It's all about being cross fit

I've started exercising again. Some might say midlife crises and sure, there might be an ounce or two of truth in that. However, I guess it's more of a I-don't-really-wanna-die thing. After some 20 years of cake eating, couch lounging, beer drinking and also watching out for captain Ahab at the beach every summer, I realized I enjoyed my life too much to let it end at the cardio E.R. at 42. At least I wanna live long enough for my brain to be able to be downloaded to say, a construct in a suburb to Stockholm. Which btw is supposed to happen in 2929 if you believe Ray Kurzweil. It seems plausible and I would really really like to believe him but I need more input, which is why I bought three of his books today.

Now the singularity is interesting enough but deserves to be attended to on its own, and today it's all about being cross fit. I want to be fit in all the ways you can be fit. I want to be strong, fast, look like one of the spartans in 300, flexible, agile, and so on. To reach this goal I realized i needed a strong scientifically and practically proven training regimen. Enter crossfit.

Crossfit was developed by Greg Glassman - an american gymnast who promoted general overall fitness. His thought is that you will only be good at things you practise, i.e. if you train for triathlon you will be good at that and if you play football you will eventually excel on the football field. However, if you want to be generally fit you need to practice general fitness. Seems fair now doesn't it? Example: triathletes are often considered to be fit, but in reality they are only fit in one or maybe two areas - cardiovascular/respiratory endurance and stamina. The triathlete is good at - triathlon which doesn't require strength, speed or power. Hence, the triathlete is not generally fit. So what IS fitness then? Glassman set out to define fitness and came up with 10 criteria:

GENERAL PHYSICAL SKILLS
If your goal is optimum physical competence then all the general physical skills must be considered:
1. Cardiovascular/respiratory endurance
2. Stamina
3. Strength
4. Flexibility
5. Power
6. Speed
7. Coordination
8. Agility
9. Balance
10. Accuracy

I think that's about right. Of course there might be other skills that fit on this list, but I'd consider a person with great skills in all those areas to be generally fit. Wouldn't you agree? To reach this optimum physical competence you need to be equal parts gymnast, olympic weightlifter and sprinter. And to excel in that you need to practise...yes you guessed it, gymnastics, strength training and sprint.

Now the big question here will be, how about endurance? Well since endurance training is often counter productive to the strength training (look at a long distance runner and you'll see what I mean) Glassman needed to find a method to train the cardio/respiratory endurance without losing the benefits of the strength training. He came up with a briliant idea. What if you can exercise the respiratory system WHILE training your strength and gymnastics. And he did. In a crossfit workout you never rest. You do all the exercises in an uninterrupted flow. No silly bodybuilding rest between sets. It means that you will exercise your cardiosystem while lifting your weights and running your short laps and doing your gymnastic execises. You will be fit. This is why crossfit seems to me to be so superior to any other training regimen that aims to general fitness.

This is how it is.