Are you fit?

Well, are you? A better question to ask might be "what is fitness?" This very question was posed by CrossFit back in October off 2002 in an article aptly titled "What is Fitness?" It is available for download for free on the CrossFit main site featured in the links section of this page. I highly recommend everyone go and download it immediately. It will change the way you look at training! For those of you who think you're pretty much up to snuff on all things fitness, or maybe you're just intimidated by the articles 11 pages, I will do a brief summary for you here. Let's get to it!

So, what is fitness? Most people think of endurance athletes like Lance Armstrong or ultra marathon runners when they think of people who exemplify ultimate fitness, but I like to think of it as general physical preparedness. That means no matter what physical task arises, whether it be running 13 miles, deadlifting 300 lbs, climbing a mountain, or just keeping up with your kids all day, we look at how well you perform these tasks. Most elites are great at one thing, usually strength or endurance, but truly fit individuals must be good at all things. All things includes 10 general fitness skills encompassing all the major physical systems and movements of the human body. These skills are: cardiovascular endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, speed, power, balance, coordination, accuracy, and agility. To train all of these skills, your training program must be constantly varied. Every workout uses different functional movements, in different orders, and utilizes different energy systems. In order to test your fitness level under this definition, we would gather a group of individuals, and draw random physical tasks out of a bin. Your performance of these tasks compared to the other individuals reflects your overall fitness level. On a scale of 1-10, if you scored 5's across all 10 general fitness skills, your score (50) would be higher than a marathon runner that got 10's in cardiovascular endurance and stamina, but 2's in everything else (score of 36).

Obviously there is more to it than that. Nutrition, knowledge of movements, technique, and much, much more determine how much you'll get out of any training regimen. I will be addressing these other topics, and expanding on today's as time goes on. Check back frequently to see what is new, and in the mean time, check out that article!