Evidence-Based Fitness

In this excerpt from one of his talks at a recent CrossFit certification seminar, founder Greg Glassman discusses the methods and rationale of CrossFit. Fundamentally, what we are about, he explains, is evidence-based fitness. Here he breaks that claim down into its constituent parts and explains the logical, scientific basis of the CrossFit system for advancing human performance. To evaluate any such system, there are three key elements that must be assessed:

1) Safety: the program's record for injury avoidance-- and prevention.

2) Efficacy: its results, or the adaptations it produces.

3) Efficiency: how long it takes to achieve those adaptations.

For a fitness program to have meaning, those three elements must be supported by measurable, observable, repeatable data. Moreover, its methods, outputs, and criticisms must be transparent, or available for anyone to see and evaluate. These are the fundamental bases of scientific inquiry and of rational argument and evaluation, and (despite the unempirical, profit-driven nature of so much of the silliness that pervades the fitness industry), they are necessarily the requirements of any fitness program that claims to make you fitter.