We’ve long desired to offer a fitness competition consistent with our fitness model (See CrossFit Journal October 2002, “What is Fitness?”) and have found the task fraught with difficulties.
Early we realized that the logistics of running an on-site fitness competition like STREND are both complicated and ultimately limit the number of participants. The fitness test, or competition, that we offer this month is conducted at a facility and time of the athlete’s choosing.
Our initial hope was to design a competition that would not only reflect CrossFit’s broad fitness concept but would also accommodate men and women, large and small athletes, the young and seniors, and individuals of all fitness levels. Additionally, we wanted a competition that would motivate and reward fitness improvements among our fittest. Specifically, we set out to motivate an improvement in the absolute strength, relative strength and gymnastics foundations of all CrossFit participants. Unfortunately this last consideration rendered the design troublesome for many who are other than already very fit and male. So, what we ended up with was a competition where the ability even to complete the test suggests a fairly advanced level of fitness.
Looking at the 10 general physical adaptations to exercise (cardiorespiratory endurance, strength, stamina, power, speed, flexibility, agility, accuracy, coordination and balance), we saw that advanced calisthenic and weightlifting movements present an excellent opportunity to advance neurological skills like agility, accuracy, coordination and balance. We realized early that any test that pushed the envelope for gymnastics movements was going to eliminate a large segment of the exercising public and indeed some of our dedicated athletes.
In the end we decided that improving these neurological skills and thereby encouraging a greater level of fitness in our participants was more important than offering a test that was universally inclusive. We are, ultimately, a program of elite fitness, and any test of elite fitness will contain elements that cannot be performed by everyone. We also felt that many of our best athletes, while among the fittest people on Earth, needed additional motivation for improvements in absolute strength, relative strength and gymnastic foundations.
While we make no apologies for offering a fitness test that best serves the already very fit, we have developed several strategies whereby others can participate and, more importantly, benefit from practicing for and working toward completion of the test. For every phase of our test we have suggested adaptations for women, juniors, seniors or anyone else who may not yet be able to complete all of this competition.
Similarly vexing was the difficulty of testing for various capacities simultaneously rather than separately. The origins of this concern arise, you may have guessed, from our oft-repeated contention that the blending and mixing of demands most clearly replicates the demands of nature.
One aspect of athlete testing that remains tricky is balancing elements favorable to larger and smaller athletes. We referee debates between our bigger and smaller athletes almost daily. The big guys want to deadlift, bench press and throw. The smaller guys want to run, jump and do pull-ups.
Our design requirements included but were not limited to the following: quantifiable results; consistency with the CrossFit fitness concept; raising our commitment to improving absolute strength, relative strength and gymnastic foundations; balancing intrinsic abilities of smaller and larger athletes; emphasizing exercises critical and foundational to advanced training; mixing training demands within each test and, of course, over the total competition; a design that would identify an athlete’s weaknesses and possibly stand as a workout plan for improving overall fitness; and, finally, we wanted to design a competition that would be “hard as hell.”
The competition that we’ve designed comprises five tests. One test is performed for each of five days in the order given.
We’ve listed within each test description a possible workout that would test for and consequently improve the performance of that test. While designing each test we asked ourselves what kind of fitness might develop from turning the tests into workouts that were repeated to the exclusion of other work and with the sole purpose of improving the tests. The answer in the case of this final product is “elite fitness.”
Scoring the Tests
This table describes a system of awarding points for each test’s score. The total points for all five tests can range from 20 to 100 points. An individual getting 20 points is a reasonably good athlete. Anyone scoring 100 points has credible claim to being one of the fittest men on Earth. Don’t despair if your score looks like what would be a D- on a sixth-grade spelling test—the numbers are just that, numbers.
This article, by BSI’s co-founder, was originally published in The CrossFit Journal. While Greg Glassman no longer owns CrossFit Inc., his writings and ideas revolutionized the world of fitness, and are reproduced here.
Coach Glassman named his training methodology ‘CrossFit,’ which became a trademarked term owned by CrossFit Inc. In order to preserve his writings in their original form, references to ‘CrossFit’ remain in this article.
Greg Glassman founded CrossFit, a fitness revolution. Under Glassman’s leadership there were around 4 million CrossFitters, 300,000 CrossFit coaches and 15,000 physical locations, known as affiliates, where his prescribed methodology: constantly varied functional movements executed at high intensity, were practiced daily. CrossFit became known as the solution to the world’s greatest problem, chronic illness.
In 2002, he became the first person in exercise physiology to apply a scientific definition to the word fitness. As the son of an aerospace engineer, Glassman learned the principles of science at a young age. Through observations, experimentation, testing, and retesting, Glassman created a program that brought unprecedented results to his clients. He shared his methodology with the world through The CrossFit Journal and in-person seminars. Harvard Business School proclaimed that CrossFit was the world’s fastest growing business.
The business, which challenged conventional business models and financially upset the health and wellness industry, brought plenty of negative attention to Glassman and CrossFit. The company’s low carbohydrate nutrition prescription threatened the sugar industry and led to a series of lawsuits after a peer-reviewed journal falsified data claiming Glassman’s methodology caused injuries. A federal judge called it the biggest case of scientific misconduct and fraud she’d seen in all her years on the bench. After this experience Glassman developed a deep interest in the corruption of modern science for private interests. He launched CrossFit Health which mobilized 20,000 doctors who knew from their experiences with CrossFit that Glassman’s methodology prevented and cured chronic diseases. Glassman networked the doctors, exposed them to researchers in a variety of fields and encouraged them to work together and further support efforts to expose the problems in medicine and work together on preventative measures.
In 2020, Greg sold CrossFit and focused his attention on the broader issues in modern science. He’d learned from his experience in fitness that areas of study without definitions, without ways of measuring and replicating results are ripe for corruption and manipulation.
The Broken Science Initiative, aims to expose and equip anyone interested with the tools to protect themself from the ills of modern medicine and broken science at-large.
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