It's interesting to see this, because one of my main criticisms of Crossfit is that the results aren't measurable because of the strong emphasis on utilizing an extremely wide variety of exercises, and lack of emphasis on progressive overloading of the same exercise.
My understanding of Crossfit is that its purpose is to isolate fitness adaptations from exercise-specific skill adaptations, to produce a well-rounded athlete who can perform almost any exercise at a competent level with minimal skills training.
In other words, if you run a 5k for every workout, and your 5k time goes down, how do you know whether it went down because your fitness improved, or because your running technique improved? How do you know if that improvement will transfer over to, say, swimming, or basketball?
Crossfit tries to answer this question by having the athlete perform various unrelated exercises, in circuits, for time, and varying the exercise selection each day. But the problem is, if you never (or infrequently) do the same circuit twice, how do you know you've progressed at all?
Contrast that with a powerlifting program that would have you increasing the weight on the bar by a certain percentage each workout. Yes, your improvements will be partly due to improved form and technique, but there's also no question that you're getting physically stronger as well. No attempt is made to separate the two phenomena, as they are inherently intertwined.
Perhaps different Crossfit gyms take different approaches to programming, though. I suppose the quality of the programming could really depend on the training philosophy and experience of a particular Crossfit coach. But I don't get the impression that the concepts of measurable results and progressive programming are really part of the core philosophy of Crossfit.
My experience shows it is measurable, but indeed since it is very varied for some workouts it may be months since you repeat exactly the same one. But eventually you do, and individual exercises are repeated much more frequently, so you can see your progress in basic exercises easier than in full combined workouts.
My understanding of Crossfit is that its purpose is to isolate fitness adaptations from exercise-specific skill adaptations, to produce a well-rounded athlete who can perform almost any exercise at a competent level with minimal skills training.
In other words, if you run a 5k for every workout, and your 5k time goes down, how do you know whether it went down because your fitness improved, or because your running technique improved? How do you know if that improvement will transfer over to, say, swimming, or basketball?
Crossfit tries to answer this question by having the athlete perform various unrelated exercises, in circuits, for time, and varying the exercise selection each day. But the problem is, if you never (or infrequently) do the same circuit twice, how do you know you've progressed at all?
Contrast that with a powerlifting program that would have you increasing the weight on the bar by a certain percentage each workout. Yes, your improvements will be partly due to improved form and technique, but there's also no question that you're getting physically stronger as well. No attempt is made to separate the two phenomena, as they are inherently intertwined.
Perhaps different Crossfit gyms take different approaches to programming, though. I suppose the quality of the programming could really depend on the training philosophy and experience of a particular Crossfit coach. But I don't get the impression that the concepts of measurable results and progressive programming are really part of the core philosophy of Crossfit.