CrossFit PT

Evidence suggests CrossFit is more effective than traditional military and law enforcement physical training (PT), Coach Greg Glassman wrote in December 2004.

Over the past 60 years traditional PT has been flensed of nearly all skill elements that train for coordination, accuracy, agility, and balance. The costs here are enormous and extend to losses in speed and power as well producing an athlete generally less capable of dealing with variances and vagaries of opponents, movement, and terrain. The skill elements included in CrossFit PT further the sense of sport that so motivates men. CrossFit PT feels like sport; traditional PT at even lower intensities feels like punishment.

CrossFit PT has been measured against other PT programs by testing its adherent’s performance against the testing standards of the program it replaced. At first this may not seem significant but testing of traditional PT trained athletes against CrossFit-like demands produces more DNF’s on test day than above average performances.

One striking and important example of this is running. CrossFit programming calls for infrequent long distance runs and frequent sprints of 400 meters. Repeatedly, CrossFit has produced better long distance running times in head to head comparisons with programs where distance running is a staple. Better running times at less than 1/3 the volume has been the trend.

Constantly varied programming of functional exercises executed at high intensity is the key to CrossFit’s physiological advantage. Our distillation of load, range of motion, exercise, power, work, line of action, flexibility, speed, and all pertinent metabolics to a single value - usually time, has conferred other less expected benefits as well.

Where tested, CrossFit PT has been shown to be a dramatic improvement to traditional PT in these regards: efficacy, time required, safety, fun, motivation, testing/metrics, psychological demands,battlefield/street engagement