In Praise of the Non-Specialist -By Jane

Ryan's successful 42.5" box jump.

Specialization.... not the Crossfit Way

One of my favourite concepts of Crossfit is the idea of being good at everything and specializing in nothing.  It is a pretty cool way to approach the workouts, every work out you are striving to be better but you want to be better in every type of fitness aspect, endurance, strength, speed etc., no one aspect should be focused on or “specialized” in.  I think it is something to be remembered at the gym, just because you are good and enjoy a certain aspect, say heavy lifting, does not mean that you should only focus on that element.  By doing so you are sabotaging your abilities in other areas and are becoming a specialist rather than a generalist.

So a couple of examples of Specialists and what is gained and lost:

“Endurance Athlete – Triathaletes, Cyclists and Marathoners are often regarded as among the fittest athletes in the world but the endurance athlete has trained long past any cardiovascular health benefit and has lost ground in strength, speed and power and typically nothing has been done to improve coordination, agility, balance and accuracy.” (Crossfit Training Guide, 2006)

Strength Athletes – Weightlifters that develop the capacity to lift heavy weight develop strength to be sure but that development comes a cost of loss of cardiovascular and respiratory endurance and loss of stamina.

Crossfit wants its athletes to have the ability of maximum competency in all physical challenges.  This again comes back to functionality, really, as an athlete don’t you want to have the ability to meet any type of challenge and do well in it rather than being really amazing at one activity and weaker than average in every other activity?

At my certification in May, a really good scenario simplifying this concept and explaining it was used and I thought it was really cool so I am going to share it:

The top female time for the Boston Marathon this year was Salina Kosgei, at 2:32 (wow).  The female winner of the Crossfit games this year was Tanya Wagner.  We will bring these two women together and tell them that we want them to compete.  We will then bring out a hat and into the hat we will put various random exercises, as many as we can think of.  So as the hat is shaken up, you would have to wonder what each woman would be thinking and I think Salina would be hoping that what comes out of the hat is a distance run while Tanya is probably hoping that the only thing that doesn’t come out of the hat is…. a distance run.  Thinking of all the activities that could come out of the hat, 24” box jumps, 300lb deadlifts, 100m sprint, pull-ups, push-ups, muscle ups, burpees, etc.  Every exercise that I can imagine, aside from distance running, I think Tanya would dominate.  As a Crossfit athlete, someone who has trained to do well in a variety of areas, Tanya should have the advantage over Salina in every type of activity that is drawn out of that hat except for distance running.  The fact that Tanya is not a specialist (distance runner) means that out of all the activities that could be drawn from the hat the one she will lose in is the distance run, while Salina, who is a specialist, is limited to being able to win against an athletic generalist in her one area of specialization only. 

That is a concept that I think is really great about Crossfit and I really love about our gym.  I am thrilled with the idea of being good at everything and having functional capability in such a variety of tasks.  While I admire specialists and the work and dedication they put into becoming the best they can be in one specific area, I much prefer for myself the idea of dedicating my fitness to be good at everything and excellent at nothing.  I want to be able to do a lot of activities well, which is why flux Crossfit is such a good fix for me and I think for most people out there.

So that is my blog on Specialization, thoughts/comments?  I would love to know what everyone thinks!

-Jane