Meet One of the Fittest Men on EARTH!

This past weekend, our very own Head Coach, Jeff Hughes, gave it his all in the biggest CrossFit competition in the world - The Reebok CrossFit Games. This is where the fittest athletes gather once a year to battle it out for the title of Fittest On Earth. After a very long weekend of grueling WODs in the hot California summer sunshine, Jeff finished out a proud 9th place. What an incredible accomplishment - that's 9th Fittest Man On EARTH! Way to go Jeff!! Can't wait to see you do it again next year.

Written By CFP Coach James Needham

“The biggest difference is the support and motivation from CrossFit’s community can not be replicated with a DVD.”

If you have not yet heard of the P90X and/or the INSANITY DVDs I am sure it is just a matter of time. Hopefully by the end of this article you will have a good understanding as to their differences AND yes, even their similarities.

The P90X & INSANITY infomercials are convincing and do a good job of promoting their product. I even purchased P90X, only to in time get tired of the routine and eventually discovered CrossFit Providence (CFP).

• CrossFit has athletes working out using the most efficient, effective exercises available. Gymnastics, weightlifting, sprinting, powerlifting, & kettlebells, are but a few of the activities you may come across. CrossFit’s specialty is not specializing.
• P90X is described as a home fitness training system that contains 12 workout DVDs, programmed for 90 days.
• INSANITY is described as a 60 day program that comes with 10 workout discs containing Plyometrics drills on top of intervals of strength, power, resistance, and ab / core training moves. No equipment or weights are used.

The benefit of P90X and, INSANITY is that they do incorporate some whole-body movements, expose the user to new horizons like Yoga and Martial Arts and criticize the current trend in fitness towards machines. Both programs are scalable. They also believe that just “going through the motions” will not stimulate results and that the results ultimately come from intensity. Even though P90X and INSANITY are similar to CrossFit in these ways there are some major drawbacks to point out.

The biggest difference is the support and motivation from CrossFit’s community cannot be replicated with a DVD. It’s an open-source group, where anyone is free to post anything related to the workout of the day (WOD). There are hundreds of thousands doing Crossfit across the world, in basements, garages, parks, and gyms. Members and Coaches (hundreds of thousands worldwide) bring individual expertise to the table and that adds to everyone’s experience. With CrossFit you are accountable when you walk through the door. The DVDs won’t come alive and start encouraging you like a CFP Coach. Since my first workout at CrossFit Providence I have not even had a second thought to “just push play” on my DVD player to re-visit P90X. The main difference that I noticed is that what I “experience” at CrossFit Providence is what I “saw” on the P90X videos. A coach walking around watching everyone’s form, individuals performing different levels of the same exercise, everyone cheering each other on, making small talk, etc. Crossfit, being open-source, is free and constantly improving based on shared empirical evidence, where as P90X and INSANITY are limited by there DVD design. Safety, efficacy, and efficiency are the three most important and interdependent facets of CrossFit and are supported by measurable, observable, repeatable facts; i.e., data. This approach is called “evidence-based fitness.” The CrossFit methodology depends on full disclosure of methods, results, and criticisms, shared through the Internet (Coach Greg Glassman).

CrossFit uses the most efficient/effective exercises available. You will never see an “isolation” exercise much less an entire workout dedicated to just one body part. By using compound movements CrossFit strengthens your body the way it is suppose to be strengthened, as 1 machine not a collection of parts. To work the body one muscle at a time or even one group of muscles at a time now seems to me like such an ineffective waist of time.

CrossFit feels like a sport. Harnessing the natural camaraderie, competition, and fun of sport yields an intensity that cannot be matched by other means. (Coach Glassman). Where P90X and INSANITY targets physique improvement solely, that result comes as a byproduct of an improved fitness level with CrossFit.

CrossFit has the element of surprise. Constantly changing workouts help Crossfitters put out their maximal effort every day, because they don’t know what’s coming next. It makes it a lot tougher than saving your energy for days that feature your favorite exercises, and thereby only consistently improving your strengths.

CrossFit is fun. Knowing that tomorrow is ‘Yoga Day’ didn’t do much to excite me on the third time through the P90X DVDs. How many P90X folks are up at midnight on the P90X website, chatting to others about ‘Chest and Triceps’ day tomorrow? Few. At Crossfit.com? Trust me THOUSANDS are constantly hitting ‘refresh’ to see the WOD before they go to sleep.

The bottom line is this: While P90X and INSANITY may help only the self-motivated individual achieve actual results; CrossFit is an ever growing living program offering a more practical workout with support from a highly motivated community.

I was an aerobic junkie. For 20 years I swam biked and run my ass off (quite literally). For years I exercised 24 to 30 hours every week logging 15000 meters swimming, 300 miles bicycling, and 60 miles running. For twenty five years I have had the same New Year’s Resolution.  “I want to be in better shape than last year”.  I still have the same New Year’s Resolution, but how I go about achieving my fitness has changed.

As a professional firefighter I am an occupational athlete. My job/profession requires me to be “fit”. And I was exercising more (in time) than 99% of all firefighters in this jurisdiction.  So why was I not in much better shape than everyone else when I was called upon to do my job?

Firefighting is demanding and strenuous work. When people take the entry level test to become a firefighter many exclaim that they like the idea of every call being different. It is ever changing. You can be just sitting down for a nice dinner at the firehouse and receive a call to respond to a medical emergency, or an automatic fire alarm, or a working structure fire with people trapped. Every response deserves your ability to handle the job required to help stabilize the problem.  The ability to think clearly under stress is also critical and rarely trained. We can be at rest one minute and hand jacking 200’ of supply hose, lifting and throwing 35’ extension ladders, and pulling ceiling the next. An exercise program for “functional” fitness for a firefighter that bases its programming on monostructured metabolic conditioning (treadmill, rowing machine, or exercise bike) followed by unilateral strength movements like bench press, bicep curls, and seated rows is grossly inadequate for what the reality of firefighting requires of us.

I always viewed my V02 Max score as the gold standard for “fitness”. Maximum oxygen uptake is measured it is a barometer for how efficient your body is at transferring the oxygen that you breath into your blood stream to replenish your aerobic exercising muscles.  It can be estimated by testing on a treadmill or ergometer by following your cardiac response when delivered an ever increasing load.  How quickly your reach an estimated 85% MHR for your age. Or you can be tested by actually measuring 02 in and C02 out while exercising. 40 is the estimated minimum V02 for a firefighter to effectively do his job under extreme physical stress. Miguel Indurain the legendary Spaniard winner of the Tour De France touted an incredible 88 V02!! To increase your maximum oxygen uptake takes a very long time to train on or near that “anaerobic threshold”.  And the increases come very slowly! Like I said earlier, my goal was to be more fit (a high V02 Max) every succeeding year.  "An athlete diminished by excessive aerobic training is slow and weak. At CrossFit we call that state, 'spun-down.'"

Some years back I heard about CrossFit and some extreme workouts from a friend. I was intrigued enough to look at the www.crossfit.com website and consider the possibilities of attempting a workout.  The first workout we attempted was “Cindy” (for 20 minutes complete as many rounds as possible of 5 pull ups, 10 pushups, and 15 body squats).  I completed the workout with a weak result and I was hooked on the bodyweight style workouts.  It did take me some time to become as sold on the Olympic style of lifting heavy things because I was not comfortable with doing those sorts of movements.  So I would search the web for the bodyweight style WODs (Workouts of the Day) that I liked to do.  In doing so I was missing a huge part of what CrossFit is all about. You should be training on all aspects of fitness. The fitter person is the person that can excel in more aspects of fitness than you.  Not the person who can run the longer and fastest, or the one who can do the most pull ups, pushups and squats.
I often ask new folks that are coming in to CrossFit Orange County for the first time “In your opinion, ‘Who is the fittest person in the world?” 95% of the time the answer I hear is Lance Armstrong.  If your standard for fittest person is the person that can ride his bicycle the fastest over a 2100 mile course for three weeks then you would be correct. As bicycle racers go, he is tops in my book!  But as the fittest person in the world? No. Fitness incorporates more than cardio respiratory endurance.

10 General Physical Skills:
• Cardiovascular Endurance
• Stamina
• Strength
• Flexibility
• Power
• Speed
• Coordination
• Accuracy
• Agility
• Balance

CrossFit training specializes in NOT specializing. An elite fit person needs to be proficient in all of these aspects of fitness. You are only as fit as your weakest skill. If Lance Armstrong came into our gym for a workout and we were competing for the title Fittest for the day at CrossFit Orange County. Lance is going to pray for the workout to be a longer endurance style workout (like ride for bike for 150 miles over a huge mountain).  The proficient athlete at many of these physical skills will be the overall more “fit” athlete than a sport specialist, even if they are the best in the world at his or her game. "There is no single sport or activity that trains for perfect fitness. True fitness requires a compromise in adaptation broader than the demands of most every sport."