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These standards ensure the broadest and most general fitness possible. CrossFit advocates and develops a fitness that is deliberately broad, general, and inclusive. Our fitness, or being “CrossFit,” comes from molding men and women who are equal parts gymnast, Olympic weightlifter, and multi-modal sprinter, or “sprintathlete.” Develop the capacity of a novice 800-meter track athlete, gymnast, and weightlifter, and you’ll be fitter than any world-class runner, gymnast, or weightlifter. Our specialty is not specializing.

This is a critical piece that is often missed or criticized by others who forget that CrossFit aims to build the healthiest and fittest people over the entirety of their lives. Critics often conflate CrossFit’s methodology with CrossFit Games athleticism — they’re not the same. Walk into any affiliate, and you’ll find the real story: people of all ages and abilities getting stronger, healthier, and more capable for the long haul. That’s the design. Games athletes represent an extraordinary pursuit that extends far beyond what CrossFit prescribes for optimal health and fitness. They train at volumes and intensities that would break most people, chasing a level of performance that, while inspiring, isn’t the goal for the vast majority. Affiliates don’t program for podium finishes; they program for parents, workers, retirees, and everyone in between who simply want to show up stronger tomorrow than they were yesterday, and still be moving well decades from now.

Over 20 years ago, CrossFit delivered to the world the definition of fitness. It works for all types of athletes and can be adapted for any population. It makes it possible to measure current fitness levels, identify weaknesses, and measure improvements or decreases in fitness. No one

Back Squat 8.8.8.8.8.8  reps

#4 – The Sickness, Wellness, Fitness Continuum

Every measurable value of health can be placed on a continuum that ranges from sickness to wellness to fitness — blood pressure, cholesterol, bone density, body fat, even mental health factors. The point to drive home here is that, done right, fitness provides a significant margin of protection against the ravages of time and disease. Fitness is and should be “super-wellness.” Sickness, wellness, and fitness are measures of the same entity. A fitness regimen that doesn’t support health is not CrossFit.

4 rounds for time of:
10 traditional burpees
15 knees-to-elbows

#3 – The Metabolic Pathways

Three metabolic pathways provide the energy for all human action. These “metabolic engines” are known as the phosphagen pathway, the glycolytic pathway, and the oxidative pathway. Total fitness, the fitness that CrossFit promotes and develops, requires competency and training in each of these three pathways. Balancing the effects of these three pathways largely determines how and why we do metabolic conditioning, or “cardio,” at CrossFit. We do not favor one or two pathways to the exclusion of the others, and we recognize the impact of excessive training in the oxidative pathway, which is common in so many other fitness programs.

Stimulus and Strategy:

deadlift 1.1.1.1.1
Today’s workout is a heavy day. Ensure all 5 sets are heavy enough to be actual working sets where you’re getting stronger. All sets should be at least 70% of your 1-rep max or a load that feels moderately heavy. Look at the recent 5-rep back squat day from Oct. 20, 2025, to get an idea of your capacity for performing 8 reps in today’s effort. Note that today you can build to a heavy set over the course of 5 working sets. That said, all sets should be challenging. Heavy is the goal today, but always prioritize mechanics, only going as heavy as technique allows.

The Four Models

#1 – The 10 General Physical Skills

CrossFit proposes that there are 10 general physical skills any fitness program should develop:  cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy. An athlete is as fit as they are competent in each of these 10 skills. A program develops fitness to the extent that it improves each of these 10 skills. We want good capacity in all ten skills and balanced capacity across the list.

30-foot R/L dumbbell one hand overhead walking lunge

20 R/L alternating dumbbell snatches

20 pull-ups

Repeat 3 times

CrossFit defines fitness as work capacity across broad time and modal domains. This means we measure and compute fitness by the power output an individual can produce across a hypothetically unlimited set of tasks or workouts, across an unlimited number of time domains, from the shortest sprint to the longest challenge we can imagine. It’s a measure of the work an athlete can do in a given amount of time, averaged across all tasks. See how Galpin was right on track?

To support our definition, we have four standards or models that explain what we’ve seen in the real world with hundreds of thousands of athletes, and these models support the reasoning behind our definition.

21 hang power cleans
15/21-calorie row
15 hang power cleans
10/15-calorie row
9 hang power cleans
7/9-calorie row

On a recent Rich Roll podcast, Roll’s guest was Dr. Andy Galpin, a well-respected performance coach and researcher. At the very beginning of the interview, Roll asked Galpin, “What is fitness?” and commented that he was asking because discussing fitness requires a functional definition. CrossFit had this very same thought over 20 years ago, and when we went in search of a workable definition, we found, to our dismay, that a suitable one did not exist. So we created our own — more on that in a second

Run 400 meters,

walk backward 400 meters.

Repeat 5 rounds

30 deadlifts 60 Situps 30 Goblet squats

REST 5 MINUTES

20 deadlifts 40 Situps 20 Goblet squats