For almost a year now, I’ve been going to a CrossFit gym. If you haven’t heard of it, CrossFit is a type of physical training where crazy people athletically minded individuals get together and do workouts like this:

“Murph”

For time:
1 mile Run
100 Pull-ups
200 Push-ups
300 Squats
1 mile Run

It’s unlike any other type of fitness regimen I’ve done before in a couple of ways:

1) It’s crazy. See workout above.

2) We measure EVERYTHING. Every workout is timed. You always try to get a faster time, or do more reps, or lift more weight – or ALL OF THE ABOVE.

There are several benchmark workouts in CrossFit that you repeat periodically – maybe two or three times a year, like “Murph.” My gym provides log books so that everyone can record their performance in the baseline workouts and see how they have improved over time. I’ve done a 1/2 version of “Murph” twice now and improved my time by over 20%. You can imagine I was pretty happy to see that (once I regained consciousness).

So, constant measurement, benchmarks, clear performance indicators, goals… is this starting to sound familiar? If I didn’t know better, I would say that CrossFit was invented by an evaluator!