We are going to take it back to the early days of CrossFit and break down an article presented by Greg Glassman, the founder of CrossFit. This article is called “Fitness in 100 Words” and goes like this:
“Eat meat & vegetables, nuts & seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise, but not body fat. Practice & train major lifts: Deadlifts, cleans, squats, presses, C&Js, and snatch. Similarly master the basics of gymnastics: Pullups, dips, rope climbs, pushups, situps, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, row, swim, etc. hard and fast. Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense. Regularly learn and play new sports.”
With few words, this paragraph about nutrition, fitness, and lifestyle covers ALOT!! Let’s break it down:
Eat meat & vegetables, nuts & seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise, but not body fat.
It is no accident that the first part of this fitness definition is directed towards nutrition because without addressing nutrition, we are NOT doing a complete health and fitness routine! The simple prescription is to eat tons of REAL food (meat, veggies, nuts, fruits), limit the starch intake, and avoid foods with added sugar. Basically the “what” to eat. The “how much” to eat is enough that gives our body fuel to exercise, but not so much to gain excess body fat!
Practice & train major lifts: Deadlifts, cleans, squats, presses, C&Js, and snatch. Similarly master the basics of gymnastics: Pullups, dips, rope climbs, pushups, situps, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, row, swim, etc. hard and fast.
This section refers to the modalities that influenced CrossFit the most: Strength, gymnastics (bodyweight) and monostructural activities (cardio). Gymnastics, in the CrossFit sense, refers to being able to control our own bodies with varying degrees of difficulty. Strength Training refers to our ability to move external loads with the productive application of force. And cardio is how much work can we do without wearing out! This is a big piece of CrossFit that defers from other fitness disciplines: we don’t train just one type of fitness, we want to train them all! The goal is to be strong AND fast AND have good cardiovascular endurance AND have good body control, and not just focus on one in lieu of the others.
Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense.
This is another piece that made CrossFit standout: the workouts are short and INTENSE! Also this part points out that we should be constantly changing up our routines and focusing on different aspects of fitness instead of getting stuck doing the same things over and over again.
Regularly learn and play new sports
To me, this is the most important part of training and being fit…TO USE IT! This could be different for all of us, whether it’s playing golf, hiking, kayaking, or anything else outside of the gym! The beauty of being fit is to take that fitness and use it. Learning a new skill/sport is undervalued with the physical and mental rewards it brings on top of the training we already do!