How do you evaluate a fitness program?
By three key criteria, says Seminar Staff Flowmaster Chuck Carswell: safety, efficacy, and efficiency, where “efficacy” represents the desired skill or adaptation and “efficiency” measures the time it takes to achieve it.
“You can ratchet up the speed so much that you have a risk factor that is way too high,” Carswell says during a lecture on technique.
The lecture was part of a two-day Scholarship Level 1 Certificate Course held at CrossFit South Philly on March 27, 2021, in partnership with Steve’s Club and the Green Beret Project. The course is sponsored by The CrossFit Scholarship Program, which seeks to spark meaningful healthcare changes in underrepresented and underserved communities by providing free access to the CrossFit Level 1 Certificate Course.
“On the flip side of that, you can ratchet up the safety so high that you now don’t have an adaptation that occurs in a time frame that is going to be appropriate for most of the people in this room,” Carswell continues.
The CrossFit program sits squarely in the middle.
“There are people getting results. They are getting them relatively quickly,” he says, adding that the way to do that while preventing injury is to follow CrossFit’s charter for safety: mechanics, consistency, and then — and only then — intensity.
“This process is relative to your psychological and your physiological tolerance,” Carswell says, “and it’s going to be different for each individual.”
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