GREG GLASSMAN: This is more than just a competition of athletes. This is a competition of training methodologies. It is the sport of fitness. DAVE CASTRO: We claim to title the Fittest on Earth and we can do that because we as a fitness methodology have defined fitness. GLASSMAN: The men and women competing here today have legitimate claim to the title Fittest Men and Women on Earth by the same rights and logic that the Lakers, the Steelers, the Penguins, and the Phillies are the best basketball team, football team, hockey team, and baseball team on Earth. CASTRO: No one else is testing fitness. And at this point, no one can make a claim. RICH FRONING: People that just come into CrossFit are like "Oh, next year I'm going to the Games." Kids don't go shoot free throws and think "Oh, I'm going to the NBA next year." GLASSMAN: There are people that say that this isn't a test that there are people out there fitter than competing here today. Great. Prove it. MATT CHAN: Anyone in the field of exercise would agree that the definition of fitness that Greg Glassman came up with is as complete as any that has ever been. So work capacity across broad time and modal domains. It's as complete as ever has been a definition. BERGH: Fitness is your ability to perform. When we're talking about physical fitness that means your ability to perform the given tasks using your body. CHAN: Fitness is not just in the gym. Fitness is outside of the gym. It's life. Anytime you find yourself saying, "Damn it, I can't do that." You have a hole in your fitness. ADRIAN BOZMAN: I would explain fitness as an intersection of your basic ability to move other things to move your body and do those things in combination. It's that overlapping of ability that exists when you have the weightlifter and the runner and the gymnast it's that part in the middle that intersects. And the bigger that part is the more fit you are. NARRATOR: Without an empirical definition of fitness all claims to being the fittest are meaningless. Greg Glassman revolutionized the billion dollar fitness industry when he defined fitness in scientific terms. Measurable. Observable Repeatable. A definition you could test. JASON KHALIPA: If try and say you're trying to test for the fittest on Earth I think that test needs to be wide, it needs to be quantifiable, and it needs to be streamlined across the board for all athletes. CHAN: From short From, you know, the 100-meter sprint to long, you know a marathon. And to test fitness you have to test all of those elements. BERGH: It also has to have known and unknown elements. So you're not just testing horsepower and pure output. In some respects you're testing things that they've never tested before. Some of it is task accomplishment. Some of it is speed through a certain task. BRIGGS: How can you recover with limited sleep, limited rest? You've got four days of competing. How can you recover and still perform well on the last day? BERGH: You have to be able to control when you push how you handle discomfort There's an element to physical fitness that has to live up here. NARRATOR: The test that unites all of these elements is the CrossFit Games. ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the CrossFit Games! A full week of competition here in Carson, California and after these 12 events we will know who wins the title of Fittest on Earth. CHAD MACKAY: I didn't really feel like I was competing at the CrossFit Games. It was more about going in and having a good workout. And it's probably something I'll never get to do again. Swim, and jump on a bar and do some muscle-ups. CAMILLE LEBLANC-BAZINET: It was a little scary, too. Let's be honest here. It felt like doing doing a bar muscle-up on a wet towel. CASTRO: Anyone can go to a pool and swim laps and do medball cleans. That's easy. You could take a medball to your pool right now your local pool and do that. Most people can't go to a pool and get out of the pool, and on the deck there's a Rogue rig and do muscle-ups. CHAN: I think by introducing elements that you can't practice in a gym it keeps the athletes guessing it keeps the athletes interested it keeps the spectators interested it keeps the whole world interested when you're just a spectator. CASTRO: It's a necessary part of our test at the CrossFit Games. Could we do a test of fitness where we did announce everything ahead of time? And well ahead of time? Sure. But for our theatrics and for our event and for our spectacle it adds to all of that. It's more than a competition of the fittest alive. It's performing art. It's theater. BILL GRUNDLER: This is what fitness is all about. How can you handle these real-world objects? Odd objects. We're testing that right now and it's very apparent whether they've been doing these sorts of movements or not. CHAN: The pig. After a 2-mile run you run to that thing and you're like okay, how do I do this? We didn't get to touch it. We didn't get to play with it. We didn't know how much it weighed. We didn't know whether or not to wear gloves. You just grab it you flip it and you're like, okay, there's the first one, here we go. KHALIPA: That was like a one-rep max deadlift over and over again for 60 reps. And I just remember thinking to myself, damn this is very, very very challenging for me but if it's that challenging for me I know it's challenging for them. GARRET FISHER: One thing that helped me out is I look over to my left and I see Dan Bailey just slobber coming out of his mouth and it just kind of made me like settle down like okay like, this is normal what I'm feeling. Like this is really hard for everybody. CHAN: And all that says to me is that these people can adapt to physical activity like nobody else on Earth. BERGH: We're not testing specialization. We're not testing pre-game strategy for these guys. We're testing in the field performance. How do you respond to something you haven't trained for before? That's an element of fitness. CHAN: It makes you pour cement stones at try it. It makes you go seek out a hill tear up a trail and sprint up it. And carry a sand bag. If we were only good a gym movements we would only be good in the gym. CASTRO: We force you to train a holistic package. We force you to train everything. And some people crack under that. COMMENTER: And Fisher may have actually passed Rich Froning. We'll have to wait ... And he did. Garret Fisher by a tenth of a second over the champ. FISHER: Just to pass him on the last little bit of the workout and beat him. It ... it felt good. Yeah, I'm not going to lie. It felt good. CHAN: You can't prepare for those things. You can't prepare for them. So how do you do it? You prepare for it by trying everything. BERGH: I think the Games bring out a need for mental fortitude and mental discipline that you might not find in everyday training. I think people around the world understand what it means to handle things that are uncomfortable to stay disciplined and stay consistent with your training. These athletes take it to an entirely different level. FRONING: In the U.S. or even the world you know, everything has become easier and we've taken out all that hard work. I think we were created to work hard. And that's what we're supposed to do. DAN BAILEY: Whatever somebody basically thinks is impossible it's being done right now. And it's being done by people who just don't listen to those kinds of limitations. And those are the type of people that compete at the CrossFit Games. LEBLANC-BAZINET: And this is why I like CrossFit. When you hit that wall and you tell that wall, "Get out of my way." And you just go through Go through that pain. Just close your eyes and keep going. NARRATOR: Regardless the lengths they go to prepare themselves the Director of the CrossFit Games always finds a way to exceed the capacities of the world's fittest athletes. FRONING: The marathon row was the most miserable experience of my athletic career. Just mentally Just bashing your head against the screen for an hour and 20 minutes is what it felt like. After I finished college rowing I told myself, I was like "I'm never going on that machine again! It's like a death machine." And then a couple years later here I am. Rowing a marathon row. MACKAY: I think the row event was pretty cool. A lot of people disagree. LEBLANC-BAZINET: Not only I knew this wasn't an event at all for me also I didn't know if I would be able to keep going. And it destroyed me. Emotionally. And then that became my hardest Games ever. I think from a spectator point of view they're sitting there like, "Hmmm." "I wonder what this guy is going to do." And I'm sitting there like, I wonder what I'm going to do. BAILEY: You're really nervous. You know it's a 2K; it's kind of a sprint. Right at the start of the event I don't remember exactly what the half-marathon started at in meters. At the time. KHALIPA: You're sitting there. You're like, OK. You're rowing at, you know, a hard rate. You're like, is that 2K? BAILEY: As I'm pulling I'm thinking it was 21,000 something but I don't know what it was so I think I went all the way down I probably rowed hard for an extra 500 meters. KHALIPA: So I just kept going. I just kept going until I hit 7 minutes. That, I have to be done. There's no way I can't be done. MACKAY: It was pretty much like a dog fight. Having the screen up and seeing where you were placed in the pack. KHALIPA: And so after I got to 7 minutes I took my pace from a 1:33 whatever to, you know, about a 2 minute and 10 second. Just sat there, regained my composure for about a minute and then once I felt like I was back on track I dropped it to a 1:50 and I held that for the next hour. BOZMAN: If you were to take the top 10 finishers of the Boston Marathon and list them out and then have another group list the top 10 VO2 maxes of the best guys in the Boston Marathon they're not going to match up linearly. You know, you have to run the race to figure that stuff out. Who's the best? Well run the race. You can't do it in a laboratory. And that's the physiological difference between potential and capacity. BAILEY: Zig Zag Sprint. That's my jam. COMMENTER: And it's time for the Zig Zag Sprint. The fifth of 12 scored events. PICHELLI: The night before I had a couple guys outside, and they were pretending to be the obstacles. They were trying to teach me how to run around them and so I'd run and I'd push them out of the way. BAILEY: I remember coming through and just sprinting as hard as I could through the finish line. And knew that I lost. COMMENTER: It's Bailey it's Hendren we're going to have to go to the chip. That was a photo finish. BAILEY: But I've lost races by a hundredth of a second before. And I've won races by a hundredth of a second. And you know when you win and lose. Ah, I really wanted to win it. COMMENTER: And we are ready for the eighth of 12 scored events. The Clean and Jerk Ladder. If a guy bombs out at a weightlifting meet but he could have lifted it should he still be recognized as the strongest guy at the weightlifting meet? Pretty cut and dry in that environment. No one is giving him kudos for that. No. He has actually got to lift it and do it. FISHER: Everybody likes lifting. COMMENTER: Barto underneath that, standing it up. Lucas Parker out of the hole at 335. KHALIPA: It didn't go bad. I took seventh. I mean that's not ... I don't think anybody would say that's bad. Right? But my legs just had nothing in them. FISHER: I felt fine. Legs felt fresh. I think it was just the adrenaline. LEBLANC-BAZINET: People were going nuts. It was so damn cool. COMMENTER: 230 pounds for Kara Webb. And the jerk even more solid than the clean. KHALIPA: And I thought when I got out there it would start feeling a little lighter. It didn't. It still felt heavy. FISHER: And we had a lot of legs, but my legs felt great coming out of that squat. MACKAY: Previous day I was 315. So I jerked 315 then 325 and then only just made the clean at 335. Missed the jerk. KHALIPA: And my technique broke down because I didn't prepare well enough exhausted at heavy loads with a highly skilled movement. That's why. CASTRO: Being strong at high heart rate is something unique that we test. And is very important in the real world. And in determining fitness. No one else is testing fitness. Strongman events aren't. And they're not claiming to. Weightlifting is obviously not, and they're not claiming to. You look at a decathalete some would say they're the fittest alive. But actually their claim is the best athlete in the world. And they really test three different domains. They test running. They test throwing. And they test jumping. Decathletes at the highest level are very strong. But in their events, in their 10 events, they don't test strength. BOZMAN: Fitness is not a theoretical "Well, I think I could have done that if things were a little bit different." It doesn't work that way. Fitness is what you can show me today. COMMENTER: Keep your eyes open, guys. I think this one is going to go really quick. LEBLANC-BAZINET: I really liked the Sprint Chipper. FISHER: That was a very cool workout. BAILEY: I get excited when anything 21-15-9 comes out. It doesn't matter what it is. LEBLANC-BAZINET: We didn't know how fast we were going to do it. How hard it was going to be. BAILEY: Because for me those workouts are just red line. It's go, go, go. All gas pedal, no brake. LEBLANC-BAZINET: It was really, you know, a big sprint against the watch. And you couldn't think of what you were doing because everyone was going so fast. KHALIPA: What I was thinking about was, how that would be a pretty stupid mistake if you dropped the ball because you would lose that period. PICHELLI: I think I went out a little too hot so by the time I got off the GHD machine I felt very dizzy and almost blown up. BAILEY: In the middle of a workout like that it doesn't hurt. Like it really doesn't. You pretty much go numb. FISHER: My legs were burning really, really bad. And I had to drop that bar. And those 165 were the heaviest snatches, like, I've ever done. BAILEY: And all you're thinking about is finishing as fast as you can. It's the aftermath when you're done that buries you. FRONING: The snatches I thought Jason would move easier than me because it's 165. I waited for him to put the bar down. Once he put the bar down I did one more rep. And then when he picked the bar up I picked the bar up. So I was another rep ahead of him. COMMENTER: Dan Bailey has the time to beat. Froning has got to hurry. FRONING: And then it was just beat him over that wall several times. COMMENTER: And Rich Froning is the first man to the wall. And he will make it. Rich Froning is now 100 points richer. FRONING: I needed that one. If I had won the Games and I hadn't won an event there would just have been people talking. And then ... I don't like to leave any doubt. NARRATOR: A test of this magnitude must be prodigiously well designed. Surprises variety equipment unveilings and previously impossible challenges rule the day. CASTRO: I don't like to program workouts for a location without having intimately spent some time at that venue. I'll go to the Home Depot Center multiple times throughout the year and just sit in various locations and look at those locations and figure out and feel how something is going to play. Because you can't just create a workout. You've got to create an experience. BERGH: At the Games alone we have 25 committees. Over 600 volunteers. 100s of contractors. We spend millions and millions of dollars on this test. It's that important to CrossFit. To make sure that the test to find the Fittest Man and Woman on Earth is the right test. CASTRO: One of the things we have to battle with and struggle with is the need for the workouts to be so grand. Or written so big. Or such unique equipment. There is something to keeping everything basic and fundamental. You don't need to read a workout and go "Oh my god, that looks so hard!" A barbell, some high-skill bodyweight movements and the athletes are all we need to have a really good test. CHAN: Yeah, yeah the uh the thruster / rope climb got me. The thruster / rope climb got me bad. KHALIPA: So you guys didn't have to get fancy. And that's what I liked about this year's CrossFit Games. There was nothing so outside the box fancy. It was just straight CrossFit. And, uh, Naughty Nancy was a great example of that. Run. Overhead squat. Repeat. And it is going to tear you up. Someone asked, "Hey, what's your favorite workout?" And it is a tough question because it's like, "What's your favorite kid?" But for me this year the thruster / rope climb workout. Simple. Basic format. Highly effective, and exposed a ton of weakness for a ton of people. BERGH: We have to keep those events very, very secret so we know that the elements we're testing in the Games haven't been practiced by those athletes. LEBLANC-BAZINET: This was new. And now everyone who fell are never going to fail again at that. CHAN: You know I don't regret that. I don't regret jumping up there because it took, it took, uh taking a chance. And being OK with failing. And that's what CrossFit is about, right? You know, that's what makes people harder. You know, physically and mentally so take chances. Go fast and take chances. CASTRO: We've traditionally been very good at doing a few things with the Games. Exposing people's weaknesses that they didn't know they have. And pushing people past the limits of what they thought was possible. BERGH: That's why the test is so important. Is that the test forces people outside the margins of their experience. Otherwise these athletes wouldn't do that. Unless you're faced with something you've never done before you don't know whether or not you can do it. You have confidence you can do it. You've done something similar to that. But you don't know. A lot of these athletes don't know their potential yet. And don't know where they can take it. And the only way you can get to that potential and increase your work capacity is with intensity. LEBLANC-BAZINET: Something brutal that is that fun is when you pass your own limit. And find yourself in a position of achievement. That's how you beat the other girl. That's how you go to the CrossFit Games. Competing almost desperately to go and win. CASTRO: At the Games we're programming for the best. And we're programming to test the fittest. Guess what. If we pick a weight like 405 and one or two people can't do it that's appropriate. BERGH: And unless you have a test that forces you outside that level forces you outside your comfort zone you don't really know. KHALIPA: Great example, 100-lb. dumbbell at the regionals. I lifted it up for the first time, I was like "Damn." This thing sucks. I couldn't even get it. CASTRO: Jason Khalipa, one of the strongest CrossFitters, doubted himself in doing that. And then he had one of the fastest times ever. KHALIPA: You put something out to the public and you think it's doable and it is doable. You just got to get there. By the time the regionals came around I was smashing it. BAILEY: You know, I think that's what separates a Games athlete from a non-Games athlete. They don't really listen to the limitations. They find what the limitation is and say, "Well, I'm going to step over that line today." And see what happens. There are so many hidden secrets to the human body that we haven't unlocked. I'm not going to put any limit on my body. And nor should anyone else. KHALIPA: I have been, perhaps you could say, at the top of the game for the last seven years. And I'm only getting better every day. That's crazy. I mean, I'm PRing all kinds of stuff all the time. You know what I mean? It's, like, bizarre. It's bizarre to me. It just blows my mind. LEBLANC-BAZINET: After my first year everyone was telling me when more people are going to get involved you're going to be out. And then the next year when more people get involved you guys are going to be out. Better athletes are going to come. And it's not happening. FRONING: There's only one common denominator there. CrossFit. You know? Those people are extremely fit people, obviously. And that's what's cool is how many tests they've been through. And how many times they've proven how fit they are. BRIGGS: I'm the fittest CrossFitter this year because of the workouts that we did. That can all change next year. So, I need to make sure that my training is as varied as possible. So hopefully I can go back and defend my title next year. We don't need more tests. I think we're getting very, very good at determining what's the right number of tests and what are those tests to make sure you get the right answer. But what's unique in CrossFit is that we can literally test for things that nobody else in the world can test. And that's what makes the CrossFit Games unique. NARRATOR: To see how far the athletes have come an event from the inaugural CrossFit Games in 2007 was repeated in 2013. PICHELLI: I was curious to see how we would compare now so that just shows how much the fitness has improved or increased. And it was just cool to see how many women have beaten that winning time from 2007. COMMENTER: And now Asia Barto the only man so far to not surpass the best time of 2007 ... CASTRO: So the definition of fitness hasn't been changed but the level of fitness has been significantly raised. The ceiling for what humans are capable of is going up and it's continuing to go higher. Because of the Games and because of CrossFit the methodology. CHAN: It's ... it's become quite the test. In the very first year that I competed we had four workouts. In 2008. And uh, three on day one one on the second day and that was a lot of volume for most of the competitors to survive. CASTRO: What people are doing in 2007 to be the fittest person alive the capacity that they had is very different is very different than the capacity of people in 2013 are able to do to be the fittest alive. FRONING: You know us. You know what we're capable of. I don't know how you figure it out. But you do. And it's always a good test. NARRATOR: What would have happened if the final event of the 2013 Reebok CrossFit Games was programmed in 2007? 2008? 2009? Or even 2010? KHALIPA: (Laughs.) BOZMAN: Yeah, it would not have been a viable choice in 2009. There's no way. FRONING: If you would have asked me in 2010 if the last workout would have had a 405 deadlift and weighted pistols, I would have said you're crazy. KHALIPA: There would have been a lot of people stuck on deadlifts. BOZMAN: That's probably the most demanding blend of capacities that we've seen in a single event. FRONING: Rob Orlando would have finished it. I don't know about in the time cap, but CASTRO: So your work potential how do we know it or define it? We don't, but we know you have more than you have now. CHAN: Oh yeah? You want us to do more? Cool. We can do that too. Oh we've never even seen this thing. Watch this. This is what we can do. LEBLANC-BAZINET: And we're not even near where we were before. You cannot even compare it. I mean, we're just ... It's not the same. KHALIPA: Here you are, you turn on the TV where as an athlete and here's these guys lifting 405 pounds you're like, "Damn, I don't know exactly how much that is but it looks heavy." And then you watch them walk on their hands. I mean, it's just like, wow! Like, that was cool. You know, like, who are these guys? They look very fit. MACKAY: It pretty much showcases our sport and what our athletes can do. BERGH: We ask more of these athletes than anybody else more than they would ask of themselves even though they push themselves hard every day. But you wouldn't get that level of capacity. You wouldn't get that level of performance unless they had a test that was this demanding. CASTRO: And it's not a gimmick. These guys aren't good at CrossFit. They're really fucking fit. They're the fittest alive period. FRONING: We can't anticipate the events in life. We can't anticipate what's happening next, so we do anything and everything we can do to be ready for what's thrown at us. And that's how I train. KHALIPA: Rich just works hard. That's it. You know, like, I've spent a lot of time with the dude. He just works out a lot. That's what he does. He's not just going to show up for one week in a year and be able to just get lucky and perform well. Because he's just good all the time. CASTRO: His fitness is real. And he has shown that across all the levels. And the Open and the Regionals and the Games are a real test because of that. FRONING: When they start to fall off is when I start to get better. At that point I'm like, OK it's time to finish the deal. COMMENTER: Rich Froning showing no signs of slowing down. CASTRO: If the programming determined who wins Rich Froning has been a lucky bastard for the last three years. In the CrossFit Games. In the last two years in the Open that he's taken 1st place. And the last three Regionals that he has won. So that's almost 9 or 10 different events. And he's won them all. BERGH: But you know you've got the fittest man and woman when it doesn't matter exactly what the order or what the tests were and the exact same thing would happen. CASTRO: Ladies and gentlemen we've had 7 CrossFit Games this man has won 3 of them. The 2013 Reebok CrossFit Games champion Rich Froning! FRONING: Physically I feel great. Physically I feel like I could do this another 7 to 10 years. But mentally it takes a toll on you. Mentally it's a ... it's a different animal. So we'll see. CHAN: I still think we've got an unlimited playing field. for adaptation still. I think that people are going to get stronger. I think they're going to get faster. Will we see someone with a sub-5 minute mile and a 500+ pound back squat? Yes. Will there be lots of them in 10 years? Yes. FISHER: We've seen heavy weights. We've seen endurance stuff. I think the next evolution is really complex gymnastics. So like planches. Iron crosses. Freestanding handstand push-ups. KHALIPA: I think CrossFit is single-handedly going to prove what the human body is capable of doing in multiple different domains. BERGH: And that's what's cool about this. It's a big experiment. There's no one way to train for this. What the athletes are all doing is training constantly varied functional movements at high intensity. What that looks like in application varies across the board. LEBLANC-BAZINET: That's our next generation. I'm so excited to see all of those little girls kicking some butt. And being muscular and all of that. KHALIPA: I think in the next 7 to 10 years we will see someone with the capacity to run a sub-5 minute mile and clean and jerk close to 400 pounds. I think you'll see it. CASTRO: They're all going to have 300 pound snatches. They're all going to have 600 pound deadlifts. They're all going to run sub-5 minute miles. They're all going to have sub 2:15 Frans. MACKAY: They're going to be phenomenal. They're going to be phenomenal. FRONING: It's going to be fun to watch because I'll be watching at that point, for sure. KHALIPA: I don't think we're going to win marathons. I don't think we're going to win Olympic weightlifting competitions. I think people are going to catch on to wow that dude just lifted a lot of weight and he can run? And he looks good? Wow. CASTRO: Look, I was a Navy SEAL for 12 years. And if you were to say how would I create the ultimate Navy SEAL? Physically? It would be through this training program and it would be someone like Rich Froning. And this program does that. It builds superheroes. It builds real-life superheroes. BERGH: And in 2020 we'll look back and say we were just in 2013 scratching the surface. We were just starting to understand what fitness really was. And I just hope we don't look back and go "Hey, we were sandbagging it." "We weren't asking more."
The first few minutes are a flagellation of Greg Glassman's god-like knowledge and impeccable definition of fitness.
Good overall, though.
That ironcross
Awesome video, definitely worth 30 mins.
So good I watched it twice
That was a pretty cool video. Not as dramatic as Every second counts. More of a half hour long promo video, but pretty cool none the less.
I can't compete on their level now, but if CrossFit is really going toward the 5:00 mile / 500 back squat athlete, I'm really fucked.
30 years old now, maybe by the time I'm 50 I'll be a bitchin' masters athlete. :)
I wish I had found CrossFit when I was younger!
Hahaha Blushed when Camile waves at the camera!! Dat smile!