AMRAP 15 Minutes:
10 Power Snatch 115/73
10 Push Ups
Run 200m
It
is not uncommon around here that we get approached by members, mainly female
but sometimes male, who are concerned about how CrossFit is or is not affecting
their physique. This is not surprising since we live in a society where
outward appearances are seemingly so important and there is so much pressure to
look a certain way. I had this conversation with one of my athletes
yesterday who thought I would be annoyed by her desire to be skinny. I
actually invite this conversation. I think it is important that you all
understand our ideas and goals regarding your fitness. You need to
understand the goals of our workout program so that you are on the same page
with us. If you do not share these goals, then you first should take a
good long look at your personal values. Then if CrossFit's fitness goals
still do not make sense to you, we invite you to find something else to do.
If
you have never read the CrossFit Journal article, "What is
Fitness?", then you need to stop reading this right now and read that
article first. Download Article,
"What Is Fitness and Who is Fit?" You really should
understand exactly what you are doing here. The goals of our fitness
program are not developed around how skinny or how muscular you can become. Our goals are strictly health, function and performance based.
We design our program with only your physical capabilities in mind with no
consideration to how the exercise will affect your physique. We intend to
increase your work capacity, to build breadth and depth among all 10 of the
General Physical Skills, and to physically and mentally prepare you for the
unknown and the unknowable. Read the freakin' article if you don't fully
understand what that all means.
Many
of you joined a fitness program because you want to look like the supermodel on
the right. Some people avoid constantly varied functional movement at
high intensity because they are afraid they will end up looking like the
super-athlete former Olympic skier on the left. We love you Eva-T.
This is a very unfortunate situation because guess what, both of these women
are genetic outliers. It doesn't matter how hard you train, unless you
were born with extraordinarily rare genetics, you will never look like either
one of these women. The fitness industry is going to lead you to believe
that by exercising certain ways you are going to be able to achieve the look of
your dreams. IT IS NOT TRUE!!! GET OVER IT!!! You cannot beat your
genetics, you can only do the best you can with what you have to work with.
You
can run hours a week and do yoga and pilates and starve yourself all day long,
and you are never going to look like the supermodel. There is a chance you might look more
like that, but in the process of training that way you will have made yourself less
fit, less physically capable, and less healthy overall. If these are your
values, then its time to re-evaluate. On the other hand, you might be
scared that you will end up looking like the beautiful Eva-T. You can
lift heavy every day with the aggression of a junk yard dog and drink a gallon
of milk every day, and unless you were just born to be an absolute animal, you
will never achieve the muscularity of Eva-T. We all were dealt a certain
hand when it comes to genetics, and the goal of your fitness program should be
(if you are a intelligent and unpretentious person) to maximize your health and
your physical ability. When you have maximized both of these, your body is going to have the athletic
look that you were destined to
have. If you attempt to alter your exercise program to create the
physique of your distorted desire, you will
be less fit and less healthy for doing so.
In
the conversation with my athlete yesterday, she told me that many of the women here
were mostly concerned with being skinny. My answer went as follows.
You lose body fat 90% by eating properly, not exercising. If you disagree
with this, we now know why you are overweight. I told her that our
program would never change to meet the desires and the goals of those
people. This business could fail miserably and we wouldn't change our
fitness philosophy for them. We are here to increase human performance
and to find the limits of what each person is capable of over time. So you
basically have two choices here, 1) embrace CrossFit, embrace performance based goals,
and embrace your own genetics, or 2) stay stuck in your rut, fight against your God
given stock, find something else to do, and get less fit while doing it.
We want people in here who want to do this stuff. People who make an
effort to understand what fitness is and what we are doing here. People
who desire to reach their peak physical capacity. People who want to
become or remain physically dominant into their old age. People who
embrace a good challenge and want to be held accountable. We aren't here
to make you skinny. We are here to
help guide you towards an elite level of fitness.
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