I don’t understand it myself, as to me crossfit isn’t a cross section of fitness and isn’t for everyone. Olympic lifts with bad form can aggravate whiplash, shoulder and neck injuries and that’s without doing high reps. The problem is that crossfit adopts high reps, and I don’t think that this makes sense. What does make sense is to get strong and to be able to move around. The things that make me feel good are the dynamics of sprint work, hypertrophy, Olympic lifts (done correctly), yoga, Thai boxing, tai chi, and boxing – all of which can get you fit. So why is fitness so focused on weights alone, and why have athletics and martial arts been put so heavily on the side?

Fitness is about being healthy, strong, mobile and able to do just about anything physical. It’s about being in great shape, and don’t get me wrong, I love weights. I truly believe weight training done properly can give you fantastic posture, spinal health, muscular strength and power, but the cons are that it can leave you flat footed, cause a lot of stress on the body and injure you. So being fit should be about being able to move your hips, shoulders, feet and knees, all in different ways with rotation, with reach, with strength, speed and power. That’s what crossfit should focus on. I can hear some trainers arguing that a multi-rounded fitness regime is not for your average person trying to lose weight, it’s for athletes only. Well I disagree strongly as I believe there is strength in mobility and mobility in strength, so where are these tested in conditioning? Let’s put it this way, if you can’t reach out for something with any part of your body then there isn’t any strength available, but on the other hand, if you can move something upwards but you can’t hold it up or maintain it, what’s the point in being able to reach? There’s no strength in that range and if there isn’t any strength, it’s pretty pointless.

My point isn’t about sheer criticism, it’s about thinking. It’s thinking about the middle road of balance and mastering the body. I like to look at the pros and cons of the body, I like people and I would like to think I could help as many people as possible with my team and my methods – a lifestyle sort of thing. Sometimes, I just feel some groups are elitist and work for certain age ranges or limits. Exercise shouldn’t be like this. Exercise is for everyone.