Tuesday April 28 2009 CrossFit The Woodlands WOD
Kettlebell swings and pregnancy. It’s a beautiful thing.
Being a specialist can severley hinder your overall fitness, or can it? Most elite level athletes are at the top of their game for a reason. They train very hard. Some would argue that most elite level CrossFitters fit into a certain frame “height/age/weight” Does this make them a specialist as well? Could an elite level CrossFitter hang on the track with an Olympic caliber athlete? If dubbed “The fittest person on earth” then that person should be able to right. What do you think? I’m not too concerned with the elite level athlete/CrossFitter, I’m more concerned with getting ordinary people, extraordinary results. Post your comments.
For time:
Squat x 100
Push up x 75
Sprinter sit up x 100
Run x 1 mile
Sprinter sit up x 100
Push up x 75
Squat x 100
Comment by Daniel
Tried to find the 400m time of someone like James Fitzgerald (2:17 Fran) – no luck, but even though he’s an incredible athlete my guess is that he’d be smoked in the 400m by an Olympic sprinter.
Comment by Adam Drake
Again, this goes back to how you define fitness. I define fitness as the ability to complete a task. Therefore, the fittest person is the one who can complete any random list of physical tasks most efficiently.
A sprinter is very good at sprinting and consequently many other high-demand tasks, but it’s likely that an elite-level CrossFitter is good at a larger number of tasks. In contrast consider an Ironman triathlete. Many people consider those athletes to be fit, but their specialty is very low intensity and long duration tasks. I would argue that the sprinter is more fit than the triathlete and the CrossFitter is more fit than the sprinter.
This doesn’t mean that each athlete is not at an elite level in their chosen field, it simply means that the CrossFitter is the most fit as defined by the ability to complete tasks the best.
A CrossFitter will probably not be able to beat a sprinter in the 400m, or a triathlete in Kona, but if you pick random tasks from a bin there is close to a 100% chance that the CrossFitter will be able to beat the other two athletes at those tasks. That’s what it means to be fit.
Comment by Melissa Bentley
Robin, you look so cute! I’m sure you’re sick of hearing it, but I just have to say it.
One thing I love about Crossfit is that it doesn’t expect me to be an “elite” anything. I love that the program knows exactly where to find my weaknesses and push me to improve upon them. My weakness is pretty much any of the high intensity exercises. I’m just slow as hell and I perpetually get winded much earlier than pretty much anyone else. There. That’s my weakness. Am I better than I was last July (some 10 months ago)? Yep. Will I ever be an “elite” Crossfitter. Nope. Am I going to lose sleep over it? Are you kidding? I’m not even going to miss a good meal over it!
Having said that, I completely understand the mentality of being a specialist. It’s very difficult to push yourself to improve upon things that you generally suck at. I hate – HATE – the high intensity days. But I LOVE the lifting days because I just have better luck with lifting than I do with things like running, jumping, or rowing. So, I have to say that if I knew in advance every day what the workout would be, I would probably end up taking the high intensity days as my “rest” days. I need no motivation if I see deadlifts on the board. When I see lots of running, rowing, and jumping, well, I usually need a lot more motivation to kick it into gear. If I were on my own in a globo gym, I’d probably play around with an elliptical machine, and then with some of the weight machines. That’s what I used to do before Crossfit. And the results, well, put it this way. By the time I gave up on the gym routine, I was weighing in around 190lbs – And still no muscle to speak of. My cardio – we won’t go there. My clothes – a nice SNUG size 18 and getting more snug all the time.
For the “average” woman coming into Crossfit, I think they need to realize that there are no inhuman people in the gym. Are there some very fit people? Yeah. The difference between people at the gym vs. someone at a Gold’s gym is the mentality. The Crossfitter is much more humble about their accomplishments, because they had to swallow down the suck to get to the level they are at. This means they couldn’t ignore the areas of weakness. They may be able to squat 200lbs, but they are going to have to learn how to run, sprint, row, and jump. Or, conversely, they may be really fast, but they are going to have to start working with the weights and increase their skill. Some of them are recovering from serious injuries, and had to work through the injury rather than around it. Or maybe they are like me – absolutely bad at EVERYTHING, and have to start at square one and learn the basics and build gradually. The funny thing about the program though, is that the results are almost instantaneous. Remember that it’s not that I never went to a gym. I did. I just didn’t have measurable results and showed insignificant improvement. It’s very frustrating to put time and money into something that doesn’t work. But society tells you that “working out” will produce results. Therefore, we believe that if we go to a gym 3-4 times a week, we should, theoretically, get into better shape. If that were really true, then people would never waste their gym memberships. There are very few people out there that didn’t suffer through a 12 month gym contract that they visited maybe a handful of times (in total).
It’s one of my favorite things to hear when a new person comes to the gym and says “I’ve never been able to do a pullup”. I just smile. A really big smile. I know they are about to do something extraordinary and heretofore impossible. I know they are about to shock themselves as they enter a new dimension of their life. I know that in 6 months, they are going to be staring – not at the pullup bar, because that will be old news – but at the rings and wondering how long it’s going to take them to do a muscle up (most women don’t even know what that is yet).
The journey is incredible, and one worth taking. If a person is willing to honestly face the part of the workout that sucks or the part of the workout that utterly and truly intimidates the hell out of them, whatever that part is, the reward is there for the taking.
Comment by Kevin Doyle
Scott and All, first and foremost let me say what a joy it’s been working out with you guys and gals. I can’t wait to get back in there. I’ll be headed back to San Antonio this weekend to continue the healing process and hopefully get out soon.
What brought me to CrossFit and what brings me back is the randomness of it. I had been bouncing around the standard lift 3 days, run 3 days workouts for years and just kind of sat around the same level of fitness. Suddenly I was in a deployed environment (Afghanistan) and found that the programs I had tried for years just didn’t hack it. Life isn’t specialized, it’s a constant varying environment, and this is especially true in a war zone. No other program trains you for a constantly fluid situation like CrossFit does. A specialized athlete may well bench press more or run faster than I can, but when push comes to shove CrossFit helped me stay alive and complete a complex series of constantly varying and tough tasks.CrossFit: combat tested, Veteran approved.
For your average Joe it gives a sense of real results when you start to see yourself improving and you’re part of a group. There’s nothing more encouraging to me than seeing a group of strangers push each other to work hard or get that last rep. How many other gyms can boast of that?
Comment by Scott Wells
I don’t know how many times everyone has heard me say this but I absolutely love what I do for a living. I get the pleasure of seeing people change right before my eyes. When I see someone hit their first pull up it’s like seeing a kid in the candy store. Their eyes light up and the excitement can be felt through the whole gym. It’s almost like a shot of inspiration to everyone around and all of a sudden you want to achieve greatness. I love how people know I don’t expect them to come in and be a world class athlete. I just need them to want to be better in a months time. We get people from all backgrounds and they all have one goal in mind, “to get better” That can mean numerous things. People who dedicate themselves reach a level that is far beyond “FITNESS” They start to inspire others because of their own stories. People love to hear the journey of others because they want to make the same leap of faith. I can’t tell you how many people have a story to tell here but I assure you they are all worth hearing
Comment by Jeff D - m/36/5'10"/205
I primarily agree with Adam. But I think we can supplement it slightly. I think it depends on whether we are looking at narrow fitness (specialized) or broad fitness (crossfit).
The crossfitter obviously has a broader fitness. His/her goal is NOT to have the fastest 100 m time in the world, nor the highest vertical jump, heaviest squat, world record for double unders in a minute, most burpees without puking, nor any other standard. But, his/her goal is to be proficient at ALL of those, and many more.
As discussed, a sprinter is specialized. Therefore, they should sprint faster than me. And they will likely do many things which they do to supplement their sprinting better than me (some forms of lifting). But, let’s get them on a pull up bar. Let’s talk about burpees. Show me some handstand pushups, etc., etc., etc.
But, if burpees don’t help them sprint, and they are (for whetever reason) specializing in sprinting, then why would they do burpees (I think this may also be a philosophical question for everyone, or maybe that’s just me)?
I think a sprinter has a great level of fitness, but a very narrowly focused fitness.
I think a crossfitter has a “jack of all trades, master of none” type of fitness. VERY fit overall and very proficient at a very high number of activities, but likely not more proficient in a narrow sense compared to any specialist.
Since most of us don’t have a reason to specialize (I’m neither going to the olympics nor the NFL) why wouldn’t I get a broader fitness? It makes yard work go faster. I can help friends move without beind dead the next day. I can do a local 5K race without lengthy specific training. I can do things I didn’t used to, or I can do them easier or faster – because I’m more fit.
Don’t hate the narrowly focused people, just realize our goals and our outcomes are different! In the long run, we’ll be reaping better benefits than the specialists.