By Daniel Jackiw
8th November 2022
What does “Real Fitness” actually mean inside and outside of the gym?
Hey I’m Dan, Adelaide’s newest CrossFit Affiliate owner. I also teach the next wave of up and coming PTs in Adelaide and have had many conversations with people about the true definition of fitness, and how it can be applied to the gym and in life.
Fitness means different things to different people, depending on who you ask. For some, its means being strong, for others it means being fast and others think of fitness as having good “cardio”. None of this is entirely bad or wrong, however, let’s look at fitness from a broader angle for a moment.
CrossFit defines fitness as broad and general work capacity that can be applied across different time frames and different physical tasks. In other words, it means being able to complete a wide range of physical tasks, no matter whether it is in a short, medium or long duration and no matter the type of task. CrossFit specialises in being non-specific.
Inside the gym, real fitness means you can lift some heavy stuff as well as run, row, bike, skip, do bodyweight exercises like pull-ups and perform other tasks relatively well. It also means having good stamina, cardio, power, coordination, balance and flexibility. We want to think about training ourselves to do more functional stuff longer, faster and more efficiently.
But the real question is how and what does real fitness actually do for us outside of the gym in the real world?
Essentially, what we do in the gym, should transfer over to what we do outside of the gym. If we are actually fit, meaning we can do a broad range of physical tasks, we should be able choose to do anything, anytime for any length of time (of course there are limits).
The world doesn’t discriminate by throwing challenges at us that play to our strengths. Therefore, we should strive to being able to do well at completing different jobs at short-high intensity and long duration lower intensity.
Here are some examples of what “real fitness” that is trained inside the gym, can mean for the everyday person:
- Playing with our kids and grandchildren anytime they/we want to and even showing them up a little
- Running 300m to the plane terminal so we don’t miss our connecting flight
- Jumping into a social netball or footy game to help out a friend
- Going for a long hike or bike ride with a group of friends
- Moving house without any pain
Real fitness means we can do all of this stuff, plus much more, anytime, without giving it a second thought. We don’t have to implement a special training plan to condition ourselves to do this kind of stuff – we are already “fit”. That is pretty cool and for many of us who have found CrossFit is the goal of being a fit human being.
Summary
Remember, you don’t have to be fit, to join a CrossFit gym and we all start somewhere in our health and fitness journeys – with baby steps. We then gradually move forward from there, building positive habits into our lifestyles that are sustainable and achievable.
Want to learn a little more about CrossFit? Check out this cool video put out by our buddies at CrossFit HQ. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YuzxKnlv3M
If you’re keen to find out more about Adelaide’s newest CrossFit Affiliate, there are 3 ways to get started:
1 – Book in a 30 min No Sweat Consult
2 – Drop us a line via DM, email or phone us
3 – Start a 1 Week Free Trial
Click here to connect with us via one of these 3 options. We’d love to chat more about how we can help you hit your goals
CrossFit Revelation could be the new challenge you have looking for.