If Bruce Lee and Crossfit had the opportunity to cross paths, I bet Bruce would have endorsed this type of workout program. Bruce lee was big on circuit type training. From using his Marcy home gym to running with his dog Bobo, a Crossfit type regimen was always a favorite of Bruce Lee.

CrossFit is a core strength and conditioning program. We have designed our program to elicit as broad an adaptational response as possible. CrossFit is not a specialized fitness program but a deliberate attempt to optimize physical competence in each of ten recognized fi tness domains. They are Cardiovascular and Respiratory
endurance, Stamina, Strength, Flexibility, Power, Speed, Coordination, Agility, Balance, and Accuracy.

The CrossFit Program was developed to enhance an individual’s competency at all physical tasks. Our athletes are trained to perform successfully at multiple, diverse, and randomized physical challenges. This fitness is demanded of military and police personnel, firefighters, and many sports requiring total or complete physical prowess. CrossFit has proven effective in these arenas.

Aside from the breadth or totality of fitness the CrossFit Program seeks, our program is distinctive, if not unique, in its focus on maximizing neuroendocrine response, developing power, cross-training with multiple training modalities, constant training and practice with functional movements, and the development of successful diet strategies.

Our athletes are trained to bike, run, swim, and row at short, middle, and long distances guaranteeing exposure and competency in each of the three main metabolic pathways.

We train our athletes in gymnastics from rudimentary to advanced movements garnering great capacity at controlling the body both dynamically and statically while maximizing strength to weight ratio and flexibility. We also place a heavy emphasis on Olympic Weightlifting having seen this sport’s unique ability to develop an athletes’ explosive power, control of external objects, and mastery of critical motor recruitment patterns. And finally we encourage and
assist our athletes to explore a variety of sports as a vehicle to express and apply their fitness.

An effective approach

In gyms and health clubs throughout the world the typical workout
consists of isolation movements and extended aerobic sessions. The
fitness community from trainers to the magazines has the exercising
public believing that lateral raises, curls, leg extensions, sit-ups and the like combined with 20-40 minute stints on the stationary bike or treadmill are going to lead to some kind of great fitness.

Well, at CrossFit we work exclusively with compound movements and shorter high intensity cardiovascular sessions. We’ve replaced the lateral raise with push press, the curl with pull-ups, and the leg extension with squats. For every long distance effort our athletes will do fi ve or six at short distance.

Why? Because compound or functional movements and high intensity or
anaerobic cardio is radically more effective at eliciting nearly any desired fitness result. Startlingly, this is not a matter of opinion but solid irrefutable scientific fact and yet the marginally effective old ways persist and are nearly universal. Our approach is consistent with what is practiced in elite training programs associated with major university athletic teams and professional sports.

CrossFit endeavors to bring state-of-the-art coaching techniques to the general public and athlete who haven’t access to current technologies, research, and coaching methods.

Many professional and elite athletes are participating in the CrossFit Program. Prizefighters, cyclists, surfers, skiers, tennis players, triathletes and others competing at the highest levels are using the CrossFit approach to advance their core strength and conditioning, but that’s not all. CrossFit has tested its methods
on the sedentary, overweight, pathological, and elderly and found that these special populations met the same success as our stable of athletes.

We call this “bracketing”. If our program works for Olympic Skiers and overweight, sedentary homemakers then it will work for you.

CrossFit is a core strength and conditioning program in two distinct senses. First, we are a core strength and conditioning program in the sense that the fitness we develop is a foundation to all other athletic needs. This is the same sense in which the university courses required of a particular major are called the “core curriculum”.

This is the stuff that everyone needs. Second, we are a “core” strength and conditioning program in the literal sense meaning the center of something. Much of our work focuses on the major functional axis of the human body, the extension and flexion, of the hips and extension, flexion, and rotation of the torso or trunk. The primacy of core strength and conditioning in this sense is supported by the simple observation that powerful hip extension alone is necessary and nearly sufficient for elite athletic performance.

That is, our experience has been that no one without the capacity for
powerful hip extension enjoys great athletic prowess and nearly everyone we’ve met with that capacity was a great athlete. Running, jumping, punching and throwing all originate at the core. At CrossFit we endeavor to develop our athletes from the inside out, from core to extremity, which is by the way how good functional movements recruit muscle, from the core to the extremities.

What is the CrossFit method?

The CrossFit method is to establish a hierarchy of effort and concern that builds as follows:

Diet – lays the molecular foundations for fitness and health.
Metabolic Conditioning – builds capacity in each of three metabolic pathways, beginning with aerobic, then lactic acid,
and then phosphocreatine pathways.

Gymnastics – establishes functional capacity for body control and
range of motion.

Weightlifting and throwing – develop ability to control external
objects and produce power.

Sport – applies fitness in competitive atmosphere with more
randomized movements and skill mastery.

Examples of CrossFit exercises

Biking, running, swimming, and rowing in an endless variety
of drills. The clean&jerk, snatch, squat, deadlift, push-press,
bench-press, and power-clean. Jumping, medicine ball throws
and catches, pull-ups, dips, push-ups, handstands, presses to
handstand, pirouettes, kips, cartwheels, muscle-ups, sit-ups,
scales, and holds.

Crossfit makes regular use of bikes, the track, rowing
shells and ergometers, Olympic weight sets, rings, parallel bars,
free exercise mat, horizontal bar, plyometrics boxes, medicine
balls, and jump rope.

There isn’t a strength and conditioning program anywhere that
works with a greater diversity of tools, modalities, and drills.