In my last blog post I shared my story on how I got into CrossFit and what led me to open my CrossFit Affiliate.

I closed with ‘What does it mean to me…CrossFit is empowering, truly humbling, and incredibly rewarding when done the right way.

What is the right way I hear you ask..’

I can tell you it is not the CrossFit Games, I can tell you it’s not just going to a CrossFit gym, it’s not diving in and out of every training program and I can tell you for sure, it is not doing everything RX.

What I can tell you is that, for me, there is actually 2 ways…to improve your health and scaling effectively.. Now what does the mean?.. This means understanding the why of CrossFit and learning more about CrossFit and the initiative it set out at the very beginning.

Constantly varied, functional movement, performed at high intensity is CrossFit’s simple definition. I can feel you yawning already with how many times you might have heard that already but hear me out as I go into more detail.

There are 4 key definitions of fitness that CrossFit contributes to better health, and they are  –

1. 10 Physical Skills (Which I will go into more detail shortly and towards the end of this blog)

2. Metabolic Pathways (A great way to look at this is scaling and what time domain I need to work in to use/ improve the desired pathway)

3. The Hopper model (Be prepared for anything, the unknown and unknowable)

4. The sickness/ wellness continuum chart (You can measure anything on this, health and fitness related of course)

In relation to understanding the above further, let me explain.

You are as fit as you are competent in each of the 10 skills. It is simple as that.

• Cardiovascular Endurance
• Respiratory Endurance
• Stamina
• Strength
• Flexibility
• Power
• Speed
• Coordination,
• Agility
• Balance
• Accuracy

Do this exercise with me, right these down on a piece of paper and draw a line chart with 10 individual markers (this refers to score of 1-10) 1 is the lowest and 10 is the highest. Now give yourself an honest score and connect your line graph, better yet do one for yourself and then ask one of your training buddies to give you a score.

If your line graph is not a straight line from top to bottom then you’ve got work to do.

Most of us will have high scores for the top 4, medium scores for the middle 3 and low scores for the bottom 3.

The goal is to be as equal as you can in all 10.  You would have a more rounded fitness capacity with 6’s all round then a few 7’s, 5s and 2s.

These “metabolic engines” that are mentioned are known as the phosphagen (or phosphocreatine) pathway, the glycolytic (or lactate) pathway and the oxidative (or aerobic) pathway. The first, the phosphagen, dominates the highest-powered activities, those that last less than about 10 seconds (1 Rep Max). The second pathway, the glycolytic, dominates moderate-powered activities, those that last 6-14 minutes (Most of your workouts). The third pathway, the oxidative, dominates low-powered activities, those that last in excess of 15- 20 + minutes.

“The pathways are just your body’s metabolic engines; they’re the things that drive or fuel the activities that we may be doing,”

The three engines are all running at the same time, but one is dominant, depending on the activity.

In CrossFit, we want to train all three engines or pathways without overly emphasising one at the expense of the others.

The Hopper model I think is great and really shows flaws in fitness and you can also relate this to the above pathways. You can see this in class when someone is really good at running for example but lack the strength to do a Squat or even better someone who can do 2 x their weight in a Deadlift but are not able to run a mile. This gives you a representation of which energy systems that person is stronger at for example.

The essence of this model is the view that fitness is about performing well at any and every physical task imaginable. Picture a tombola wheel loaded with an infinite number of physical challenges, where no selective mechanism is operative, and being asked to perform feats drawn at random. If you were to make this a competition out of 100 people for example, the person who is well balanced (all 6/7s and not 8/5/3) might not win each of those things drawn at random but will be more consistent with their placing finishing top 10 in every event and not 50th place here, 1st place there, 25th here etc you get the picture.

This continuum represents your health. CrossFit have observed that nearly every measurable value of health can be placed on a continuum that ranges from sickness to wellness to fitness. Though tougher to measure, we would even add mental health to this observation.

Examples of such values include blood pressure, body-fat percentage, heart rate, and glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) levels, among others. 

The fittest will have all of their parameters or markers going in the direction of fit and done right, fitness provides a great margin of protection against the ravages of time and disease.

CrossFit (Greg Glassman) was able to define what fitness was and have a solution to the worlds most vexing problems, diabetes and obesity.

In simple terms, off the couch and off the carbs.

Maybe ‘doing it right’ is not the best term and my intention is not to offend anyone reading this. Let’s go with the term ‘more effectively’.

These are 100 infamous words that help understand more about CrossFit and how to use it more effectively.

‘Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.

Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean, squat, presses, C&J, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast.

Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense.

Regularly learn and play new sports.’

Just before you move on, read that again.

It doesn’t need to be any more than that.

In my opinion, if you can abide by the above you’ll get the return on your investment in your health you want and if you deviate you’ll be chasing it for the rest of your life.

I think we all think that fit people need to have a 6 pack, that fitness happens in a month or signing up for a membership, that it is training to look good for an occasion or that you’re training to overload with excess sugar and alcohol at the weekend and mitigate against poor lifestyles choices (Food/ Alcohol abuse).

I also truly believe that in the last 5 years, being fit is all we think about , and for me that’s sad. There is so much pressure about what it looks like to be fit, what it should look like and what we should be doing about it. This statement ‘Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat’ to me means having control and doing the right thing most of the time. I once read ‘you live and you learn and sometimes what you learned is that you didn’t live’  and I think it is relevant to those who chase this desire to be the best and fittest person in the room. They miss out on so much because of this. It goes without saying that if you choose to do sports for a career and make money out of your skill, this is a totally different conversation and I am for that but I am talking to you the 99% of the fitness population who just want to feel better in their own skin and look good naked.

It should be about our health and health markers. Our confidence in our own body.

This leads up to taking shame in what we feel scaling is. Scaling is a positive thing but there is always a send of negativity when this is mentioned, as if you’re not good enough.. No, scaling makes things more relevant to our abilities. Scaling means that if we refer back to the 4 definitions of fitness and metabolic pathways, we can improve these by achieving the stimulus of each workout. You might say ‘ who cares about the stimulus’. The reason it is important is for adaptation and progression to take place.

Even in the Bodybuilding world, if your goal is to add on lean muscle, you don’t want to do 1-3 reps, that is improving your absolute strength. You would look to do hypertrophy training and use 8-12 reps range. Or a another example to help context, if you want to improve your running and be faster at 100m, you wouldn’t run 5k’s every week. So in the CrossFit world, if a workout has a time cap of 10 minutes and let’s say that involves 4 Rounds of 200m and 10 burpees and the workout takes you 20 minutes, and you continue to do that each time you become dominate in one energy system and lose the value of you the workout. A key word that I am yet to mention is Intensity. Intensity is what drives results. Not only does scaling provide intensity, but relevant intensity.

The problem is as humans we always want more. We want to lift more, we want to train more, we want more from our training, we don’t like to be beaten, we don’t like if our ego is dented, we want to look better, we go all in and then we’re all out, we chase the RX, we chase the heavy lifting and we have got lost in the real reason in why we started. To improve our health.

I feel that most need to rediscover why we started training in the first place and realign with that reason. In my opinion, it is where you had the most fun and got the most results.

The reality is in the words of the founder, Greg Glassman, ‘Stick to the basics and when you feel you’ve mastered them it’s time to start all over again, begin anew, again with the basics, this time paying closer attention’.

How do you get better at understanding CrossFit in 100 words? One of the ways I truly believe, is for you reading this to go and do the CrossFit Level 1. I guarantee it will be one of the best investments you make in yourself. The iconic red seminar staff t-shirts are renowned for being some of the best coaches in the world. These will generally be CFL3 & CFL4 coaches.

CrossFit requires balance. Doing the right thing most of the time.

Steering clear of fancy exercise, or fitness fads. As a gym owner it pains me to say that fitness has become very commercialised and the CrossFit Games has a part to play too (that’s another story). That by the way, is a separate entity entirely.

You have probably heard the old saying that CrossFit is not for everyone but is for anybody. I believe that statement to be true.

It is for anybody who wants to improve. Anybody who wants to learn. Anybody who wants to learn new skills and for anybody who is willing to play the long game. If you can’t tick off all of those reasons above then you fall in the category of ‘everyone’ and I mean that respectfully.

I am talking truly improve, truly learn new skills, truly wants to learn not just for your first 6 months or for when you achieve the movement. An ongoing development how improving the way we move, improving the way we eat, improving in new sports.

Going to the gym, chasing a sweat and not wanting to improve, is the same as going to the doctors for high blood pressure and them prescribing you medication and just being content that you see yourself doing something about it, when in reality it’s not the best choice . You do it because you know you have too.  

You want to do something about your high blood pressure, learn to move more and adapt the way you eat. You would have to change parts of your lifestyle. You want to get better at CrossFit, along with changing the way you learn, always be prepared to learn new things then ‘Stick to the basics and when you feel you’ve mastered them it’s time to start all over again, begin anew, again with the basics, this time paying closer attention’

For example, I started snatching maybe back in 2010-2012 something like that, and you can bet anything you want that every single rep I still do now I learn from it.

• Firstly was this lift a mobility issue?
• Was this a strength issue?
• How was my set up?
• How was my first pull/push?
• Bar path/ contact.
• Did I have straight arms
• Did I shrug
• Was I patient enough in the lift.
• Plus many more questions

And if I am in doubt or say no to anyone of the above, I redo the rep until I can say yes to all. Do I load more… no? I create the self awareness to go back to basics and master it all over again.

But coach, that will take ages to get better, or get a new PB. That’s exactly my point.

Although these questions have limiting answers and many variables, they are just an example.

How good are you at your job?

How good are you at driving?

How good are you at saving money?

Anything you’re good at its because you truly understand it, you have practised it over and over again and if you’ve ever been burnt in one of them examples, its probably because you tried to take a shortcut, wasn’t focused or didn’t do the basics right. I hope you can understand my analogy.

If you need a sign, or a different perspective on what do with your training/ how to get the best results, try some of the things I discussed and let me know it’s better, same or worse. I am truly open to learning more about the impact it can have on you.

Of course this is all in my opinion but I hope you have enjoyed and understood my reasons of how do to CrossFit in the most effective way. Although it may feel like the longest way, it is the shortest because it’s the most direct and done the way it should be.