Defining “CrossFitness”

Hey all,

I spend a lot of time thinking about fitness. It’s my hobby, my lifestyle, and my career all rolled into one! There are so many ways to measure fitness, whether it’s for a sport, occupation, or just for optimal health. When it comes to defining “what is fitness” though, CrossFit as a sport/fitness activity is in a league of its own.

The difficulty with CrossFit is that it incorporates so many different fitness variables. The CrossFit spectrum covers everything from 1rms to marathon rows and there are literally millions of iterations of wods out there to sample from.

Beyond the Whiteboard does an excellent job of distilling down your fitness from all the varied work you do. If you’re not on there yet, you should be – it takes all the complication out of assessing your fitness by providing you a Fitness Level from 0-100. But even this is an ever changing equation as it depends on what workouts you are doing, and more importantly, which ones you are logging each week to contribute to the algorithm!

To provide a bit of clarity for everyone, what I’ve come up with are three test weeks that I believe demonstrate a well – rounded amount of fitness challenges. Each one of these weeks will test strength, endurance, and WOD capacity. The idea is that by looking at your performance across all of the challenges in these three separate weeks, you will have a clear idea of how “CrossFit” you are.

It was no easy task to break down the many wods and movements to the ones that cover all the bases… and to be honest, each coach and athlete would likely have their own perspective on which ones should be included. I think that the chosen challenges represent a large enough spectrum to see where you are at.

These test weeks will be run periodically through the year, and you will get to run through each specific test week twice in one calendar year. This will give you ample time to train up for the next test week to maximize your performance. The current phase of training that you are in has already started that process, incorporating workouts and movements that will be a part of Test Week 1.

This first test week will run November 19-25, with the movements we are going to test as follows:

Clean and Jerk 1RM
Open WOD 11.1/14.1 (10 min AMRAP of 30 double unders and 15 power snatch 55/75)
1k Row
1RM Pullup
Fight Gone Bad

This week, and all the other test weeks, will have performance levels to aim for that will be published in advance so you can aspire to a target level. The weeks will run in the usual WOD format, with matched workouts for M-T, W-Th, and F-Sa, so make sure you make it in for all three days to get your best overall picture of fitness.

I’m excited to see what results you all can put up!

See you soon,

Cam

TRAINING MONDAY/TUESDAY

Warmup

3 rounds of Rowling to 225m

*coaches choice fitness reward

Skill

Front Squat 5,5,3,3,3

@ 70,75,80% of 1RM

WOD "Wall Buddies"

In Pairs, split reps as needed

12min AMRAP

Rx 50 Wallballs (14/20), 40 Toes to Bar, 200 Double Unders

FG Knees to elbows

TG Scale Ball weight, Hanging Knee Raise, 400 singles

CP Heavy Wallballs (20/30), 300 Double Unders