CrossFit isn’t just trademarked HIIT

It comes up all the time; "CrossFit is just HIIT, right?" 

Before I give you my take, let’s take a look at High-Intensity Interval Training, or HIIT. 

HIIT is a specialized and programmable form of interval training that combines alternating periods of intense anaerobic work with less-intense rest periods. These have been trending in the past decade, because they work, but the truth is, HIIT is nothing new; in the 1930’s, the Swedish were tired of losing to the Fins in cross-country competitions. A guy by the name of Gosta Holmer decided to put his athletes through workouts that incorporated brief amounts of fast-paced runs followed by a slower pace for long distances. He called it “speedplay” in his native language, which translates to “Fartlek.” Anyone that has ever trained for an aerobic race over 5K has probably heard of Fartleks because they are commonly-practiced methodology in those realms of exercise. 

HIIT is a great way to burn a lot of fat, sculpt muscle, and build athletic efficacy in a short amount of time. Now the public is finding out that HIIT works! Fitness fads, such as the “Insanity” and “P90X” DVDs build upon this method, as well as the actors who starred in the movie “300,” who had to transform their bodies into Spartans in a short-span of time. Along with the rapid evolution in social communications, it didn’t take long for the public to figure out the secrets of the professionals. 

So, it “burns a lot of fat, sculpts muscles, builds athletic efficacy…” Sounds a lot like the benefits of CrossFit; so CrossFit and HIIT must be the same thing, many people assume. But let me explain why that is only a partially-correct answer.

Yes, it’s true that CrossFit programming includes elements of HIIT training (Tabata intervals, for example). But to say that they are the same thing is a misnomer; HIIT is but a portion of the pie when you are talking about constant-variance through functional movements at high intensity across broad time and modal domains. I like to use the Fran example:

Fran is a set-structure of 21-15-9 thrusters followed by pull-ups for time. Most CrossFitters achieve this by breaking them up; one example is to do 3 sets of 7 reps for the 21, 3 sets of 5 reps for the 15, and 3 sets of 3 reps for the 9. It’s intense, it’s broken up into sets and reps and it’s done rapidly; that’s an interval workout! 

But consider this; for a competitive CrossFitter, is Fran an “interval exercise?”  Some of the elite have sub 2-minute Fran times, and they don’t break that up at all; it’s a continuous motion from 21 thrusters and pulls ups all the way down to the last 9. So Fran is only a “HIIT exercise” if you scale it down to one. 

What I’m trying to say is, HIIT is not inclusive enough to be considered the exact same as CrossFit. You can do “Fight Gone Bad,” one of the more a more classic benchmark workouts, every single day but is that “CrossFit?” Where’s the constant-variace? Where’s the broad modal and time domains? 

To “CrossFit” means you are building athletic efficacy through all physical domains. You touch upon metabolic conditioning, gymnastics and weightlifting modalities. You squat, you run, you flip tires, you muscle-up, you burpee, you snatch. The variance is just as much a part of CrossFit as the HIIT-portion is. CrossFit is also scalable; it believes that our needs in fitness vary by degree not kind. Even the simple fact that you don’t know what you’re getting into until a couple hours before your WOD is part of being prepared for the unknown and the unknowable, unlike a 6-week workout routine where it is all planned out for you. 

CrossFit even has guidelines for nutritional and competitive eating plans, mobility guides and specialty courses for a myriad of sport-specific skills like martial arts and football. All these elements are what make CrossFit programming so unique and different than just “working out.” 

In the long run, I find that CrossFit is the holistic prescription for health and fitness, and it would be unfair to consider it exactly like HIIT. It doesn’t mean we don’t do it and it doesn’t mean that it’s bad; it’s just much more profound than “intervals.”

Broaden fitness to specify skill

Many of you hear me shout, remind and mention it often; GPP, or General Physical Preparedness. But what does “GPP” really stand for? 

Not having a specialized background in traditional sports, I think I caught on to this relatively easier than most, since joining the Marine Corps was my first-ever experience with any kind of fitness or conditioning program. (No joke.) What it helped me to realize is that fitness is an overall endeavor, not a specific skill to play lacrosse, run a marathon, or shoot free throws. 

GPP is laying the foundation of fitness to prepare... Prepare for what? Prepare for anything. The unknown and the unknowable, right? But that doesn’t mean that GPP is the end state; it can also prepare you for the "anythings" of something. It can lay the ground work in our physical traits but, after we get a solid foundation, it can take you toward Specific Physical Preparedness “SPP”, for a sport or a specialized skill.  

So how can we achieve GPP? By programming within the micro, meso and macro spheres of fitness. We program to achieve balance, not to bias specialization. Take the spinning-plate analogy, for example:

We have ten plates to represent each of the ten physical traits (I call them "trait plates"): cardiovascular and respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy. We start spinning each plate on a stick and we constantly monitor each one, making sure to re-spin our sticks so all plates keep spinning. We can do less work by focusing on just two or three plates and spinning them so they are very fast, but the rest of the plates will eventually fall. But if we take our time to watch all ten plates (the macro), focus on the few that start to wobble (the meso), and prioritize our spinning to the one about to fall first (the micro), we can keep all ten plates spinning; we don't need to have a few super-fast spinning plates, but we don’t want any to fall…

Or, as the saying goes, “You don’t have to be the best at everything but you can’t suck at anything.”It is common to “cherry pick” your fitness, but the reality is that you can’t. Overtraining only a few areas will leave you deficient in other important areas of fitness. We all want to do the things we’re good at, but the honest truth is that we get stronger by doing the things we’re weak in; this can apply to more than just your workout regimen.

So I encourage every CrossFitter to take GPP to heart; seek out a general, broad fitness to implement into your routine. Constant variance will help you set a solid foundation in GPP which will lead you to the path of superior specialization when the time comes. In the meantime, if that time doesn’t come yet, we can enjoy being fit, being healthy and having fun!