! !"##$%&’$%&’()%)*$+’,-$..’!"++)()’’ !*",,./-’,-0&1’ #$1’2343’ "#$!$%&&’%(!)*+,%! "#$!$*-%.!/012’*&1! "#$!3(*,!4(5+%! #00’67%8!&6’!)9:5+;!3%5%*.%<!=!+.1’+:91+6,!+.!9,5+-+1%8! ! ! Executive Summary The purpose of this study is to test the efficacy of the CrossFit fitness program and methodology to increase the physical fitness of U.S. Army Soldiers. Over the past several years, the CrossFit fitness program has gained popularity among U.S. Army Soldiers and leaders. In unit’s across the U.S. Army, CrossFit is replacing or augmenting traditional physical training methods. CrossFit’s growing popularity in the U.S. Army begs the question, is CrossFit an effective fitness program and does it match the U.S. Army’s physical training requirements? CrossFit is a core strength and conditioning program created in 1995 by Greg Glassman, a life-long physical fitness trainer and gymnast from Santa Cruz, CA. The stated goal of the CrossFit program is to develop a broad, general and inclusive fitness, the type of fitness that would best prepare trainees for any physical contingency. To achieve the aim of general, broad and inclusive fitness, the CrossFit program has athletes perform constantly varied, high intensity, functional movements. These movements generally fall into the three modalities of gymnastics, Olympic weightlifting, and metabolic conditioning or “cardio.” In a typical CrossFit workout athletes conduct a warm-up, a skill or strength development segment and then a “Workout of the Day” or WOD. The WOD by design varies from day to day, but typically includes a mixture of functional exercises conducted at high intensity from anywhere between 5 and 20 minutes. Since the creation of the U.S Army, physical fitness training has played an important role in combat readiness. However, throughout its history the U.S. Army’s method for conducting physical fitness training has changed and evolved. Most recently, in the late 1990s, the U.S. Army began to see evidence that its method of conducting physical training was not producing Soldiers ready for the rigors of modern ground combat. This reality began a general move within the U.S. military towards functional fitness programs as many leaders and organizations began to rethink physical training and its relation to combat readiness. Take for example, the revision of FM 21-20 (Physical Fitness Training), the Ranger Athlete Warrior program, and the United States Marine Corps, Functional Fitness Program. The CrossFit program’s growth in the U.S. military over the last decade is equally representative of the U.S. Military’s move to functional fitness. In 2006, Glassman estimated that up to 7,000 members of the U.S. military were using the CrossFit program regularly. That number has grown exponentially since 2006 represented by the fact that there are now over 58 non-profit military CrossFit affiliates throughout the world, to include affiliates at many major U.S. Army installations like Fort Bragg, Fort Hood, Fort Polk, Fort Knox, Fort Meade, Fort Leavenworth, the Pentagon and the United States Military Academy. In order to test the efficacy of the CrossFit program, this study measured the change in level of physical fitness (defined as an athletes’ work capacity across broad time periods and modal domains) of fourteen athletes during eight-weeks of physical training utilizing the CrossFit program. The fourteen athletes were all students at the Command and General Staff College, and were a mix of men and women with varying levels of physical fitness and CrossFit experience. The athletes were given an initial assessment made-up of four physical evaluations (the APFT, and three CrossFit benchmark workouts; “Fran,” “Fight Gone Bad,” and “the CrossFit Total”) that tested their ability to perform a variety of functional movements across modalities and for differing periods of time. These athletes were then introduced to the specific CrossFit movements and conducted a six-week CrossFit specific training program. During the last week of the program these athletes were re-assessed using the same evaluation tools in order to measure the change in their level of physical fitness. Athletes in the study were required to !" complete each initial and final evaluation and attend an initial three hours of CrossFit Foundations instruction. During the six-week training period athletes were required to attend a minimum of four, one hour, training sessions per week. Based on the results of the data we collected during the athletes’ performance on the assessments, and our qualitative evaluations of the athletes during the six-weeks of training, we believe this study produced four important findings. 1) Over the eight-week study, every athlete experienced an increase in their work capacity, measured in terms of power output, with an average increase of 20%. Therefore, we believe the CrossFit program was successful in increasing every athlete’s general level of physical fitness. 2) While those athletes that were least fit at the beginning of the study saw the largest net gains in work capacity, even the most-fit athletes in the study experienced significant gains. The results of our study indicate that above average athletes overall work capacity increased 14.38%. One of our most fit athletes, with considerable CrossFit experience, saw a gain of 28.32% in overall work capacity. From our perspective, these results considerably strengthen our assertion in the first finding by demonstrating the CrossFit program’s ability to increase the level of physical fitness of above-average athletes who in theory would have less capacity for improvement. We believe that the CrossFit program’s prescription of high intensity combined with constant variance is one of the primary reasons that the above-average athletes in the study experienced gains in work capacity. Additionally, based on our qualitative observations, individual motivation to both maintain intensity and develop new physical skills appears to be one of the major observed differences between above-average athletes and average or below average athletes. 3) Despite a generalized training program that did not specifically train the athletes for any of the assessments, the athletes’ performance on the assessments improved. For example, on the one repetition maximum weight deadlift assessment, the athletes mean increase in work capacity increased 21.11%. Importantly, these results were achieved despite only performing the deadlift in a workout five times out of twenty-eight training sessions. The results from the shoulder press, back squat, push-up and sit-up assessments mirror the deadlift in that despite limited number of training sessions devoted specifically to these exercises, the athletes’ performance during the assessments improved. These results lead us to the conclusion that generalized training can prepare athletes for unknown and unknowable events, a crucial capability in combat, and can produce improvement in specialized events despite non-specialized training. 4) Generally the athletes in the study experienced relatively equal increases in power output in each of the assessments. Based on how we devised the assessments, this indicates a balanced increase in performance across metabolic pathways and across the ten general physical skills. We believe the consistency of improvement across assessments validates the CrossFit program’s claim that it produces a broad and inclusive brand of fitness. From the perspective of the U.S. Army, this is significant because capacity across metabolic pathways and modalities characterizes the type of versatility required of U.S. Army Soldiers. !!" TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Purpose 1 II. Background 1 a. What is CrossFit? 1 b. Functional Fitness – Back to the Future 2 III. Research Methodology 4 a. Overview 4 b. Defining and Measuring Physical Fitness 4 c. Selection of Athletes 5 d. Assessments 6 e. CrossFit Foundations Classes 10 f. Training Plan 10 g. Training Sessions 10 IV. Presentation of Data 11 a. Empirical Measurement of Workout Performance 11 b. Empirical Data by Assessment 12 c. Comparison of Assessments 24 V. Findings 24 VI. Conclusions and Recommendations 28 Bibliography 34 Appendix A (Athletes Profile) A-1 Appendix B (Training Plan) B-1 Appendix C (General Physical Skills) C-1 Appendix D (Movement Standards) D-1 Appendix E (Start-Up Company Equipment Set) E-1 Appendix F (Austere Equipment List) F-1 Appendix G (Assessment Data) G-1 !!!" I. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to test the efficacy of the CrossFit fitness program and methodology to increase the physical fitness of U.S. Army Soldiers. Over the past several years, the CrossFit fitness program has gained popularity among U.S. Army Soldiers and leaders. In unit’s across the U.S. Army, CrossFit is replacing or augmenting traditional physical training methods.1 CrossFit’s growing popularity in the U.S. Army begs the question, is CrossFit an effective program and does it match the U.S. Army’s physical training requirements? Currently there exists a host of anecdotal evidence claiming that the CrossFit program is effective. 2 However, to date, only one formal study within the U.S. Army has attempted to add empirical evidence to these claims.3 Our study seeks to contribute to the discussion by adding further analytical research on the CrossFit program in hopes of helping U.S. Army leaders make well- informed decisions regarding the future of U.S. Army physical fitness training. II. Background: a. What is CrossFit? CrossFit is a core strength and conditioning program created in 1995 by Greg Glassman, a life-long physical fitness trainer and gymnast from Santa Cruz, CA. The stated goal of the CrossFit program is to develop a broad, general and inclusive fitness, the type of fitness that would best prepare trainees for any physical contingency, to include the unknown and the unknowable.4 As Greg Glassman states in a CrossFit Training Guide, “Our specialty is not specializing. Combat, survival, many sports, and life reward this kind of fitness and, on average, punish the specialist.” Additionally, Glassman states that the CrossFit method is unique in its focus on maximizing “neuroendocrine response, developing power, cross-training with multiple training modalities, constant training and practice with functional movements and the development of successful diet strategies.”5 The CrossFit program’s concepts of fitness rest on three standards. Athletes are held up to these standards to determine their level of fitness. The first standard is the 10 general physical skills, which include: cardio respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy. By this standard an athlete is as fit as they are """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" 1 U.S. Army units using the CrossFit method include both conventional and special operations forces. U.S. Army installations, both in the continental United States and deployed, have established functional fitness training facilities that allow Soldiers to do CrossFit type workouts. Specifically, there are 58 non-profit military CrossFit affiliates located on U.S. military installations around the world (see the list of affiliates at www.CrossFit.com). For example, at Fort Hood there are two non-profit military affiliates. The first is the 20th Engineer Battalion whose leadership created Lumberjack CrossFit and use CrossFit for their battalion physical training (see http://lumberjackCrossFit.blogspot.com/). The second is CrossFit Centurion Fort Hood (see http://CrossFitforthood.blogspot.com/). For news reports that chronicle the rising popularity of CrossFit in the U.S. military see Rebekah Sanderlin, “Commando-style workout has cult following,” Fayetteville Observer (December 18, 2006), and Bryan Mitchell, “CrossFit workout craze sweeps the Corps,” Marine Corps Times (June 22, 2008). 2 See for example, Major Dave Maxwell, “Winning the Battle of the Bulge.” CrossFit Journal (November, 18 2008). 3 The non-profit military affiliate at Fort Hood, CrossFit Centurion Fort Hood, conducted a study similar to this one in 2009. That study is unpublished. 4 Greg Glassman, “Understanding CrossFit,” CrossFit Journal 56 (April 2007), 1. 5 Greg Glassman, “Foundations,” CrossFit Journal (April 2002), 1. #" competent across these 10 skills. The second standard encapsulates the idea that fitness is about performing well at a broad range of physical tasks. CrossFit refers to this standard as the “hopper.” If one puts every physical task imaginable into a hopper, spins it around and then pulls out a random task, we would measure an athletes’ level of fitness by their ability to consistently perform well at any of the tasks pulled from the hopper. The third standard is the ability of athletes to perform well across the three metabolic pathways that provide energy for all human activity. These are the phosphagen, glycolytic and oxidative pathways.6 According to this standard, an athlete is as fit as they are conditioned in each of the metabolic pathways. To achieve the aim of general, broad and inclusive fitness, CrossFit has athletes perform constantly varied, high intensity, functional movements. These movements generally fall into the three categories, or modalities, of gymnastics, Olympic weightlifting, and metabolic conditioning or “cardio.” In a typical CrossFit workout athletes conduct a warm-up, a skill or strength development segment and then a “Workout of the Day” or WOD. The WOD by design varies from day to day, but typically includes a mixture of functional exercises conducted at high intensity from anywhere between 5 and 20 minutes. Key to the CrossFit method is the idea that CrossFit is the “sport of fitness” -- it attempts to harness the, “natural camaraderie, competition, and fun of sport,” by keeping score, timing workouts and defining rules and standards of performance.7 b. Functional Fitness – Back to the Future: Since the creation of the U.S Army, physical fitness training has played an important role in combat readiness. However, throughout its history the U.S. Army’s method for conducting physical fitness training has changed and evolved. Most recently, in the late 1990s, the U.S. Army began to see evidence that its method of conducting physical training was not producing Soldiers ready for the rigors of modern ground combat. The Army Physical Fitness School, then at Fort Benning, Georgia, began testing Soldiers using a 1946 Physical Efficiency Test. This test, created from the lessons of combat during WWII and intended to test U.S. Army Soldiers’ readiness for combat, consisted of the following events: jumping over a 3ft wall, and an 8ft ditch, climbing a 12ft rope two times without pause, conducting a fireman’s carry 100 yards in 1 minute, foot marching 5 miles in 1 hour, running 1 mile in 9 minutes, swimming 30yds and treading water for 2 minutes. After giving this older test to modern day Soldiers, the Army Physical Fitness School found that present day Soldiers were less fit than their WWII counterparts were. The director of the Army Physical Fitness School attributed this trend to the fact that the current APFT had become the focus of physical training in the Army and that the APFT did not accurately measure the skills necessary for combat, particularly anaerobic skills such as agility, strength and speed.8 In response to these findings the Army Physical Fitness School at the time proposed changes to the APFT and a revision of FM 21-20, the Army physical training manual. That revision was recently published as TC 3-22.20 (Army """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" 6 Greg Glassman, "The CrossFit Training Manual, v4," http://www.CrossFit.com/cf- seminars/CertRefs/CF_Manual_v4.pdf (accessed January 13, 2010).15. 7 Ibid, 2. 8 Stephen Lee Myers, "The Old Army, It Turn Out, Was the Fitter One," June 25, 2000, http://www.ihrpa.orgnewyorktimes.htm (accessed January 13, 2010). $" Physical Readiness Training) and outlines three fundamentals for U.S. Army physical training: strength, endurance and mobility.9 Throughout the past decade the realities of modern combat have caused many military leaders and organizations within the U.S. military, in addition to the U.S. Army Physical Fitness School, to rethink physical training and its relation to combat readiness. This thinking has lead to a resurgence of functional fitness programs in the U.S. Military. Two important cases in point demonstrate the U.S. military’s recent move to functional, combat-focused fitness. The first case is the U.S. Army Ranger Regiment. In the summer of 2005, the Ranger Regiment initiated a program called the Ranger Athlete Warrior Program, or RAW. This program was intended, among other objectives, to “achieve a level of physical fitness that is commensurate with the physical requirements of Ranger missions.”10 The RAW program includes four primary components: functional fitness, performance nutrition, sports medicine and mental toughness. The perceived importance of this new fitness program to the U.S. Army is captured in the following statement from the editor of Infantry magazine in 2007, “The Ranger Athlete Warrior Program offers a means of improving Soldiers’ conditioning well beyond anything we have tried up to now, and deserves our close attention.”11 The second case is the U.S. Marine Corps. In 2006, the U.S. Marine Corps leadership began to believe that its current physical fitness training regime was not adequately preparing Marines for the rigors of modern combat. In a paper entitled, “A Concept for Functional Fitness,” the U.S. Marine Corps spelled out its move away from traditional military physical training with its focus on long distance running and other endurance training to functional fitness focused on combat readiness. As LTG James F. Amos explains in the introduction to this paper, “In recent decades we have not maintained our focus on combat when we designed our physical fitness programs. Our physical training was not ‘functional’ in this sense.”12 The U.S. Marine Corps reinforced its change in thinking by adding a Combat Fitness Test in addition to its traditional Physical Fitness Test in October 2008. Although different than RAW and the U.S. Marine Corps’ functional fitness concept because of its grassroots nature, the CrossFit fitness program’s growth in the U.S. military over the last decade is equally representative of the U.S. Military’s move to functional fitness. In 2006, Glassman estimated that up to 7,000 members of the U.S. military were using the CrossFit program regularly.13 That number has grown exponentially since 2006 represented by the fact that there are now over 58 non-profit military CrossFit affiliates throughout the world, to include affiliates at many major U.S. Army installations like Fort Bragg, Fort Hood, Fort Polk, Fort Knox, Fort Meade, Fort Leavenworth, the Pentagon and the United States Military Academy.14 The growth of CrossFit in the U.S. military mirrors the growth of the program throughout America in general. Glassman opened the first CrossFit affiliated gym in Santa Cruz in 1995. Then in 2001, he introduced his fitness program on the Internet at CrossFit.com, and began publishing a monthly journal and holding seminars at his local gym. Since that time, CrossFit """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" 9 Department of the Army, TC 3-22.20: Army Physical Readiness Training (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2010). 10 RAW PT, v.3.0, 4, online at http://www.utoledo.edu/hshs/military_science/pdfs/RAW_PT_Manual%2C_v3.pdf ; accessed on 5/3/2010. 11 Danny McMillian, "Ranger Athlete Warrior Program: A Systemic Approach to Conditioning," Infantry, May-June 2007. 5. 12 U.S. Marine Corps Combat Development Command, "A Concept for Functional Fitness," November 2006, http://www.CrossFit.com/2007/01/a-concept-for-functinal-fitne.tpl (accessed May 14, 2010). 13 Rebekah Sanderlin, "Commando-style workout has cult following," Fayetteville Observer, December 18, 2006. 14 Study authors conducted a search on the CrossFit website, www.CrossFit.com, for military affiliates. %" has grown from 18 affiliated gyms in 2005 to almost 1,700 in 2010.15 Glassman attributes the growth of his fitness program to the confluence of the launch of his website and the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. From his perspective, at that time “people [began to take] fitness much more seriously.”16 In addition to its functional applications to the military, many attribute the CrossFit program’s popularity to its simplicity and variety. Soldiers in deployed or austere environments have found that the CrossFit program, because it does not rely on a lot of equipment or distance running, can be performed almost anywhere.17 III. Research Methodology: a. Overview: In order to test the efficacy of the CrossFit program this study measured the change in level of physical fitness of fourteen athletes during eight-weeks of physical training utilizing the CrossFit program. Athletes were given an initial assessment made-up of four physical evaluations that tested their ability to perform a variety of functional movements across modalities and for differing periods of time. These athletes were then introduced to the specific CrossFit movements and principles and conducted a six-week CrossFit specific training program. During the last week of the program these athletes were re-assessed using the same evaluation tools in order to measure the change in their level of physical fitness. Athletes in the study were required to complete each initial and final evaluation and attend an initial three hours of CrossFit Foundations instruction. During the six-week training period athletes were required to attend a minimum of four, one hour, training sessions per week. b. Defining and Measuring Physical Fitness: We defined physical fitness as an athletes’ work capacity across broad time periods and modal domains.18 More plainly stated, physical fitness is an athlete’s ability to successfully conduct a host of different physical tasks for varying periods of time at varying levels of intensity. We chose this definition because we believe it best articulates the type of fitness required of U.S. Army Soldiers. Soldiers need to be broadly trained athletes who can perform well across a full spectrum of athletic tasks, and who are competent across the ten general physical skills.19 They cannot afford to be strictly endurance athletes or strictly strength athletes. We believe our definition of fitness captures these requirements. Therefore, by our definition, increases in an athlete’s level of physical fitness can be measured by increases in an athlete’s work capacity or average power output regardless of the physical activity being performed. Therefore, this metric of fitness allows for a comparison between traditionally incomparable activities such as running long distance and weight lifting. By our definition, the ability to demonstrate a high level of work capacity (intensity) across varying time periods indicates an ability to perform using any three of the major metabolic pathways that provide energy for all human action. These three major engines are known as the phosphagen pathway, the glycolytic pathway and the oxidative pathway (see """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" 15 James Wagner, "Fitness is a Full-Time Pursuit," The Wall Street Journal, February 2, 2010. 16 Bryan Mitchell, "CrossFit workout craze sweeps the Corps," Marine Corps Times, June 22, 2008. 17 See for example, First Lieutenant Matthew Hoff, “The Panther Recon Downrange Gym,” The CrossFit Journal (September 20, 2009). 18 Greg Glassman, "The CrossFit Training Manual, v4," http://www.CrossFit.com/cf- seminars/CertRefs/CF_Manual_v4.pdf (accessed January 13, 2010)., 2. 19 The ten general physical skills are outlined in Appendix C (General Physical Skills) and were taken from The CrossFit Training Guide v4, 17. &"