What This Means for You

Understanding this list changes how you think about the workouts you least enjoy. The movements that feel awkward or neurologically demanding, the ones that require coordination and precision and practice, are exactly the ones you need most if you tend to avoid them. That discomfort is usually a signal that a skill is underdeveloped.

It also reframes what “weakness” means in CrossFit. When the program pushes you toward something uncomfortable, it is not randomness. It is the program finding gaps along this list and filling them. That is the design.

One more thing worth knowing: As you get older, the instinct is often to simplify. To drop the complex movements. To stick with machines or low-skill alternatives that feel safer. But pulling the neurological component out of your training does not preserve your capacity; it erodes it. Power and speed require practicing the skills that produce them. There is no shortcut around that.

Fitness That Shows Up in Real Life

A 75-year-old client who was 2 miles into a hike when he came across another hiker who had fallen and couldn’t get up. He deadlifted the person off the ground using strength and technique built over years of consistent training. Then, he helped them walk back to the parking lot, a task that required the endurance he had also developed. There was no cell service. There was no other option. His fitness was the plan.

That is what this list is building toward. Not the fastest marathon time. Not the biggest squat. Something harder to measure and more broadly useful: the capacity to do real work, across a wide range of demands, whenever it is required.

Developing all 10 skills will not make you elite in any single one. It will make you capable across all of them. In most situations that actually matter, that is the better deal.