Good at Everything or Great at Something

Personality, experience and know-how...I'd take my barbell cert over again to listen and learn from Tate.

He is a meathead. Obviously his motivation as a trainer is not to help people but to make himself look good.

Look at his stable of athletes. He obviously knows power lifting. So you're right he's not a trainer but a coach.

I dunno Ben. I'd say that Dave would relish the opportunity to "tweak the equalizer" and observe data within the CrossFit athlete pool that supports a strength bias or hybrid program, ala Jeff Martin, Gant Grimes, Max Mormont, Rutherford, et al. The question I would love to hear Dave talk about all day would be how he would take a GPP CrossFitter and raise all dials effectively, without sacrificing any of the other indicators of "fitness" that we posit.

No coincidence then that the associated reading with this entry is "Strength Bias".

We saw in last year's games hints of how the likes of a Rob Orlando could perform at GPP after training multiple time and modal domains, it will be interesting to see how some of the hybrid programs are represented this year. While Mainsite continues to pump out proven athletes, I think it's exciting to see some of the other approaches that are out there that explore the inner workings of the black box.

Dave Tate is the man!

Dave Tate is clearly brilliant at what he does. I enjoy and learn lots from his videos. However it is clear he is new to the concepts of Crossfit. It is true the elite crossfiter does give up being a potential 10 in one area, but this is not to be all 5s, more like the ideal is all 9s. I am sure in time he will see the synergy of increasing weak areas even for specialists.

I could listen to Dave Tate talk all day. I hope we continue to see more of him. More box squats!

While I like the idea that ideally Crossfit will make you a "9" in all areas I think maybe you aren't grasping what Tate is talking about or how far above the curve elite athletes are. Just looking at the extremes Tate brought up of a power lifter vs. a marathoner it's clear that there is no way a person could ever be considered a "9" in both of those disciplines at the same time and possibly not even in the same life time. To be great at either of those or in this case a "9" which might mean competing at a national level say collegiate/semi-pro runner and a similar national level competitor at power lifting requires years and years of hard work at that specific sport. All that work you put in is at the same time taking away from your ability to be good at the other; every mile you run, the less you dead lift and every dead lift session followed by mass eating the slower your run time gets. Part of being a Crossfitter is realizing that the only thing you'll ever be a "10" at is general physical preparedness which is ok with me.

I really like what Jesse wrote, he/she clearly understands the concepts that Dave is putting forward. Let's take for example the area of strength on Dave's equlizer. But more specifically the deadlift, which is the truest test of overall strength. The best powerlifter in the world can deadlift 1008lbs. A "10" would be 900lbs and above. That is truly elite, I think only 12 men have pulled over 900. A deadlift over 800lbs is clearly a "9". Now look at the Crossfit Games, the deadlift portion only went up to 505lbs and 16 men completed that. That was considered "elite" for the games. If you went into any commercial gym you would find a bunch of gym rats who could pull over 400lbs, which would be around a "5" (because that is the average of people who train strength). So I would say that a 505lbs deadlift would only put you at around a "6". There were only 16 people who pulled 505lbs at the games. That is saying that the most elite level of Crossfit is only at most, around a "6" possibly a "7" for a handfull. In all honesty that would probably put the average crossfitter around a "4" or below. And that is what Dave is talking about. I don't think he was being elitist, I think he was just saying that he would rather specialize than be average. I think a crossfitter would do pretty well being around a "5" or "6" in most areas. I hope this makes sense and does not create further complication :)

I agree with Jesse and Morgan. You think about the snatch event at the games. The top weight was 240. The world record for the snatch is I think 468 pounds, so the top crossfitter is basically a 5 here too. Also, and I don't know this for sure, you would think that an olympic gymnast could do 30 muscle ups in 1 or 2 minutes, and the top crossfitters get 3 or 4 minutes I think...It is actually pretty humbling to think about how much better specialists are than us in their event, but then again, a top crossfitter could beat them in everything else.

The eternal question... Great at one thing? Or, good at everything?

That's a good point Morgan. I was a little taken aback that Dave put elite crossfitters at straight 5's, thinking that it should be a little higher like 7's, maybe 8's. Then again, I just thought to myself, well he doesn't know crossfit well enough. But I like your point about the deadlift and when looked at it like that, it does put some things into perspective. Elite specialist athletes really are way ahead of the curve in their area of expertise, and it would be foolish to think crossfitters could come close to matching multiple levels of expertise in complete seperate levels of fitness. But, like Jesse said, being a "10" at general physical preparedness, which is more akin to real life scenarious, is fine with me.

dave tate trains people for an athletic CAREER. crossfit trains people for an athletic LIFE. that's why tate doesn't care at all about "area under the curve," even though his elite powerlifter's 10 on strength will never be able to make up for all those 1s and 2s elsewhere, in comparison to the elite crossfitter's 5s and 6s.
it would be REALLY interesting to have tate and coach glassman square off over glassman's contention that training gpp will improve elite athletes' performance more than continued focus on spp. because tate is saying the exact opposite here.

Open mind on all subjects and towards all people.

You can learn a lot from Dave Tate about getting stronger, then you learn about other aspects of Crossfit from the other experts in those areas, a Jeff Tucker i.e. for gymnastic movements.

One of the best thing about being a CrossFit participant is you can tweak your routines to suite your individual needs and goals for Life, not just a career in PowerLifting or NFL football. Those athletes are very unique and far and few between. That is what I take form Dave Tates talk.

CF is about total fitness, and strength is one aspect. Dave is a strength expert.

I like Sam's differentiation between Career and Life.

It is worth pointing out that most elite specialists have combined a genetic predisposition for their sport with tremendous amounts of study and practice. Excellence in any field requires all three. If you have a person gifted in a particular area and you provide knowledge and practice in a different field, he/she will probably never excel at the national or international level. Example: Michael Phelps learns basketball from Phil Jackson.

Training GPP is relatively new, and I think we are skimming the surface of athletes genetically pre-disposed to GPP. Relating to Jesse and Daniel, after 20 years and several generations of GPP evolution the fire-breathers might be close to 8s across the board. Interesting to find out.

Specialists are only elite when confronted with specialized obstacles.

I don't mean to take away form the achievements of elite powerlifters or marathon runners - their skills are impressive and it is a marvel to see them push the limits of human potential.

But, for everybody else, life isn't a series of defined and controlled exercises - it's random and unpredictable. The ability of Crossfit to prepare normal people to meet the physical challenges of life is, IMHO, why it is so successful and so popular.

Isn't the point of Crossfit to have functional fitness that that allows you to prevail against the unknown and the unknowable in your life? I get what Dave Tate is saying and to be great at one thing you are going to have to sacrifice in other areas. The choice isn't whether you want to be great or not, it comes down to your reasons for working out in the first place. I like the fact that Crossfit can give me my best performance across all areas of fitness.

240 is not a 5 in the snatch. if you did it by standard deviation im sure that 240 is in the, at least, 98th percentile of human beings. same logic applies to muscle ups.

I suppose that probably is true but it is also a bit misleading. Take the 100M dash for instance; at one end Usain Bolt with his 9.51 (? I'll have to look the exact number up, you get my point though) is a 10 and at the other end is a quadriplegic with a 100M time infinite. Based on that scale, a 5 is someone who can walk the 100M in under 10 minutes and an 8 is pretty much anyone who can jog the 100M in around 20 seconds. However, and I understand that this is just my interpretation here but I believe it is a more accurate one, if you just look at the population that is capable of running or even walking quickly the ability to be an 8 or 9 changes drastically. The problem with lumping these athletic disciplines into standard deviations is that it tends to marginalize the difference in really exceptional performance. In the standard deviation method, a person who was a 9.8 on the scale would be much better than a person who was a 9 where a 6 would only be a bit better than a person who was a 5. In any case, you can get as technical as you want but the point of the message is (and it's a very true point) that if you really want to excel in one particular discipline you have to focus on it and sacrifice in other areas.

I agree with the positive comments above regarding this featuring Dave Tate. Frankly, IMHO this is the best video from Tate so far. I think once he has more exposure to CrossFit and Crossfitters, the stuff that he puts out will be gold. The whole point of Crossfit is to be good in all domains, not just one or two. He definitely seems to "get it", he is just happier training different types of athletes who do not have GPP as their ultimate goal. So what? Most of the Subject Matter Experts (SME) that we look to in the CrossFit community have a bias towards certain types of training. That is why they are SMEs in that area. Listening to what they have to say can only help us improve in their area of expertise.

Also note that in Dave Tate's comments regarding football players that he acknowledges that players that are more balanced in all areas of fitness tend to have longer careers than ones that don't, precisely because they are not a (Dave's term) 'freak' that is a '10' in one area.

My personal experience from Crossfitting for about 1.75 years is that when I 'top-out' in one aspect of fitness(for example, strength) if I keep working the WOD's hard I usually notice that another area of my fitness IS improving at the same time I have stopped improving in the other. My WOD times start to drop in the 5-15 minute time domains or my 5K/10K runs and/or row times go down. Maybe a skill that I have been trying to master suddenly becomes easier or my flexibility seems to be improving. Then, once the lagging area is improved, the aspect of fitness that was stagnant will sudden improve as balance is achieved again.

I think Tate's comments are spot-on regarding that in order to achieve general fitness, you may need to lay off your work in one aspect of fitness in oreder to bring up your weak area. That is essentially, my understanding at least, the basis of the genesis of the Brand X Strength Bias program. That and doing so in a way that does not sacrifice your level of performance in other areas.

I have to say, in agreement with Jesse and others, it's sometime disheartening to hear how delusional some of us (Ben?) are about how accomplished we really are. I have no doubt that a good Crossfitter is probably in the 90th percentile of human beings in terms of all-around fitness and athletic ability. But to believe that makes you anything more than a 5 in terms of actual ability is ludicrous. Are you really content comparing your snatch to the typical man on the street and then patting yourself on the back for a job well done? That doesn't sound very "elite" to me. I’d much rather look at people like Casey Burgener for a reality check on how far I really have to go before I can even pretend I’m anything more than a 4 or 5.

Most people can't do a muscle up. Most people can't dead 400 lbs. But if you’re going to claim to be "strong," as opposed to just "stronger than the average male," then most of us better realize that we haven't even begun to approach the standards by which we should measure our achievements. Dave Tate is absolutely right that most of are, at most, a 5. It’s also true that there are a lot more people below that 5 than there are above the 5. That’s not a reason to rest on your laurels, though.

True. Depends how you look at it. I like how you look at it better than my original comment. If you take the percentile against all humans, I think you are right that an elite crossfitter would be higher than a 5. Yeah, we might be way far behind the best in one area, but we are definitely ahead of the curve in most other areas, which would put us above a 5. It's not that 10lb snatch is a 1 and 480lb snatch is a 10, so a 240lb snatch is a 5. Good point.

Tate might be correct with the points stuff. That part is subjective anyway.


But a strength of the CrossFit 'randomized tasks' model (the model that often seems to get thrown to the side in favor of the 'metabolic pathways' model) is that it lends itself to be evaluated in terms of competition easily.


For example, if there are 10 components of fitness (maybe more accurately termed the 10 constraints of fitness, since most often an increase in one leads to a decrease in another), consider two hypothetical athlete profiles:


Key:
Component of fitness
Score for that component of fitness


Profile 1 ("Good at Everything")
1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9    10
10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10


Profile 2 ("Great at Something"):
1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9    10
1    1    1    91    1    1    1    1    1    1


If these athletes were to compete against each other, repeatedly, in truly randomly selected tasks (ie. not just 'whatever we think of today', but randomly selected using a random number generator), and we consider a "Win" to be the larger score for that component of fitness, "Great at Something" would only beat "Good at Everything" 10% of the time, when tasks are chosen that favor Component # 4. The rest of the time, 90%, "Great at Something" would lose.


Looked at this way, scoring uniformly well in each category ain't that bad. In fact, it is great.

I wonder if this goes back to the definition of fitness. Are we really happy with the standard definition of performance ABTAMD? I would maybe posit that to be truly fit, you must not only be good (fine, a 5) in a number of different areas, but you must also excel in a couple of areas. What evidence or support do I have? Don't know - this is philosophy. But I guess I just have a hard time saying recognizing someone as having "elite" fitness if that person has never achieved elite performance in any one area, just like I have a hard time saying a marathoner is "fit" even though he is unable to do a single pullup.

So, maybe you have to be "good at everything" AND "great at something" to be elite?

Agreed. Rip's take on the slow lifts is a better fit than a 'pure' powerlifter. I am sure Mr Tate is great in his own domain, but sorry, I'd not sign up for a cert...

Coincidental discussion regarding the importance of overall fitness at Mark's Daily Apple. Today's post is about fitness for survival http://www.marksdailyapple.com/could-you-save-your-own-life/. It's a perspective that takes the point into a new, and theoretically, more important realm.

I think there are 2 aspects in these replies that are most relevant; Jesse Gray's point of marginalizing the difference in these abilities and Dave Tates arbitrary determination that a Powerlifter will have a 1 endurance relative to a 10 strength

Jesse is right, just because Usain Bolt is a 10, doesn't make a Crossfit stud a 5...I wont pretend to have that one figured out, but Tate said that "you guys have tons of data"; so I am sure Greg Glassman has his scientists and statisticians crunching numbers and determining some real evidence in terms of a data supported version of "1-10"...My hunch, Crossfitter's fall higher then a 5

Dave Tate's graph of data points for a powerlifter I think represents the concept correctly, but not the reality of training. Strength and endurance are inversely related yes, but a 10 strength does not mean a 1 endurance, by that logic I don't think Jason Khalipa or Rob Orlando would be able to do some of the things they do. The inverse relationship between certain physical traits has a threshold (the point where one trait negates another), but the human body is also amazingly complex and resilient, which is why IMHO I think you would need an extraordinary amount of data to generally determine at what point a training modality causes a physical ability to decline, or when a physical ability is increasing so much that it takes away from others.

Like Brian Ross said, give it 20 years and we will have a guy with a crazy sized heart and lungs, a weird muscle distribution, and no "flight" and only "fight" nervous system...9's across the board!!

Michael,

I think you're being unnecessarily hardcore about this but maybe I'm looking at a broader base of comparison to you.

I guess it depends whether our 10 to 1 pool of comparisons is General Population, Gen Pop for people of about our own age/size or..the group of people who also train for each of those events.

Sure...a 240lb Snatch or a 400lb DL may not scare anybody at a power or O lifting meet, but they would be a definite 9.8 among general population and over 9 for Gen Pop of people of about the same size and weight.

Ultimately, how we each measure our physical accomplishments is up to us individually.

Personally, as a 38 year old father/businessman with no pretensions of being Jason Khalipa, I believe the best way to compare them is two fold - against how I would measure against myself if I were training in a different way and how I measure against my buddies who are similar in age and physical talent to me but train les hard, less often and less wisely.

"After hearing rumors about Rip leaving I'm guessing they're looking at potential replacements."

Wait a minute? Rip is leaving? When and why?

I agree with your two fold comparison approach. This is reflected statiscally with the use of Z scores and T scores.

For example, in osteoporosis (loosely: bone thinning). Doctors can compare an old lady's bone density to the average healthy 25 year old (the T score). They also compare it to old ladies' of similar age, size, ethnicity, etc (z score). While almost all old ladies have lower bone density than a 25 year old, they may be above, or conversely, way below the average for the comparison.

This seems like a reasonable approach with crossfitters. As the general population gets fatter and more lazy, an average crossfitter will be able to DL, snatch, whatever more than 98% of people. But compare them to Mikko, Everett, OPT and Khalipa....different story. And depending on what you compare to, it really affects where you place on the 1 to 10 scale. As one person compared Usain Bolt's 100m time to a quadriplegic's. This is silly. Sure it is a hypothetical slowest possible time, but I would never compare myself that way.

This is a good discussion though!

Also, I've heard rumors that Rip left on other CF blogs like months ago. No idea whether it's true or not.

I also heard Rip is leaving. Can anyone confirm that? Or is HQ not ready to release the info?

You are correct, Rip is leaving but I believe (with absolutely no source on this btw) that it's on relatively good terms over philosophical differences. Rip seems to have a long history of packing up his barbell and going home over minor issues so it's not really a surprise. Rip is still doing barbell certs however they are not Crossfit certs. I know he is doing what he calls a "Starting Strength Coach Certification" at Crossfit Socal in early February.

In my opinion when you become an elite crossfitter you are great at something, you are great at crossfit. Crossfit is a new sport and in my opinion is a far great sport than powerlifting. Is a top crossfitter like Miko Salo a more amazing athlete than someone that can deadlift 800 or 900lb? I know which athlete i would rather be like! If you take away the steroids and suits, straps etc not to many powerlifters would be lifting that kind of weight anyway.

#23, i'm with you. i've WANTED to find something valuable and/or enjoyable in the dave tate videos, but i can't. whatever he offers has already been gone over ad infinitum, or totally contradicts what crossfit puts out all the time. the whole thing seems like a very poor fit.

I love the comments on this article. I think Rip is great and so is Dave Tate in their own ways. I have learned a lot from both of them.

I agree that comparing the top level athletes as a 10 versus the average person (whoever that is) as a 1 is a little suspect. I think we are also looking at the wrong people when we think numbers of top level powerlifters. Lifting raw and with drug tests is a different world than lifting in squat suits, bench shirts, wrapped and possibly juiced. If you look at the average record deadlifts for the 20-39 year old age groups on the RAW powerlifting federation website they are far below 900 lbs. For the 181 group the average record was 597 across these age groups. I don't know the weight of the 16 competitors at the games that pulled 505 but if they were close to 181, that would put them at an 8.5 out of ten of world class SPP powerlifters. That points to the fact that the assumption that top level CFers may be a little low. I know there are holes in my argument. I am just trying to make sure that we are trying to compare the raw, non-drugged athletes because I believe that is the majority of the CrossFit community.

http://www.rawpowerlifting.com/records/World/WorldDeadliftRecords.pdf

Kevin

I'm not sure where all the Tate replacing Rip stuff is coming from?? Sounds like pure conjecture to me.

All the Tate videos (I've seen so far) came from ONE special lecture he gave on ONE day, and this was quite some time ago now. CF HQ obviously had him mic'd and lots of film and have begun editing his lecture into smaller pieces.

Maybe it seems like this videos are from different times and different locations across the nation, but I'm pretty sure it was one unique day in San Diego, that we're getting a LOT of mileage out of...

Yes Rip is out. It is not a rumor. Check the discussion forums. The Basic Barbell cert (silly name in my opinion) has only a few left and then they will be doing their own 3 day cert.

Louie Simmons is in. Powerlifting Cert. 1st one is already scheduled and full. I think it was invite only.

Tate is great at what he does. There are things we can learn from him. Does Coach think he is the be all end all? Probably not but since when has Coach taken 100% of what any SME has to say.

HQ is headed in the right direction in my eyes!

With regards to the 1-10 scale:
Rippetoe's table of strength standards is valuable because it is defined for trained individuals. The untrained (or unhealthy) population is not of interest and should not be used as a yardstick of physical capacity.

Rippetoe also notes that training progress follows a logarithmic curve: easy gains at the beginning with smaller increments of improvement as training age increases. For a linear scale (0-10) of physical capacity to mean anything, the given parameter (strength, speed, etc.) needs to be considered on a logarithmic scale, or something like it. For instance, there may be several numbers (6, 7, 8) between an 11 sec. 100m dash and 10 sec., while only perhaps one number between 11 and 12 sec.

Brandon Oto and Joe Cavazos have put in an inordinate amount of time to develop this quantitative ranking of GPP parameters. Check it out here:
http://gpp.degreesofclarity.com/

This thread is a great example of the purpose of the CrossFit Journal. "Our mission is to provide a venue for contributing coaches, trainers, athletes, and researchers to ponder, study, debate, and define fitness, and thus collectively advance the art and science of optimizing human performance." (From the Start Here page)

Dave Tate, Mark Rippetoe, Louis Simmons, Greg Glassman (and many others) have decades of experience training athletes in the slow lifts with great gains. They all have different perspectives, but all have found success with their athletes. I believe there are nuggets of wisdom to be gleaned from all of them if you're paying attention.

We thrive on intelligent and creative disagreement. We are not seeking a single answer to such complex questions as human performance.

The goal of CrossFit is to increase work capacity across broad time and modal domains. I am grateful to Tate, Rip, Simmons and Glassman for allowing us to publish their perspectives. These perspectives are there for us to consider, use and/or reject, in part or in whole.

My recommendation? Don't seek right and wrong. Consider useful or useless. Praise wisdom, and call BS. Done with integrity, we're all better off for it.

Very well put Tony

Kevin,

I think most of the guys at the Games who lifted 505 were at or over 200. You are right though. They are probably close to 8.5ish when compared to raw lifters. Further, word is a bunch of those guys (maybe not all) could have gone higher, some had 600 deadlifts entering the games. These guys also just finished that (brutal) run...which did not favour the bigger athlete. Last place in the run was first up in the deadlift. So, I'm going to assume all those guys could lift more than they did if they were at a heavy lifting only competition.

Also, it's hard to argue with Tony. Definitely a great discussion.

Well, the raw website is not a good source. Primarily because the best deadlifters can only get roughly 50#'s out of their suits. Deadlifting by nature is considered raw, no mater what federation. Any ways... What drives me nuts is that there are a lot of comments by people who do not know anything about powerlifting, and secondly, do not know how average the best Crossfitters are when it comes to strength. They are not bad athletes, they are incredibly talented athletes who combine some strength with tons of endurance work! And that is amazing and awe inspiring! But they are not truly "elite" or even close to it in the realm of pure strength. That being said. I have done Crossfit and Gym Jones, and I think they are both great at making you great at what they have you do. I longer do them, I am now a pretty commited powerlifter. That is why I watch these Tate videos. Any ways back to my point... I work catering, it is a terribly demanding job. Very physical and long hours. I am 5'6" and 215# and I do the job just fine. I would really like to know how many people have actually used the conditioning of Crossfit to tackle some real life problem. The odds are incredibly low. I think the truth is that some people like Crossfit, and that's great! And there are other people that like Powerlifting, or Bodybuilding or whatever. The point is this, we face almost no physical adversity in our suburban lives. There are almost no real world challenges that endurance forces us to overcome. We all simply train how we like to train. And that's great! Tate is amazing at teaching people how to become stronger. If you don't want to become stronger, don't watch his videos. He is not into Crossfit, he is into powerlifting. But I think he is totally supportive of the Crossfit idea for people who want to do it. In fact he is so supportive that he is willing to teach the techniques for getting stronger and improving your game. But at the end of the day we are all doing the same thing: looking to better ourselves through physical adversity. That adversity is man made, we subject ourselves to it. And, we are all better for doing so!

Well, went back and read the message boards. If its true that Ripp left because he wanted better quality control, then Westside relationship will be doomed from the start. Louie Simmons has had a very rigorous cert for the Westide Method for some time now. Involves much reading, attendance to seminars, and a 300 question test, with a 90% pass rate in order to be certified. I'm curious to see how this will mesh with the current philosophy of crossfit certs.

With all due respect to Mr. Tate's extensive experience and skill, what's with his continually poor language? As a permanent coach or guest speaker, I'd expect him to represent himself, Crossfit and its members with a bit more respect. I'm continually disappointed in his inability to make a point without swearing. Drop less "F-Bombs" and more knowledge, Dave.

Bryan,
as stated above, it was from one cert at one day.
he is NOT or not yet a permanent coach or guest speaker.
he's not representing Crossfit, he represents himself.
he just shares his views with us.

If anybody's interested in playing more with Tate's idea of the "equalizer," using 1-10 scales for the 10 fitness domains, Joe Cavazos and myself developed a series of tests and scales a while back designed to actually do this.

http://gpp.degreesofclarity.com/

Dunno whether it would have any use to you, but we found it interesting to actually quantify these rather than just talk about it abstractly.

Oops, Westide Cert is only 45 questions, not 300 (was thinking of my USATF level 1 cert, sorry). But its 45 essay questions, with a 3 hour time limit. Sounds pretty tough if you ask me.

It seems you are applying your reasons universally. Many CFers are LEO/Mil/FF or in other professions in which they need CF type fitness. We are not all livingf the suburban life. That is where CF succeeds and other modalities don't do as well. Overall I agree with your sentiment though. One should absolutely do what they enjoy in regard to fitness as long as they can maintain their life and livelihood with it.

GREAT would be to see 900lbs being lifted without straps, clothes, belts, and other stuff for a start. Strongman competition is awesome by the way. But in Crossfit they focus on overall health, that is useful on the daily basis, so, we are great at what we do...and without belts, straps, clothes and so on...cheers!

I have really enjoyed reading everyones comments and opinions on this topic as well as all the information assocoaited with this website. As someone with a background in fighting, have fought and trained for approx 16 years, it seems some of you are forgetting that you are great at something, Crossfit. I have never seen a fighter who got a gold medal at the Olympics in wrestling, held a world belt in boxing, held a world title in Muay Thai and also won the World Championships in grappling, obviously many of the elite mma fighters have excelled in one or more of these disciplines (everyone has there strengths and disciplines they enjoy most), to include holding titles but fighting is about the complete package as, with my limited exposure, is crossfit. I personally would rather be the best mma fighter than the best boxer, muay thai, wrestler or grappling practitioner. You guys/gals are great athletes your just well rounded.

yea lets all just be average at a bunch of stuff...thats a great goal...stupid

yea lets all just be average at a bunch of stuff...thats a great goal...stupid