CrossFit Harrogate
The method behind the madness
We support and encompass CrossFit's methodology for living a healthy lifestyle for all age groups.
To understand the lifestyle, programming, and ethos of CrossFit, we must first understand the training of CrossFit.
CrossFit makes use of three different standards or models for evaluating and guiding fitness. Collectively, these three standards define the CrossFit view of fitness. The first is based on the 10 general physical skills. The second standard, or model, is based on the performance of athletic tasks, while the third is based on the energy systems that drive all human action. Each model is critical to CrossFit and each has distinct utility in evaluating an athlete’s overall fitness.
CrossFit’s First Fitness Standard: 10 general physical skills
Cardiovascular/Respiratory endurance
Stamina
Strength
Flexibility
Power
Speed
Coordination
Agility
Balance
Accuracy
You are as fit as you are competent in each of these 10 skills. A programme develops fitness to the extent that it improves each of these 10 skills. Improvements in endurance, stamina, strength and flexibility come about through training.
CrossFit’s Second Fitness Standard: Train for the unknown and unknowable
The essence of this model is the view that fitness is about performing well at any and every task imaginable. Picture a hopper loaded with an infinite number of physical challenges and being asked to perform feats randomly drawn from the hopper. This model suggests that your fitness can be measured by your capacity to perform well at these tasks in relation to other individuals.
The implication here is that fitness requires an ability to perform well at all tasks, even unfamiliar tasks. Nature frequently provides largely unforeseeable challenges; train for that by striving to keep the training stimulus broad and constantly varied.
CrossFit’s Third Fitness Standard: Energy Systems
There are three metabolic pathways that provide the energy for all human action. These “metabolic engines” are known as the phosphagen (or phosphocreatine) pathway, the glycolytic (or lactate) pathway and the oxidative (or aerobic) pathway.
Total fitness, the fitness that CrossFit promotes and develops, requires competency and training in each of these three pathways or engines. Balancing the effects of these three pathways largely determines the how and why of the metabolic conditioning or “cardio” that we do at CrossFit.
Favouring one or two to the exclusion of the others and not recognising the impact of excessive training in the oxidative pathway are arguably the two most common faults in fitness training.
Should you wish you understand the fitness & programming of CrossFit in more detail we would recommend reading the below article.