What is Crossfit?

CrossFit can mean a lot of different things to different people. At Burning River CrossFit we believe CrossFit begins with a belief in fitness. We have sought to build a program that will best prepare people for the unknown and unknowable that occurs in sports as well as every day life. After looking at all sport and physical tasks collectively, we asked what physical skills would most universally lend themselves to performance advantage. There are physical movements that will create the base of a great athlete. In sum, our specialty is not specializing but building the foundation and moving up from that point.

Our definition of  fitness is increased work capacity across broad time and modal domains. Capacity is the ability to do real work, which is measurable using the basic terms of physics (mass, distance, and time). Life is unpredictable (much more so than sport) so real world fitness must be broad and not specialized, both in terms of duration and type of effort (time and modal domains).

The magic is in the movements. All of CrossFit’s workouts are based on functional movements. These are the core movements of life, found everywhere, and built naturally into our DNA. They move the largest loads the longest distances so they are ideal for maximizing the amount of work done in the shortest time (intensity).

By employing a constantly varied approach to training, these functional movements at maximum intensity (relative to the physical and psychological tolerances of the participant), lead to dramatic gains in fitness. Intensity is essential for results and is measurable as work/time. The more work you do in less time, the more intense the effort.