This is the first in a series of posts I have lined up to brain dump some of the lessons I took away from the CrossFit Level 1 certification. I’m calling it the WTF? series, because honestly, that’s usually what comes out of people’s mouths when they approach me about my training.

Disclaimer: this shit isn’t gospel, it’s just my opinion. If you have a different one, I’m good with that and would love to hear it.

Right out of the gates, you can’t talk about your training without understanding the “What”. So…

What is CrossFit?

This is the most common question we get from friends and family, right? It’s also the one that seems most difficult to answer intelligently in layman’s terms.

Most of us have read and regurgitated the by-the-book definition of the CrossFit prescription (Constantly Varied, High Intensity, Functional Movement), but there’s some vocab in there that tends to be overused by the rest of the fitness world, so it doesn’t really answer the question for our newbie. You could serve up our concise definition of fitness: increased work capacity across broad time and modal domains (over a lifetime, for bonus points), but that’s a mouthful and usually elicits blank stares. While accurate, those definitions just don’t have the sex appeal that someone asking you about CrossFit might be looking for. They want to know why we do what we do and what they’ll get from it.

In the final lecture at our certification, Pat Sherwood stated “We’re training for life.” As someone who has done this awhile, I can appreciate what that means and it could become my 10,000 foot response. But perhaps that’s gone the other direction and is overly vague. Our imaginary friend wants some kind of nugget to turn over in his head before buying in.

Here’s my take (with some wiggle room depending on the person I’m talking to): CrossFit is a strength and conditioning program that aims to provide an understanding of fitness, a path to that fitness, and the tools to apply that fitness to all aspects of a person’s life.

The conversation rarely ends there, but it’s a healthy start. It’s probably more formal than I actually sound (there’s usually some f-bombs in there, I’m sure) but you get the point. Beyond that, I might talk about the programming, the open source nature of the community, the ever-expanding culture, the evolution of CrossFit sport (the games, for example), and so on.

So, what is CrossFit to you? I’d love to hear some other descriptions besides the textbook jargon.

In WTF? #2, I’ll jump into intensity and it’s place within CrossFit programming.

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