Pffffffft…see that, it was January! Which of course is no biggy, so long as things slow right down once it becomes warm again!
Below is an amazing comment from Coach Glassman, he is talking about an article that he wrote, available here which has received over a million downloads. And, was why a lot of people actually got into CrossFit in the first place.
What is Fitness will feature within Educate very soon.
”Where none existed we created a definition of fitness amenable to accurate and precise estimation. This is a prerequisite to measurement, and measurement is necessary to systematically, scientifically, improving fitness. This doesn’t make our definition right or wrong - definitions don’t come in flavors “right” or “wrong” - they’re either consistent or not, useful or not. Defining fitness as work capacity measured across broad time and modal domains is a moment in exercise science.
It also grounds the measurement of fitness to movement and not any one of countless surrogates. We didn’t need university approval for this; we didn’t need any of the academic and “scientific” organizations seemingly chartered to advance fitness (NSCA, ACSM, et al) to approve of our approach. We got the permissions we needed from logic, math, and the scientific method. It turns out that applying Newtonian mechanics to human performance bears fruit as it has in the study of all movement. Who’s surprised? I’m not.
As the principal architect of this approach, I will tell you that my motivation came in great part from the odd and long-nagging realization that exercise science was fruitless. I’ve publicly asked for decades now for someone to name a single contribution to any sports performance or training methodology arising from an advance in exercise science. (Crickets.)
This is the context with which I appreciate, understand, and explain CrossFit - even at Harvard Business School where the subject in my annual visit is our unparalleled business success. I stand in front of business students and explain that we took a stab at the first scientific definition of fitness relying heavily on Sir Isaac Newton and it worked!!
Even our low carb approach to eating had its origins in its dramatic impact measured in force, distance, and time. That is NOT insignificant, even if an aside.
None of this found an audience in academia - a few notable academics excepted. What did get the attention of the academy was our eventual dominance in the trainer certification space and our incestuous (frankly) relationship with first responders and men and women in uniform around the world.
The first significant response from academia was to fake a scientific study. The biggest name in exercise science suborned (were scientific misconduct perjury “suborn” would be the perfect choice of words) scientific misconduct as editor-in-chief of the largest peer-reviewed journal of exercise science and when exposed engaged in perjury and later spoliation of evidence to hide all of the above. “Caught red-handed” would be an understatement. The entire scientific edifice of the NSCA is an out and out fraud.
The corruption came from the top and appears throughout the NSCA. I could let the legal filings, judges’ and referees’ rulings speak for all of this, but I won’t.
We have emails detailing an unholy alliance of the NSCA, Pepsi, Ohio State University, ESPN, and a host of other nationally and internationally renowned companies and organizations coming together to stop what’s going on here on this website and in 15,000 gyms around the world flying the CF flag. What would that effort look like? Here’s just one effort costing millions: a score of bills drafted and floored in a dozen states over a dozen years making CF illegal. I called the NSCA and the ACSM “soda whores”. The NSCA sued me for it. They also dropped the suit after getting caught hiding emails that proved they were, well, soda whores. (On the advice of counsel I won’t mention that Lanny Davis has now come around trying to make this all go away.)
Dr. Morriem’s report was my introduction to scientific misconduct as a field of study. It also introduced me to the “replication crisis” and became the start of a deep and personal academic obsession with coming to understand what is wrong in science and medicine. Our exposure to the scientific fraud at the NSCA has been an education, better yet, a template, for the failures of organized fitness and medicine globally and the lack of meaningful response to the tsunami of chronic disease visible to all of us. We’ve been to hell and back and didn’t come back empty handed.
We owe it to our affiliates, CrossFitters, and the world to share what we've learned and been through.”
Some read, from the “Boss.” I love his passion and his fight, and if you met him, so would you!
CrossFit Cardiff WoD
A: Back Rack Walking Lunge
10 - 10 - 10
B: Deadlift*
5 - 5 - 5
*keep weight to where you can just graze the floor between each rep.
