Crossfit

'Crossfit'! is the latest craze in 'fitness' and we have been receiving a lot of queries about how it compares to what we do and what everybody else does.

For those who haven't heard of it, Crossfit is a brutal program comprised of an incredibly wide variety of exercises from olympic lifting to running to boxing and absolutely everything in between. It is designed to cover every aspect of endurance, strength and conditioning. It is described on the Crossfit website as being the "principal strength and conditioning program for many police academies and tactical operations teams, military special operations units..." etc. They even say that their "specialty is not specializing"!

So how good is it? Well, that depends on the context in which that question is being asked.

Is Crossfit 'good' in terms of creating an incredibly rounded athlete who could take on almost any physical challenge and do it better than average? Obviously yes!

Is Crossfit 'good' in terms of developing the base strength and endurance capability necessary for serious ass-kicking as a martial artist, police officer or soldier? Obviously yes!

Is Crossfit 'good' in terms of helping a person develop a better figure or physique than the hopelessly ineffective rubbish that consistutes 'training' in every gym across the world these days? Absolutely yes.

Is Crossfit the most efficient and effective exercise program for the most rapid and/or extreme improvements in body composition? Absolutely NOT!

Is Crossfit the best choice of exercise for a person who doesnt want to spend almost every non-working hour of their week performing sickeningly painful, yet totally arbitrary exercise that has no direct relevance to how their body looks? Absolutely NO!

Crossfit is DESIGNED to create very broad athletic ability for people serious about broad athletic ability. And for this it is AWESOME. And people who become awesome athletes tend to have pretty awesome bodies, generally!

BUT Crossfit is not DESIGNED to create a great LOOKING body! So if a great LOOKING body is your priority, Crossfit is NOT the BEST choice. Compared to a proper body recompositioning program Crossfit will waste huge amounts of your time, effort and comfort for a much lesser result.

That said, if you don't 'like' the best way of creating a good body (ie strict dieting with measured, planned, HEAVY weight training), then proper application of Crossfit SHOULD wind up creating a far better body than any easier, softer and less demanding exercise program. The real question is: if you are willing to work THAT hard on that MUCH stuff, why wouldnt you just focus the same effort on just training for the body you want?