Today's Workout

"Cindy"

As many rounds as possible in 20 minutes of 

5 pull-ups
10 push-ups
15 squats

-or-

'Mary"

AMRAP 20

5 Handstand Pushups
10 One-legged Squats (alternating)
15 Pull-ups

Choose your woman wisely and get well acquainted with her…

What does CrossFit and a naked, creepy guy in a trench coat have in common? My good friend Colin Jenkins co-owner of CrossFit Ventura once told me this allegory to describe how CrossFit differs from the big-box "globo gyms" in terms of fitness indicators. 

At CrossFit Goodland we offer a definition of fitness: "increased work capacity across broad time and modal domains." We also measure and repeat workouts so that you can see evidence of your work capacity increasing through time. The classic globo gym indicators of fitness are body fat testing (usually not even hydrostatic, but some type of terribly inaccurate bio-impedence method or calipers), weight, heart rate, blood pressure, and VO2 max. While these data are important if they are extreme outliers, they do little to tell you about someone's ability physically. Exercise physiology has not advanced to the point at which these indicators alone can tell you about someone's fitness level. For this reason they are more correlates to fitness than actual indicators; however, go from a 10 minute Baseline to a 5 minute Baseline and you have done the same amount of work in half the time producing a much higher power output (or increased work capacity). Sometimes simplifying data is actually the most profound thing a scientist can do. The globo gym methods may reduce body fat and weight especially over a long period of time, but they do little to tell an individual about his or her fitness, of which the globo gyms do not even have a solid definition, its more of a murky ideal set by the best looking people in the club. Seriously, ask a trainer at a globo gym what fitness is and see how they respond. For this reason globo gym is like a naked guy in a trench coat who says he's well endowed (promises fitness), but is unwilling to really show his gift with the world (without proof or a definition); while the CrossFit model is open source and open coat letting it all hang out for the world to see. Each workout score we produce may not say a whole lot individually, but a high level of performance across the board indicates what we like to refer to as a "Firebreather." We have nothing to hide and our methods will not only increase fitness and improve all the globo indicators simultaneously, they provide you with measurable, repeatable data to prove that you have become more fit.