In 2007, I learned about this thing the Rastas call “Ital”. Ital is an Iyaric (Rasta talk) word that means “vital”, but with the connotation of “I” (as in, “I am vital”, or “my vitality”). It can also mean, “I-Tall,” as in, “these are the things that make I grow tall” (in stature and in spirit). Ital is a livity (way of living) that encompasses many aspects, but is usually discussed or considered around topics of eating: what to eat and what not to eat. An Ital diet can mean many different things, depending on who is giving the definition.

Some of the ways that Ital food can be defined include:

• Only consuming food you grew yourself
• Eating only plant-based foods
• Restricting the diet to the foods that are considered “clean” in the Old Testament of the Bible
• Eating plants along with some fish
• A vegetarian diet including certain dairy and egg products
• A diet with NO white foods (white flour, white sugar, white rum, white salt, white rice, white bread, etc.)

I have experimented a lot over the past 15 years with this entire spectrum of dietary restrictions. As a fitness coach, I have also challenged myself to eat for performance and for health. These ideas weren’t always compatible, but there were often parallels with notions like Vegan, Organic, Locovore, Pescatarian, Kosher, Halal, and Paleo. Some versions of the Ital diet worked well for my body and others did not.

When I did my training and certification as a Nutrition Coach, I began to appreciate the individuality of an ideal diet. What works for me may not work for you because everyone’s food must be personalized. We all have very different tolerances, sensitivities, and nutrient requirements. We also differ in our values, priorities, and goals. So, of course it would be impossible to make an absolute blanket dietary prescription for all humans. That’s where all the dietary fads and cults fail, but there are lessons we can learn from them:

• Foods that you grow yourself, hunt, fish, or forage will be the most under your own control and discretion and likely the highest quality
• Foods are more nutritious and sustainable when sourced as locally, seasonably, and organically as possible
• Plant foods contain a broad array of important nutrients (amino acids, fatty acids, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals) and non-nutrients (fiber and water)
• Ideas of dietary cleanliness are important mechanisms to regulate food sourcing and hygiene
• The most highly-processed food products that power the global industrial food system are also those most linked to chronic illness and life-threatening disease
• Your diet is for you and does not need to serve a narrow ideology

These are a few of the nutrition principles that I now advocate for. I also teach an idea of BLOOD, DIRT, and WATER as a simple heuristic for defining good human nutrition. “Blood” means eat healthy meat from healthy animals. “Dirt” means eat plenty of plants that come straight out of the ground and need to be washed. “Water” means drink water and help keep our waters clean.

But my life is a constant experiment and I haven’t stopped there. My learning about nutrition through practice of new ideas continues. Today I practice what is basically the Ethiopian version of Ital: the particular diet of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. In this diet, there are actually two diets to be followed at different times:

1. “Yet Baraka,” meaning, “blessed food.” This is all the food allowed by the Law of Moses.
2. “Yet Tsom,” meaning, “fasting food.” These are the foods we eat on Wednesdays and Fridays and certain other fasting periods throughout the year, such as the current Fast of the Prophets that continues until Genna (the Ethiopian Christmas).

“Tsom” is a word that means Fasting. This is an Ethiopic word, Ge’ez I believe, and found today in both Amharic and Tigrinya. It is very close to the Arabic and Swahili words for fasting, such as, “Sayumu.” During Tsom, or fasting periods, we eat no animal products whatsoever (honey is considered a plant product). So, Tsom food is basically vegan food, but typically straight from the earth. You don’t find Top Ramen and tofu in a Tewahedo Tsom diet, but you do find Injera made from Teff, stews of various lentils and pulses, sauteed greens, salads, and other plant-based whole foods.

When I am in the Tsom period, I don’t restrict myself only to Ethiopian foods, though. I still eat the globe, with Kenyan, Mexican, Indian, Thai, and various other cuisines. Sometimes I eat pure raw food, like simple plates of fruit or little salads.

Here are some pictures of the kind of Tsom foods I have been eating on my latest trip to Africa. Maybe you will find some inspirations here.

This is a “Smart” blog. Why is this in the Smart category? Because Smart is about mental fitness. That’s my concept of intelligence and thoughtfulness, knowledge, reason, logic–all the stuff of the mind–being just as important to train and develop as the things of the body.

Ok, so we can’t actually pretend that the mental and physical are at all separate. The mental benefits of hiking actually come from the physiological effects of the activity. Think about it. You’re moving blood, circulating fresh oxygen throughout your body and removing waste products with every step and every breath. That means your brain is getting flushed too. On top of that, you’re breathing that really good, fresh tree-oxygen. You’re circulating lymph (Google it). You’re looking at a lot of different things, some close and some far, which exercises the muscles of your eyes and stimulates the visual processing areas of your brain. Need I say more?

Your body might be hurting from the steep uphills and repetitive impacts of stepping–maybe chafing from the backpack straps–but your mind is in a wonderland. You’re thinking more clearly than you have in a long time.

“Mental Acuity” is a phrase that refers to the brain’s ability to respond to stimuli. It’s another word for sharpness or clarity: the ability to quickly and properly respond to something that demands thought. This ought to be the primary goal of a healthy lifestyle, because–even if your daily life demands nothing physical from you–everyone needs this sharpness.

Going for a hike, getting out in nature, moving your blood, flexing your feet against the varied textures of the terrain, stimulating your nervous system, staying alert to all the little sounds and movements in the woods around you, this is a brain workout as much as it is a body workout.

When you return from your hike, now you’re ready to make that big decision. It’s time to have that important conversation or attack that critical project. Now that your mind is refreshed and alert, you’re thinking more clearly than ever. Take this as another great (even greater) reason to go hiking: for mental acuity.

Today I completed the Zoom class for my Youth Mental Health First Aid certification. I learned how to properly assess the situation and approach someone whom you think is having a mental health issue, how to listen non-judgmentally, how to give them reassurance and information, then encourage them to practice self-care and to seek out professional help if needed.

I also learned the difference between first aid and professional help in this case. Similar to coming across a hiker with a broken leg while out on a trail, I can offer some immediate help and support, but it is outside my scope of practice to do the surgery or put the cast on. In the mental health scenario, I am able to reassure, to listen, and to help the person get to the professional help they need, but I am not qualified to diagnose, medicate, or give therapy.

I came across this course in an email from my son’s school, and I thought it would be useful for me to learn more skills to help him through the stresses of COVID-world. Then, as I was doing my course pre-work, I realized that this could be helpful with my clients in my coaching business. Now that I’ve taken the course, I see the utility in this skillset throughout my life, in my everyday interactions and all my relationships with various people. I strongly encourage EVERYONE to take this course, not just professionals who see a direct application to their job.

On the big, philosophical-discussion side of this (and you know I’m going to take it there), we have a problem with mental health care in the United States. We have a MAJOR problem with mental health care in the United States. We can blame a lot of things for that, and we can point our fingers at who passed the buck, or who dropped the ball. But, ultimately, we have only ourselves to blame. As a society, we are responsible for one another. This means that we are responsible for one another’s health and wellness, including mental health. The first step to getting people the proper care they need is to care about them, respect them, and listen to them. By practicing these skills, we won’t only help folks get the right treatment, we might actually accomplish a lot of prevention as well.

The course is offered in the Skagit Valley area through United General Hospital. You can find all the info on this webpage, if you scroll about halfway down the page to the “Mental Health Promotion Classes” section.

I believe that discipline works best as a pull (your own spirit and internal motivations pull you to do this activity), not as a push (external punishments and rewards push you to follow the rules). But how do you develop your own personal discipline? How does it work mechanistically? Where is the instruction manual?

Fundamentally, every choice you make throughout each and every day is a choice between discipline and regret (to borrow a phrase from Jocko Willink). When you make a choice that benefits you and your mission, that’s discipline. When you make a choice that hurts you and your mission, that’s regret. Therefore, I would say that personal discipline is a process of recognizing your own regrets, then developing proactive habits to avoid repeating any of those regrets in the future.

It works like this: you make RIGHT NOW YOU suffer for a little bit (going to bed earlier instead of watching the show, eating broccoli instead of candy) so that FUTURE YOU won’t have to suffer a lot.

It’s the basic concept of sacrifice. You’re giving up something that looks good in the present moment (a TV show, some candy) in order to gain something even better in the future moment (the mental acuity you have after a full night’s sleep, the better skin and improved digestion from eating healthy green veggies).

To develop your own personal discipline habits, you simply keep a journal (or mental log) of the choices you made that turned out to be regrettable or sub-optimal. Also log the choices you made that led to better outcomes. Then, you practice exerting a little bit of willpower each day to repeat the good choices without repeating the bad choices. That’s the beginning of your personal discipline.

The good news is that this becomes easier with time. A little bit of discipline goes a long way. The benefits compound like interest. Flex your willpower muscles and you’ll come a long way very quickly.

So, the answer to those questions above is that discipline is a personal process of learning to make better choices for your own benefit and for your own reasons. It is something you teach yourself to do, and once you’ve practiced it, it becomes instinctive, natural, and effortless.

My business cards say, “Health & Fitness Coaching.” But, what exactly does that mean? What do I really do?

The services I provide are Individual Design Coaching programs, One-on-One Training, and At-Home Training. That just tells you what’s on the menu, though, it doesn’t really tell you what I DO. In order to understand that, I’m going to need to break down some concepts for you.

Smart, Fit, and Clean = An Ideal

First of all, the name Smart, Fit, and Clean represents an ideal state. The vision is for you as a human being to be smart (mentally acute, intelligent, rational) as well as being fit (physically healthy, capable, resilient) and clean (spiritually at ease, grounded, fulfilled). This is my triadic fitness concept that encompasses mind, body, and spirit.

The goal is for you to value and develop all of these areas. Specifically, this work is done through the practices of Lifestyle Coaching, Nutrition Coaching, and Exercise Coaching.

Lifestyle Coaching = the BLGs

Lifestyle is the foundation of our health and fitness. Lifestyle Coaching is a process of guidance to help you establish and sustain healthy behaviors that lead to greater mental clarity, improved physiological function, and a heightened sense of well-being.

The essence of a healthy lifestyle is represented by the Basic Lifestyle Guidelines:

• Balance
• Purpose
• Hydration
• Sleep
• Energy
• Rhythm
• Recovery
• Digestion

So, Lifestyle Coaching is a process of inquiring into these elements of your lifestyle and developing strategies to improve upon each of them.

Nutrition Coaching = Personalized Nutrition

Nutrition is the house that you build on top of your healthy lifestyle foundation. This is literally what you are made of, as your body utilizes the nutrients from your food to grow and repair the tissues in your body. This is also what you run on, as your body uses the nutrients from your food to fuel all your activities.

In Nutrition Coaching, I utilize an approach known as Personalized Nutrition. This process centers you as a person, rather than an idealized ‘diet’ as the beacon of perfection. A personalized nutrition approach takes into account your current state of eating, the physical state of your body and performance, as well as your overall goals.

Personalized Nutrition develops skills and habits relating to:

• Protein
• Hydration
• Meal Timing & Frequency
• Food Hygiene
• Food Intolerances
• Carbohydrates
• Fats
• Stressors
• Supplements
• Fasting
• Pre/Post Workout Nutrition
• Competition Fueling

Exercise Coaching = Workout Programs

This is the fun stuff, but it goes at the top of the house (as the roof) because–while it is critical to keeping the house together and functioning as a shelter–it is the last thing you build, not the first.

As with lifestyle and nutrition prescriptions, I base exercise programs on assessment. Assessment is truth. These simple tests tell us what you are capable of and where you need to go. Considering your goals, history, and the current state of ability shown through assessments, I am able to design a tailored fitness program to get you where you need to go.

My workout programs focus on developing three qualities:

• Movement Ability
• Work Capacity
• Strength

What is “Health & Fitness Coaching?”

Health & Fitness Coaching, as I practice it, means putting the basic lifestyle guidelines together with a personalized nutrition plan and a tailored exercise program. The goal of all of these being to help you be smarter, fitter, and cleaner on the inside as well as the outside.

Lifestyle Coaching + Nutrition Coaching + Exercise Coaching = Smart, Fit, and Clean

My purpose in posting food photos is threefold:

1. To encourage you to cook and eat your own food at home
2. To reaffirm that healthy food can also be delicious food
3. To emphasize that everyone’s food choices will be different, based on who they are and what they are trying to achieve

• CrossFit History Lessons, Pt. 1
• CrossFit History Lessons, Pt. 2
• CrossFit History Lessons, Pt. 3
• CrossFit History Lessons, Pt. 4
• CrossFit History Lessons, Pt. 5
• CrossFit History Lessons, Pt. 6

A Theoretical Hierarchy of Development

That little picture up there is the CrossFit “theoretical hierarchy of development”. I hope Greg doesn’t sue me for re-posting it here. He’s done that kind of thing in the past (just ask Mark Twight).

I support this model. If it wasn’t his idea first, I’d say it was my idea. I’ve practiced this model for 17 years, essentially, testing it against reality with myself and with clients. It works. It makes sense. Nourishment must come first, as nutrients are both the fuel sources for your activity, and the building blocks of your physical adaptation to training. Conditioning–more specifically, the building of an aerobic base–must come next. Body control and neurological development are layered on top of that. True strength development and heavy lifting comes next. Then you are ready to express your physical capabilities in the form of sport.

What I’ve done in my own work is re-conceptualize the hierarchy of development into what I call the “health house”. This brings the framework more into the realm of general population, rather than the ‘elite athletes’ that Greg was often talking about. I don’t train elite athletes. Often, I don’t even train athletes. I train regular people. Regular people need to think about their lifestyle first, then add nutritional practice, then a consistent exercise habit. One problem I saw in CrossFit was people starting at the top with this pyramid, but neglecting the basics of their lifestyle, such as good sleep, digestion, hydration, and having a purpose. When you do it that way, it doesn’t work.

Integration

Greg’s quote at the top of this section is, “strive to blur distinctions between ‘cardio’ and strength training. Nature has no regard for this distinction.” Well… that statement has a lot of problems with it. If–let’s start with if–IF you are a highly-trained athlete, you can safely and effectively blur this line. If you are competing at the CrossFit Games, you have successfully blurred this distinction and learned how to turn strength contractions into an aerobic effort. On the other hand, if you just signed up for the first week of your gym membership, you have no business attempting to blur this distinction. Trying to do strength exercises in a conditioning format when you lack the neurological development ( = years of reps & practice) to perform those exercises properly will only lead to injury. Melding cardio and strength also requires pacing abilities, which can only be developed over the long-term. You can’t just throw people into the blender (or the chipper, or the grinder) and hope they survive.

Next comes the most insightful and prophetic statement in this entire CrossFit Journal issue. “Every regimen, every routine contains within its structure a blueprint for its deficiency.” I think this is a very apt statement that applies to the 100 words, the 3 fitness standards, and the other frameworks of CrossFit described in this document. I’ve written quite a bit over the past week about some of the deficiencies that played-out over the past two decades. These were all contained within the structure of the regimen proposed here.

The obsession with variance as a way to “broaden the stimulus” of training is a perfect example. It is true that there are advantages and disadvantages to every type of training, but we must wield these tools like a knowledgable mechanic with a shiny professional toolbox. The “constantly varied” mindset often looks more like a kid with a bunch of rusty garage-sale tools that he isn’t sure how to use properly, or when.

“There are an infinite number of regimens,” on that Greg and I agree, but they’re not all going to deliver the goods for everyone. Each individual actually needs their own individual training plan, tailored to their particular abilities and goals at the time, and changing with them as their priorities change. This is where assessment and goal-setting skills matter. This is where program design skills matter. It isn’t just giving people a bunch of random stuff and hoping they come out better. You have to tailor the work to them, meet them where they are, and help them get where they’re going.

Then he goes into a few general layouts of workout prescriptions. These are fun and interesting, but betray a general laziness in Greg’s approach. “We can create routines like this forever”, he says. Yeah, but do they ever fit together well from day to day, week to week, month to month, or year to year? Do they ever build to anything? The answer is no. No one follows CrossFit.com programming for very long.

There’s this thing called the “CrossFit Plateau”, a phenomenon in which people do CrossFit for 18 months and get better the whole time, then suddenly stop making gains and have to become more intentional with their training program. This happens to coincide with another well-known phenomenon with beginner trainees: anything will make them better for the first 18 months, but then they’re going to need more intentional stimuli in order to adapt. The truth is, long-term CrossFitters or actual CrossFit athletes all learn to follow more thoughtfully structured programs one way or the other.

Scalability and Applicability

This is one of the most controversial of the many controversial ideas that Greg Glassman ever proposed: scaling workouts. He makes the famous statement here that, “The needs of an Olympic athlete and our grandparents differ by degree not kind.” Boy, did I used to repeat that line a lot, and boy was I wrong. The more you learn about the needs of Olympic athletes, or about the needs of our grandparents, the more you learn that this statement is incorrect. Olympic athletes need various kinds of metabolic abilities that our grandparents will never need. Olympic athletes need various kinds of movement skill and neurological abilities (to express power, for example), that our grandparents will never need. Our grandparents need to move well and feel good and function well under the hood. Olympic athletes need to score points and win medals, even if it beats up their joints and ruins their endocrine system to do so.

“We scale load and intensity; we don’t change programs.” More laziness. If you have an Olympic athlete client and a grandparent client and you can’t write each of them their own program that suits their lifestyle, goals, and current state, then you’re just being straight-up lazy.

So, the last part of this article is really where the arguments fall apart in the worst way. He says that the need for sport-specificity, “is nearly completely met by regular practice and training within the sport and not in the strength and conditioning environment.” Well, that is neglecting the fact that Volleyball players need a different type of strength & conditioning than boxers do. They jump! They don’t punch! Those are different movement patterns, using different joints and muscle groups, and they require different strength & conditioning programs as a base to be able to express themselves effectively in sport.

At this point, it’s just a sales pitch, and I am no longer buying what he’s selling. I’ve seen too much and learned to much over the years to buy it anymore.

• CrossFit History Lessons, Pt. 1
• CrossFit History Lessons, Pt. 2
• CrossFit History Lessons, Pt. 3
• CrossFit History Lessons, Pt. 4
• CrossFit History Lessons, Pt. 5

Weightlifting

Ok. Look past that bit of Greg Glassman’s body-shaming over there in the corner and let’s talk about the actual merits or flaws in the content.

I personally love the sport of Olympic Weightlifting and I’m indebted to Glassman for introducing me to it. In the early days of CrossFit North (the first CrossFit affiliate on the planet), I had the pleasure of being instructed by the great Nick Nibbler in his Hangar Weightlifting Club. I also attended the very first CrossFit Specialist Seminar, when Dave Werner arranged for Mike Burgener to come up and teach Oly lifts to a bunch of us Seattle folks. I’ve taught these lifts to hundreds of people and I’ve even been to a competition (once) to try the genuine Olympic Weightlifting experience.

I acknowledge the benefits of these lifts and their utility to athletes. I mean, it’s no accident that Power Cleans are so ubiquitous in collegiate strength & conditioning programs. Greg holds up the deadlift, clean, squat, and jerk as the foundations of a good lifting program, praising their functionality as multi-joint compound movements. I’m loving this.

On the other hand (and of course there has to be an “on the other hand”, doesn’t there?), he says some things in this section that are just flat-out wrong. Let’s start with “these movements are the starting points for any serious weight-training program,” and, “they should serve as the core of your resistance training throughout your life.” Consider those statements in the eyes of a completely untrained, 45 year-old call-center operator. The starting point for their weight-training program DOES NOT, CANNOT, and SHOULD NOT include cleans & jerks. Trust me. I have put a lot of gen pop (general population) through weight training programs over the years. Many of them actually need to start with bodyweight movements, then very simple lifts, and–dare I say–bodybuilding techniques long before they are ready for complex, coordinated actions like cleans & jerks. Taking someone with no proper motor-control patterns for the hinge movement and asking them to clean a barbell is a recipe for disaster. They might have years of waiter’s bows, good mornings, and deadlift variations in their future before they’re ever ready to try the clean. Same goes for the jerk.

Now, let’s assume that we’ve trained this individual well for a couple of years, built a great base of strength & coordination, and now they are ready to try the Olympic lifts. In fact, they take to them quickly and enjoy them immensely. Does that mean they ought to continue doing them until they’re 90? Well, maybe. Some people are certainly like that. But, it isn’t fair for us as fitness coaches to tell them what they “should” and “should not” want to do for their entire life. They may also get to a point, as many people do, where these lifts are causing them more harm than good. Inviting injury is not a good recipe for health & longevity.

Next, Greg says that “body building movements have no place in a serious strength and conditioning program”. This is the statement of someone who has never undergone a serious strength & conditioning program, or even witnessed a serious strength & conditioning program being followed by professional or elite athletes, or maybe never even seen one on paper. Bodybuilding movements have tons of utility in serious S&C programs. I’m not saying that bodybuilding protocols and goals are the same as those of athletes. Bodybuilders are pursuing body composition and aesthetics (looks), not athletic performance. However, the single-joint movements are not “relatively worthless” as Greg says. They are excellent for rehab, prehab, and correcting structural balance. Google “functional bodybuilding” if you want to open an interesting door into that world.

Following that little detour into the absurd, baseless, and dogmatic elements of CrossFit philosophy, Greg returns to a sensible position. Now he’s talking about Powerlifting and the utility of the bench press, squat, and deadlift in training programs. Yes. Lifting for strength is good.

The last part of this article is a brief justification for these “very demanding and very athletic” movements as a way to keep athletes entertained through sport, rather than bored by training. It is obviously accurate, but I object to the way of thinking behind it and the way of thinking it encourages. Some people are athletes, some people are not. Athletes cannot perform sport all the time without any periods of training. Non-athletes need training before they are able to participate in sport in the first place. So, training always has a place and a role. Also, fitness as entertainment is a flawed concept that lacks long-term consistency and success. The marketplace is clearly demonstrating that now.

Throwing

In addition to weightlifting and powerlifting, Greg expands the weight training discussion to include throwing work with medicine balls. This section is very brief. I think the concept is sound. Med ball work is great and I’ve employed it successfully for years. It’s important to acknowledge that many people will need to start slow and light before they are ready for fast and heavy (always an important principle to remember).

He talks about Hoover Ball, which is still to this day one of my favorite sports. This game was invented for president Hoover. It involves a volleyball court and a 6lb. medicine ball. Careful you don’t try to bump, set, and spike!

Nutrition

I commented on Greg’s nutrition prescription from the “100 words” back in Part 1. He is absolutely correct here in saying that, “nutrition plays a critical role in your fitness”. Nourishment will absolutely impact your ability to perform and your body’s ability to create beneficial adaptations to training. He’s also correct in calling-out the high-carb/low-fat/low-protein diets that were fashionable at the time as contributing to higher risks of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. Hopefully, most people in 2020 have deprogrammed themselves from the 30 years of propaganda put forth by the grain and sugar industries that fat and protein were bad for us. This is a topic I’m sure I’ll write much more about in the future, but I’m thankful to Greg that he helped get that conversation going on a wider scale so many years ago.

Then Greg goes into the Zone Diet stuff. This is essentially his end-all-be-all diet for everyone at all times. I don’t want to attack the Zone Diet here, but it’s the idea that there is one best macronutrient or general dietary prescription for all people and all purposes that I disagree with. I have practiced dozens and dozens of different diets. In fact in 2003 alone (the year I first read this article), I attempted the Mediterranean Diet, Water Diet, Food Pyramid, and Protein Power Life Plan, amongst others. After discovering CrossFit, I got into Paleo and Zone. I’ve been a Vegetarian and a Vegan. I’ve tried a lot of different stuff. There is no one size fits all diet for every person all the time. There’s probably not even a single diet that works best for a single person throughout their entire life time. People change. Goals change. Habits and priorities change. Nutrition programs need to fit the people who practice them and need to change with those people as they go through different seasons of life.

In addition to the nutrition concepts I learned at my CrossFit Level 1 & Level 2 seminars, and what I’ve learned through attempting a wide variety of diets, I have also received a Nutrition Coaching Certificate through the OPEX Coaching Certificate Program, and a Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification. I will tell you from a position of experience, training, and education that a personalized nutrition program works best.

Sport

Here Greg praises sport. I praise sport right along with him. Here Greg says that sport is better at expressing and testing physical skills than it is at developing them. I agree. Training is an important companion and support system for sport. Here Greg says that sport, “more closely mimics the demands of nature than does our training.” Yes, I agree. He encourages his athletes to engage in sports regularly, in addition to their training. I do the same with my clients and I think that’s a great principal for life.

More tomorrow…

Here are the previous 4 articles on this topic:

• CrossFit History Lessons, Pt. 1
• CrossFit History Lessons, Pt. 2
• CrossFit History Lessons, Pt. 3
• CrossFit History Lessons, Pt. 4

Gymnastics

When Greg talks about gymnastics here, he’s including a whole range of disciplines whose aim is body control. Climbing, Yoga, Calisthenics, Dance, it’s an interesting collection of activities. I used this concept for a long time, but now I don’t think it’s honoring any of these individual disciplines to lump them all under “gymnastics”, except for Calisthenics, which is definitely a component of gymnastics. But, Climbing, Yoga, and Dance are really their own things with no relationship to Gymnastics. The umbrella category of “body control” or “movement disciplines” might be more accurate.

What I like about his way of thinking about these disciplines is that he links together the type of adaptations that are developed through their practice. Upper body and trunk strength, flexibility, coordination, balance, agility, and accuracy can all be well-developed through these disciplines.

This is really the area where I believe Greg Glassman had the most experience as an athlete and the greatest insights as a coach. He lays out a roadmap of gymnastics skills development, from calisthenics (like pull-ups, push-ups, dips, and rope climbs) to more difficult skills like muscle-ups and handstands.

Greg lays down the challenge of pirouette development, which really disappeared from CrossFit for most of the past two decades. I always thought that was a shame because pirouettes are clearly an awesome skill to develop that requires a high degree of body control. Actually, the first time I’ve ever seen them in a fitness competition was at last year’s iF3 World Championships in Sweden. It was a great call-back to the early days of Functional Fitness, and very impressive to watch.

He talks about presses to handstands and L-sits and stretching, things that I often employed in my CrossFit classes, but many clients looked askance at because they’d never seen that in their previous experience of “fitness as entertainment” or any CrossFit Games videos.

Our practice of gymnastics in the early days contained a lot of ideas around competency, control, and perfect form. I’ve always thought the CrossFit movement veered too far away from this centering of gymnastics over the years. Watching athletes bang out sets of 50 sloppy kipping handstand push-ups with a plexiglass wall to support them was never anywhere near as impressive as watching 1 single well-executed press to handstand followed by a free handstand push-up.

I still give body control and movement disciplines a high level of importance in my own training program and the programs I write for clients. This is one of the pillars of functional fitness. While its practice within the CrossFit scene has not quite lived up to the ambitions of their founder or the vision of us early practitioners, maybe we’ll see a comeback of these ideas.

Implementation

I love this idea of creating a new kind of athlete who is equal parts gymnast, Olympic weightlifter, and sprinter. I don’t think this ideal needs to be applied to every individual who enters a fitness program, and I guess that’s the rub. Glassman’s vision here is inspiring and motivating for people who are already athletes–or at the least, fitness enthusiasts–but it has been applied to a lot of people who really didn’t need it or have any business attempting it. Aggressive marketing and poorly-run gyms were responsible for this good idea being given some poor applications. Still an ideal I personally pursue, though, and I respect those others who do as well.

Metabolic Conditioning, or “Cardio”

I love the breadth of his vision of metabolic conditioning. He’s talking about biking, running, swimming, rowing, speed skating, and cross-country skiing. I also appreciate his simple division of anaerobic and aerobic, and comparing this to sprint distances to give people a clear picture.

He talks about the benefits of aerobic training, including improved cardiovascular function and lower body fat. But, he slags off aerobic training at the end of that paragraph by mentioning the trade-offs to muscle mass, strength, speed, power and anaerobic capacity. Of course, these trade-offs are there, but I disagree with the conclusions he draws from that. He starts to say that anaerobic training is all you need, because it also benefits cardiovascular function and lowers body fat, but without loss to muscle mass, strength, speed, and power.

The problem I have with this is that it involves and over-simplification of this aerobic vs. anaerobic argument. The truth is, sprinters must spend years developing their aerobic system (not to mention coordination, muscle, connective tissue, heart and lungs) through long aerobic efforts (distance). Then, and only then, are they able to express the ability to sprint. Also, they don’t just do sprinting. Even 400m competitors don’t spend the entire training year doing nasty anaerobic efforts. They continue to practice longer distances and lower efforts in training to maintain their aerobic base and other beneficial adaptations.

Interval Training

Greg’s answer to developing the cardiovascular system without loss of muscle & power is to use interval training. I think his logic is flawed here–I mean, people who do a lot of interval training without strength training will still lose muscle mass–but I love interval training and have used it with great success with myself and my clients.

He provides a helpful chart of sprint interval work and rest protocols targeting all three energy systems. This is quite useful. He also, briefly, describes the Tabata interval, which I have a lot to say on and should probably write an entire blog article about. But, Tabata only gets two sentences in Greg’s article, so I’ll save that for another time.

The main problem with CrossFit’s approach to interval training has been in application. The truth is, many of CrossFit’s “sprint interval” workouts are actually just long aerobic efforts with sprint distances incorporated within them. But, without a significant rest period before & after those efforts, they aren’t really sprints, they’re just short legs of a longer aerobic circuit. So, CrossFit’s so-called sprint training is usually aerobic training in disguise.

Then he goes into a lengthy diatribe on Dr. Stephen Seiler’s model of aerobic training adaptations. The first wave adaptation is increased maximal oxygen consumption. The second wave adaptation is increased lactate threshold. The third wave adaptation is increased efficiency. Greg’s whole argument here is to maximize the first two adaptations, but completely avoid the third adaptation.

I think he’s entirely wrong on this one. The aerobic system, and aerobic efforts in general are all about efficiency. Efficiency is the point of aerobic metabolism. Efficiency is good. The alternative that he proposes, “regular high intensity training in as many training modalities as possible through largely anaerobic efforts and intervals while deliberately and specifically avoiding the efficiency that accompanies mastery in a single modality,” is exactly the S#!t show that leads to sick and injured people coming out of CrossFit, that led to the multiple injuries and health problems that I suffered as a CrossFitter in my 30s, and birthed the saying, “You know what CF stands for, don’t you? Cluster F@#k.”

If you have not trained a particular modality long enough to develop efficiency in it, then you have no business using it in interval training. That is my assertion. I’m talking about movement efficiency, mitochondrial efficiency, heart & lungs, all of it. Get good at something, then you’re ready to up the challenge in terms of intensity (greater force at higher speed). Get good at a lot of things, then you’re ready to mix them up. Learn to express aerobic work, then you’re ready to attempt anaerobic work. I would say that developing skill and efficiency in multiple modalities is the precursor–or prerequisite coursework–to be able to do the kind of high-intensity interval with multiple modalities that Greg is describing here.

This last point is precisely why people like me–fitness nuts with years of sports and training background that already possessed skills and efficiencies in multiple modalities–thrived in CrossFit during the early 2000s. It is also precisely why so many “regular people”–untrained, out of shape, without pre-existing adaptations to years of training and exercise–failed in CrossFit during the 2010s. During their boom period, the theory of fitness development used in thousands of boxes throughout the world neglected to prioritize the fundamentals for their clients. I believe this is what led the CrossFit bubble to burst, and it’s why I left.