as well give up now, because I will never come close to being called “fit”.

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=ES&hl=es&v=uDawlrIeaVM Looks pretty fit to me, but his form could use some help

6. Comment by Adam Drake

   Brandon,

   I agree that Lance Armstrong is more fit than the average person (since the average person simply isn’t), but I dispute the assertion that he is fit in the general sense. He certainly has great cardiorespiratory endurance, but that’s only one component of fitness. The fact that he can run sub-3 marathons or win the tour doesn’t make him fit. It just means he has great cardiorespiratory endurance

   I’d like to see his time on Diane (21-15-9 of 225lb deadlift and handstand push ups), or know what his CrossFit Total (1 rep max squat, deadlift, press) is.

   Fitness is the ability to perform any random task well and that’s a lot more than being a good endurance athlete.

7. Comment by Brandon B

   So is diane and the total the end all be all of fitness tests?

   I think the term “fit” is too vague of a term. I would say to have great cardio-respiratory endurance you would have to be pretty fit. You certainly don’t get that by sitting on the couch. Just because Lance specializes doesn’t mean he isn’t fit. I wouldn’t expect Lance to go win the Crossfit Games, just like I don’t expect whoever wins the crossfit games to go win the Tour De France. They both train for different sports. Regardless both people would be considered extremely fit in my book.

8. Comment by Melissa Bentley

   i think it’s the wrong direction when we start trying to say things like “my fitness program is better than yours just because you specialize and I don’t”. That’s just a silly arguement. I don’t think there is a one of us that wouldn’t trade places with Armstrong’s level of fitness, albeit it might be limited in a few small but improvable areas. If we were all brutally honest with ourselves, we all have areas where we could drastically improve. if nothing else, Armstrong has infinitely more dedication to his sport than any of us just because it takes that high level of dedication to do what he has done. So, 10 measures of fitness aside, he kicks all of our butts when it comes to shear dedication – especially in the face of adversity. Lance Armstrong is well aware of his own limitations, just as we all are or should be. If he chooses to not pursue some of those areas, who the heck cares? He’s Lance Armstrong for cryin out loud. If he’s got nothing else, he’s got more heart than the rest of us. No one get’s onto Tiger Woods for not being a better basketball player. Regardless of the ability to be “fit”, it is not to say that some areas of our individual fitness won’t be stronger than others. Lance’s forte is endurance. Good on him. Happens to be my weakness. I’d love to have more endurance and I’ll bet he has a thing or two to teach someone like myself about building endurance. A goal is to be fit in all of the major areas, but hell, we are not going to be “equally” fit in all of those areas. It’s just not possible.
   You know, many of us looked at the Gym Jones website before. Some of us found Crossfit because of Gym Jones. I’m not going to get into the argument of whether the Gym Jones mentality is elitist or not (it is), or whether it is superior to Crossfit. I will say that Gym Jones does focus on those 10 areas of fitness, but they still direct the program to assist the individual in the pursuit of a specific sport. They disagree with the idea that fitness is a sport in and of itself. People in Crossfit often have the opposite viewpoint. If I lived in Salt Lake City, I would want to train at Gym Jones too. And I’d even let them help me specialize in something – at the end of the day, what is the point of being “fit” if you don’t go out and do something with it?

9. Comment by Adam Drake

   I don’t disagree with people specializing, in fact I encourage it if that’s what they want. I’m simply saying that fitness must be rigorously defined in order to be a useful term. The way it’s used in popular conversation serves to make it a useless metric. In order for it to be useful it must also apply equally to all people. You can’t say that Lance Armstrong and a champion powerlifter are equally fit. They may both be experts in their field, but that is NOT the same as having the same level of fitness.

   So no, I DON’T think Armstrong is fit in the technical definition. I think he’s a great athlete and I agree with Melissa that he has an amazing amount of dedication to his sport. I also wouldn’t take his “fitness” if you gave it to me. I’d rather have less cardiorespiratory endurance and be more balanced, that is, fit in the formal sense.

   I’m not taking a CrossFit approach, or a Gym Jones approach (I don’t know much about them), or any other kool-aid drinking approach. I’m simply saying that in order to quantify something you have to take a logical, scientific, approach. You must have clear definitions that allow you to take objective measurements and reach unbiased conclusions. This translates into my assertion that you can’t say that someone is fit just because they’re an expert in their particular skill. You can only say they’re fit if they meet the definition of fitness, which is what the whole question was in the first place

10. Comment by Stemulite

    Everyone has different fitness goals, I think as long as you reach your own personal goals you’re doing what works best for you. Bodybuilding, power lifting, and sports isn’t for everyone. Some people just want to be able to walk up a flight of stairs without being out of breath. I say do whatever program works best for you.

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