In Audio, CrossFit, ExPhysiology, Videos
February 21, 2009
In this two part lecture, Coach Greg Glassman defines fitness. This lecture is the first time we’ve published a revolutionary new component (a three-dimensional metric) that has the potential to both redefine and unite the health and fitness industries forever.
Fitness can now be concisely and precisely defined as increased work capacity across broad time, modal, and age domains. Work capacity is the ability to perform real physical work as measured by force x distance / time (which is average power). Fitness is this ability in as many domains as possible.
Science is about measurement and prediction. Without an objective, measurable metric by which any reasonable person can determine the MKS (meters or distance, kilograms or mass, and seconds or time) of a performance, there cannot be science. This is true of vehicles, aeronautics, weapons, power plants, and human performance. Exercise science that doesn’t define fitness in such a way that it can be measured simply is not science.
Physical output can be measured in terms of foot-pounds/min. We move our own bodies and we move external objects. We can measure how heavy those bodies and objects are, how far they travel, and in what time period. Your ability to move larger loads longer distances in less time in the broadest variety of domains throughout your life is the degree to which you are fitter.
CrossFit’s prescription for achieving this fitness is constantly varied high intensity functional movements. We can accurately predict measurable, observable, repeatable improvements in work capacity across broad time, modal, and age domains through this prescription. We have millions of examples at this point.
The new component introduced in this lecture is age. Fitness can be graphed in two-dimensions with duration of effort on the x-axis and power on the y-axis. At each duration, we average your power capacity across a variety of modal domains (skills and drills). This creates a power capacity curve, the area under which is your work capacity across broad time and modal domains.
We can now add a third dimension to this graph, the z-axis, which is age. By reassessing your two-dimensional fitness at various times throughout your life, the power curve takes on the shape of a plateau or blanket. There is a three-dimensional volume under the curve. Health is a lifetime of elevated capacity, which can now be quantifiably described as maximizing that volume. True health, therefore, is nothing other than sustained fitness.
In Part 1, Coach covers the first three operational models of fitness originally published in the seminal What is Fitness article, and how they become united by the work capacity graph. 20min 0sec.
In Part 2, Coach explains the fourth model, the sickness, wellness, fitness continuum, and how that becomes subordinate to the metric of maximizing the volume of work capacity across broad time and modal domains throughout your life. 17min 51sec.
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