CrossFit 101 talk by Coach Greg Glassman

I was lucky enough to go to CrossFit founder Greg Glassman’s talk last Saturday at CrossFit Bellevue, thanks to gym pal Jim who had a ticket but couldn’t go. Even after years of immersion in CrossFit and several certifications, the talk was really inspiring. It took my mind back to the fundamentals: why we’ve continued as CrossFitters and trainers, what we want for not just our clients but for our whole society, why we’re so passionate when we talk about the deadlift, and so on. Here are a few excerpts from my notes.

The exercises that became CrossFit were distinguished from other, more popular gym exercises by being:

Difficult (“None of the machine exercises are hard.”)

Compound movements (this means multi-joint as opposed to isolating a muscle)

Old; they “predate the gym by millions of years”

Built into our bodies’ structure, ie, natural, and “tied to our DNA”

Distinguished by their ability to express power (ie they are functional movements)

Causes of “inordinate, spectacular adaptation” in any activity that requires a high heart rate, max heart rate, or cardiorespiratory endurance

Universal motor recruitment patterns (this means universal to all situations; found everywhere in daily life)

These movements are essential to independent living. A person who can’t get up from sitting or lying down, who can’t lift something off the floor or carry something, is headed for a nursing home, according to Coach Glassman. On top of that, he says, “decrepitude” and “the nursing home” is always either encroaching on us or being pushed away. Decrepitude starts encroaching on us as early as perhaps age fifteen, he said, and illustrated this vividly: picture a fifteen-year-old girl seated on a bench. Stand in front of her and put two fingers on each of her shoulders, and tell her to stand up. If you can prevent her from standing with two fingers on each shoulder, he predicts “movement problems” at age 30. If nothing changes, he believes that in the long run that girl is headed to the nursing home.

CrossFit sees illness and fitness as three sections of a spectrum, with “wellness” in the middle. Is “wellness” the absence of detected pathology? That’s not good enough; we want fitness and see it as better than wellness.

Coach Glassman told us that intense exercise has been shown to promote positive gene expression “in all known organ systems.” More good genes are expressed and bad ones are not. “There is no reason to think the brain is excluded,” he said. Therefore he believes it’s true that CrossFit “makes us smarter.”

If you’re just starting to look into CrossFit, you might be wondering right now, “So what are these difficult compound exercises that will supposedly keep me out of the nursing home?” Come in and see us when we get our doors open in December, and we’ll teach you the squat, deadlift, press, clean, jerk, kettlebell swing, and so many other strong moves. You’ll love being stronger. And if you’re “a certain age” you’ll love picturing that awful “decrepitude” being shoved away, hard.