CrossFit Miles City

What is CrossFit?

CrossFit is many things. It is a fitness program whose aim is to forge a broad, general and inclusive fitness. CrossFit is also the community that grows when people do these workouts together and share in each other’s success. In fact, the community aspect of CrossFit is a key component of why it’s so effective at improving fitness. We define fitness as increased work capacity across broad time and modal domains. Therefore we seek to build a program that will prepare its participants for any physical scenario – not only for the unknown, but the unknowable. This simply means that we want to be able to perform work in a broad, not specialized manner, both in terms of duration and type of effort. So, how do we improve our fitness? By performing:

• Constantly Varied, Functional Movements At High Intensity

That’s a mouthful right? So let’s break it down… The magic is in the movements. All of CrossFit’s workouts are based on functional movements. These are the core movements of life found everywhere, because we were made to move this way. Some of these movements include: the squat, deadlift, overhead press, clean, snatch and pull-up. For instance, when you are required to pick up something off the ground like a bag of groceries, you are essentially performing a deadlift.

The next component is that our workouts are constantly varied. So rather than having a set workout we perform every day of the week, CrossFit believes that routine is the enemy, so no two weeks of workouts are ever the same.
Finally, the high intensity component refers to maximizing the amount of work done in the shortest time. The more work you do in less time, the more intense the effort. Intensity is relative to physical and psychological tolerances of each individual. So, running 400 meters in 2 minutes could be the most intense thing Person A has ever done, while it is a much lower intensity for Person B.

On a similar note, the CrossFit program is designed for universal scalability, making it the perfect program for any committed individual, regardless of experience, age or gender. We may scale load and intensity for individuals, but the program does not change.

So what does this look like in application? CrossFit combines movements from weightlifting, gymnastics and endurance training. An example workout could be 3 rounds for time of 5 deadlifts at 225#, 10 Pull-ups, and Row 500 meters. You would time how long it takes you to complete this work and the faster you perform the work, the more intense your effort will be, bringing about physical adaptation. We’ve learned that harnessing the natural camaraderie, competition and fun of sport or game yields results and an intensity that cannot be matched by other means.

Courtesy of CrossFit Inc.