You with me? OK, now ...
... something else happened here. Along the way in playing with these three models
—turn the hopper and pull out skills and drills.
Let's balance these 10 general physical skills so that your
well, do you have balanced and
breadth and depth in capacity of cardiorespiratory, endurance, stamina,
strength, all that.
That model, and the balance of the molecular approach here.
We had observed along the way something that was kind of a curiosity at first, and in the
original "What is CrossFit,"
"What is Fitness" document, that has been kind of a capstone CrossFit document,
brought a lot of
people that brought you into this movement brought them in.
We had observed as kind of a curiosity
that there is a continuum, it's called, between
sickness,
measures of sickness, wellness
and fitness. That is
we had absorbed that if I could quantify
any measure, if it was truly a measure that I could put numbers to,
something would be of interest to say a physician or an exercise
physiologist, potentially, whether they're interested or not, I guess it's true.
What we'd find is we'd sit well ordered in this pattern. Let me give you
examples. Let's look at body fat.
OK? You understand that if you're 40 percent body fat,
that's considered pathological, you got a problem—you're morbidly obese.
There's numbers floating around—I don't know what they are—15 percent, make
it up, every community seems to have a different one—that's well or normal.
Five percent
is more consistent with what you'd see in the elite athlete.
Bone density.
Same thing. There's a level of bone density
that is pathological.
It's osteoporosis or osteopenia in the early stages. There is a value
that is normal—they say yes you have normal bone density. We find
gymnasts with three to five times normal bone density.
I can do this with resting heart rate, with flexibility,
with all of the 10 general physical skills. Even some subjective things where
we can put numbers to it through
analytical methods like mood state. There's a sense of
well-being that's normal that athletes, who are a different breed all together, they kind of hang out with
Superman complex,
and then there's the depressed. I do not know of a measure, even something loosely
obtained through like subjective
kind of analytical psychological methods, I do not know of a metric that runs
counter to this.
This led us to believe that fitness
and health were
varying different measures of the same reality.
Suggested that rather strongly, and so we're on the road lecturing
and we're dealing with these three operational models, and this fourth
curiosity,
weren't sure what this fourth piece what it's significance quite was or not,
but we did understand this: If there's anything in your
lifestyle, in your training regimen, in your
in your recreational pursuits—take that broadly—
if there's anything in your life that has one of these metrics moving in the
wrong direction,
I want you to seriously entertain the possibility you're doing
something profoundly wrong.
Because what we find when you
do CrossFit, when you're doing constantly varied, high intensity, functional movements,
and eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar,
and getting plenty of sleep every night, that we don't have this spectrum
of what we'd call "side effect."
I don't have "Wow, everything's going great but this one value's just going in the
wrong direction and quickly." And that is not the exception but it's the rule is to
be expected with
medical intervention. So your physician might have a plan for you for body fat
but it might reduce your bone density or your muscle mass.
And it may be that your doc has a a solution to your cholesterol problem,
but the drug gives you a stroke.
It has happened, still is happening, and we didn't see that phenomenon. We
didn't see that, wow,
everything's been great except this one thing went to shit since we've been working with
you, never saw that.
And so we knew there was something significant here, we knew this could
be kind of
another test in assessing
what you were doing. And I was watching Pat Sherwood
struggle with the presentation of this in Brooklyn back in November,
and he was doing a brilliant job, but I was like, come on, I go "Man, this is the
fuckin' part I hate is trying to explain how these three models
interface with this bit." And this is important enough to us again because it
showed that fitness and health
seem to be varying degrees of the same reality.
You know, not different facets, but just different measures.
Lousy value, good value and an
excellent one. And we didn't want to get rid of it but we needed it in there and
where it logically tied in we weren't
quite seeing it and we were going on with this, and I'm watching him hit this thing,
and all of a sudden it just came to me in a flash and it looks like this:
I apologize for anything technical that might be here.
But the problem lies with me not you, I'm going to try and draw here.
So, we got this fitness, remember? We got
power on this axis and I've got duration of effort here,
and we made the claim that that curve here would represent your fitness,
you with me? Well check this out, if I add a third dimension here,
and the real measure of this is, do you see
3D, you get the corner of the
room there? You got that? We're looking at a little corner.
And what I'm gonna to do is forget this line, you don't see it, it's just gonna help me
to do something kind of real. Look what I'm gonna do here:
Can you see that? Can you see that I produced a solid
coming down and forward out of the corner?
Good, because that's not a beautiful graph.
It ain't bad either but hey, it's worth it,
this is entirely determined on those of you who go, "I see 3D" then, fuck, it's a good one, OK?
Here we are, look, this is fitness.
I'm just gonna work back into that. I don't want to hang out in the third dimension too long
and make anyone dizzy.
Come back here to two space, this is fitness.
Let's look at some of the things that the exercise science community—let me tell you a problem
with exercise science.
It is very, very rarely scientific that would meet the rigors of anyone who's actually
studied science,
real science—chemistry, physics, engineering.
And it's almost never about exercise. Isn't that interesting? So exercise science is
neither science nor about exercise. And we look at things that that crowd looks at
and one of them is VO2 max.
I'm gonna tell you right now, you hear anyone talks too much about VO2 max,
I'm gonna tell you, they're very likely not doing science and do not understand exercise.
That's just a fact, it's a dead-end, bullshit thing.
VO2 max, let's take lactate threshold,
and let's even look at something that isn't bullshit: strength.
Here's what I'm gonna tell you: These things are correlates,
may be components, but absolutely, positively subordinate to what happens
here.
Who would take
an increase in VO2 max for a decrease in work capacity across broad time and modal domains?
Let me tell you what that translates to. When we hook you up to the
tube and pinch off your nose and run you on a treadmill, man, you're using more air than
you ever have before.
But you're gonna lose the race.
Lactate threshold, I'm going to improve your lactate threshold
but you're gonna get choked out in your fight.
Because of a lack of work capacity. Is that a good deal?
OK, if you're winning, if your performance is there,
if you can demonstrate high levels of fitness, I don't really care about these
things.
That being said, let me tell you what we've been doing at CrossFit.
By using constantly varied, high intensity, functional movements,
designed to elicit a broad, general, inclusive fitness, a fitness that'll protect
you from the unknown and the unknowable,
by looking at a curb like this, what we found is that we have made very
significant improvements in these things in almost every athletic community
without ever looking at them.
Without ever looking at them. And I'm gonna tell you—and I can make a list of hundreds of these things—
and no one has ever produced a great athlete by taking those things one at a time
and building back up to something that looks like an athlete.
Doesn't happen, doesn't work that way. The place that works
is hanging out at university avoiding athletes and coaches with a tremendous
effort getting a bunch of silly little bullshit degrees in your name—generally
non-science degrees—
and feeding off the public, eating out of the government trough.
It'll work there, but not in the real world. Sir?
They are correlates that are somehow connected
by mechanisms you don't understand, or they are components, essential,
but the bottom line is they are subordinate and that I'm not gonna develop
fitness by advancing them.
I'll let those nuts measure them and go, "How you doing that?" You know,
they tell me they're important, I say they're not.
Then they find out that I can move them better than they can. I can move them best
by working constantly varied, high intensity, functional movements. Doing things that look like
Fran, Diane, Helen, turning fitness into sport
by working with fixed workloads
and trying to minimize the time by making every workout a competitive
effort
amongst the cohort. And when I do that, what we find is that these metrics
do spectacular things but fuck 'em, I don't care.
What happens is I'm maximizing the area under the curve. Now let's go back to 3D.
Here's the shocker. This piece here is fitness,
this here, I
hope you see a three-dimensional solid.
That's health. It's health.
And I have the same relationship to things that seemingly matter:
HDL, the good cholesterol,
ejection fraction, how much blood the heart can empty in each pump.
I can play this game all day long. Just about anything that the doctor will tell
you is important to your health,
what we find is
the hypotheses here is that we can maximize this volume
by maintaining our work capacity across broad time and modal domains
through the ages as you get older and older and older.
And I can play the same game, I can ask are these things
just correlates? Are they components?
And are they indeed just entirely
subordinate, too? Well there's a compelling body of evidence, it is my
belief, my thought, I think where we're headed, and look,
right or wrong, this still needs to be measured. I want you to understand that.
It still needs to be measured but I'm of the opinion
that health, that this volume will be maximally
held by maximizing your area under the curve
and then hold that work capacity as long as you can. In other words, eat
meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar,
learn and play new sports, do CrossFit in 100 words or less,
do the constantly varied, high intensity exercise throughout your life on a
good diet.
And that will buy you more health than will
trying to, "I'm gonna fix my cholesterol, I'm going to improve my bone density."
Likely, the
medical approach here would be pharmaceutical intervention.
So I'm gonna take a drug for my cholesterol, I'm gonna take a drug for my bone density,
I'm gonna take a drug for not sleeping well.
And I am of the opinion that it's a failed approach
much as this is a failed approach. And it makes sense to me that if I'm really
interested in maximizing the solid,
I would take the two-space model and hold it as high, for as long as I can.
But let me ask you this: Suppose you think good cholesterol
is really important—I want my HDLs up.
Suppose I had a guy who at 90 years old, has 65 percent of the work capacity
he had when he was 25, which was also in about the
the top 5 percentile of all people your age.
And now, at 90, there's not one in a thousand your age. In other words, here you are,
90 years old, you're running up and down steps,
your successfully engaging the ladies,
and if someone tries to take your wallet from you at the ATM you're gonna fuck 'em up,
alright?
And you're 90! You picture the guy?
Suppose I tell you he's not in good health because his HDLs are low.
Would you right then and there go, "Hey, I'll tell you what, man, you can have my wallet, and
my dick won't work when I meet the ladies,
and I need help getting up and down the steps but my cholesterol's fucking beautiful."
Do you want that deal?
Of course you don't!
Of course you don't. I can look at longevity, even this single axis, here.
Is the goal to live forever? Or is the goal to maintain as much functional
capacity for as long as humanly possible?
Theodore Dalrymple is an editor for "The Wall Street Journal" and a
physician—that's a pseudonym for, who knows what his real name is? Doesn't
matter when your as famous as Theodore Dalrymple.
He says that the overwhelming majority of the
increases in longevity that occurred over the past—
you know in the modern era—over the past few hundred years, that medical science can take
almost no claim for.
It can almost all be attributed to hygiene and sanitation.
He also says that the way forward—the big gap, the big improvements—are not going
through a pharmaceutical intervention,
not through surgery. The MDs aren't gonna provide it. He says it's gonna come through fitness.
That's what's gonna do it. He's looking at exactly what we're looking at
from a very different perspective, from the
perspective of a physician who's in a great position to understand
what I see as deficient in trying to take a pharmaceutical intervention to
fix these components our correlates with the subordinate measures
and think you gonna build back up to a good life. If I look at longevity alone,
there's an instant problem here. Can you imagine if this curve,
if this blanket, if it goes way low so you never have
any work capacity but it is stretches out to
200? Is that a life that any of you want?
I'm not here to say yes or no.
I'm not here to say that. My personal view is that was a
resounding "fuck no,"
but that's for everyone to determine, that's a normative
kinda thing. We're not just talking science when we're talking about that, but let me
tell you this:
It is imperative, it is essential for doing science, for making meaningful assertions,
that it be measured this way. The metric is important.
Not what outcome you'd like to see. I have this fear that someday medical
science is gonna get average life expectancy to 150.
And yet, still at 75, you go into the nursing home and they're wiping your
fucking ass, and feeding you with a spoon and you're watching "Oprah" all god damn day long,
you know, for 75 years. That to me was like dying at 75 and going to hell.
If someone wants that, there'd probably be a time and
place where that can be arranged,
but it's not what I'm looking for, and it's really not what CrossFit's about.
This is about vitality, it's about capacity.
Capacity, capacity. "What can I do?" Getting things done.
And what would that be? Stop someone from taking my wallet at the ATM,
successful engagement of the ladies, right? And to be ambulatory, I wanna go up and
down the steps, man,
without help, without help.
What we have here is a unification of fitness and health,
it was hinted at by this continuum— remember the values? Everything sat
well ordered where the normal or well value sat between
the pathological and the fit.
By the way, that continuum also tells me something else.
If you are fit, you have a whole bunch of qualities—
blood pressure, cholesterol levels, bone density, resting heart rate,
body fat—that before you can become pathological,
you'll have to be well. Fitness is a hedge against sickness with wellness as
an intermediate value.
That's how profound it is.
Questions?
The exercise science community—people neither doing science nor
exercise—
They're of the view that these are entirely different worlds. Cannot be
bridged, cannot be unified.
Look, whether there's fruit to it or not, I'm gonna tell you right now,
here's a metric that proves otherwise.
What significance comes will remain to be seen, but if
we are going to develop a science of exercise—and CrossFit is leading the
world in that—
we've got more scientists, PHDs, MDs, trainers, coaches, athletes, and more money
and greater reach
than any organization in the world today studying fitness, doing fitness.
Questions? Stunning, huh?
How about lunch?
Is that next? Thanks for your time, guys.
Thank you, coach! (applause)