CrossFit is a strength and conditioning program that is made up of constantly varied, functional movements performed at a high intensity level.
Functional movements are essential actions that you perform in your day-to-day life, like squatting, pulling, pushing etc. Functional movements are “natural,” meaning they are not movement patterns used only at the gym. Rather, these movements are found everywhere in human behavior and arise spontaneously as a response to life. For example, getting up out of a chair requires an air squat; picking up groceries from the floor, a deadlift; getting a five-gallon water jug onto a table, a clean; placing items on a high shelf, a shoulder press.
Training with high intensity will produce more of the results we seek more quickly. If you want to increase muscle mass, decrease body fat, increase bone density, or insulin sensitivity — if you want to look better, feel better, work better, sleep better, play better — intensity will get you there.
The goal of CrossFit is to create a broad, general, and inclusive fitness: fitness with a general physical capacity that lends itself well to any and all contingencies; the likely and unlikely; the known, unknown, and unknowable. It is not enough to develop one capacity at the expense of any or all others. We do not just want you to be good in the gym or at one physical task; we want you to be good at life, work, sport, and everywhere, at any time, for any duration, and in any environment. Achieving that requires constant variance.
