The First Fitness Standard

There are ten recognized general physical skills. They are cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy. You are as fit as you are competent in each of these ten skills. A regimen develops fitness to the extent that it improves each of these ten skills. Importantly, improvements in endurance, stamina, strength, and flexibility come about through training. Training refers to activity that improves performance through a measurable organic change in the body. By contrast improvements in coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy come about through practice. Practice refers to activity that improves performance through changes in the nervous system. Power and speed are adaptations of both training and practice.

The Second Fitness Standard

The essence of this model is the view that fitness is about performing well at any and every task imaginable. Picture a hopper loaded with an infinite number of physical challenges where no selective mechanism is operative, and being asked to perform fetes randomly drawn from the hopper. This model suggests that your fitness can be measured by your capacity to perform well at these tasks in relation to other individuals. The implication here is that fitness requires an ability to perform well at all tasks, even unfamiliar tasks, tasks combined in infinitely varying combinations. In practice this encourages the athlete to disinvest in any set notions of sets, rest periods, reps, exercises, order of exercises, routines, periodization, etc. Nature frequently provides largely unforeseeable challenges; train for that by striving to keep the training stimulus broad and constantly varied.

The Third Fitness Standard

There are three metabolic pathways that provide the energy for all human action. These “metabolic engines” are known as the phosphagen pathway, the glycolytic pathway, and the oxidative pathway. The first, the phosphagen, dominates the highest-powered activities, those that last less than about ten seconds. The second pathway, the glycolytic, dominates moderate-powered activities, those that last up to several minutes. The third pathway, the oxidative, dominates low-powered activities, those that last in excess of several minutes. Here’s an excellent reference for additional information: http://predator.pnb.uconn./beta/virtualtemp/muscle/exercise-folder/muscle.html Total fitness, the fitness that CrossFit promotes and develops, requires competency and training in each of these three pathways or engines. Balancing the effects of these three pathways largely determines the how and why of the metabolic conditioning or “cardio.”

PARK CITY, UT  In the midst of prostate cancer awareness month, X Games gold medalist Steve Fisher (Breckenridge, CO) recalls what he felt at the age of 20 to learn that his father had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in December of 2003.

“It was completely overwhelming,” Fisher said. “It was literally just before the first Grand Prix in Breckenridge. He had just turned 51 and went in for his routine screening and his report came back that there were traces of prostate cancer.”

According to statistics, one in every six men are diagnosed with prostate cancer just like Fisher’s father, Ed, who was treated at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota a month after his diagnosis. Now, five years later, he remains cancer free.

“So far it hasn’t come back and he’s just really lucky that he caught it early enough to where they could get all of the bad cells,” Fisher said.

It was through his father’s experience and a desire to promote prostate cancer awareness and research funding that Fisher came to be involved with Athletes for a Cure, which is a program of the Prostate Cancer Foundation that enables athletes to raise money for the cause.

This year we lost 27,000 men to prostate cancer, with 186,000 more men diagnosed in 2008. That’s more diagnoses than all other (non-skin cancers) combined! The prevailing (and fatally incorrect) wisdom is that this is an “old man’s disease.

This year Athletes for a Cure was represented at more than 200 events across the US and everywhere we went we were greeted by men and their  families who for the most part were under 55-years old who had a prostate cancer diagnosis in the family. Here are just a few stories as told in a short video: http://www.vimeo.com/1881463

There would be no more appropriate time to ask you for your prayers and thoughts than Christmas Eve for the 186,000 men who, on a day they least expected it had their doctor walk into a room and say, “I’m sorry, but you have prostate cancer.” Please add a special thought for those 27,000 families that lost a man in their lives.

Please take a moment tonight to remember them all. Thank you.

Scott

Word spread across the countryside about the wise Holy Man who lived in a small house atop the mountain. A man from the village decided to make the long and difficult journey to visit him. When he arrived at the house, he saw an old servant inside who greeted him at the door. “I would like to see the wise Holy Man,” he said to the servant. The servant smiled and led him inside. As they walked through the house, the man from the village looked eagerly around the house, anticipating his encounter with the Holy Man. Before he knew it, he had been led to the back door and escorted outside. He stopped and turned to the servant, “But I want to see the Holy Man!”

“You already have,” said the old man. “Everyone you may meet in life, even if they appear plain and insignificant… see each of them as a wise Holy Man. If you do this, then whatever problem you brought here today will be solved.”

Excellence is never an accident. It is achieved in a person or company only as a result of an unrelenting and vigorous insistence on the highest standards of performance. It requires an unswerving expectancy of quality from the person or staff.

Excellence is contagious. It affects everyone. It charts the direction of the business. It establishes the criteria for planning. It provides zest and vitality to the company. Once achieved, excellence has a talent for permeating every aspect of the organization.

Excellence creates commitment and dedication from everyone in the organization. Once it is accepted and expected, it must be nourished and continually reviewed and renewed. It is a never-ending process of learning and growing. It generates a spirit of motivation and is always the result of a creatively conceived and precisely planned effort.

Excellence inspires every phase of people’s lives. It unleashes an impact which influences every activity, every staff person. To instill it in an organization takes commitment. It demands adaptability, imagination and vigor, but most of all, it requires from everyone a constant state of self-discovery and discipline.

Excellence is an organization’s lifeline. It is the most compelling answer to apathy and inertia. It energizes a stimulating and pulsating force. Once it becomes the expected standard of performance, it develops a fiercely driving and motivation philosophy of operation. Excellence is a state of mind put into action. It is a roadmap to success. When a climate of excellence exists in people, staff, management, and projects, business becomes easier.

Excellence in a person and an organization is important… because it is everything.

I have recently learned that at age 41 that I have Prostate Cancer. Yes, you read that right. I can’t believe it myself. After a series of test I learned about it on Thursday May 29th, 2008. That day will be forever entrenched into my mind. Since then I have done a lot of research, talked to a lot of people and have learned way more than I ever thought I would know about the prostate and prostate cancer. This is my first post on my blog. It seems that my age in an anamoly and there isn’t much data on the Internet for people in their early forties diagnosed with prostate cancer. I want to create this blog so I can share my experience from beginning to end with the hope it will help someone else that may be my age going through this or someone who may have suspicions at this early age but haven’t done anything about it and should be screened. In my next post I will go back to the beginning and talk about my symptoms and blog through until I reach the current time period. From there I will blog my experiences moving forward. Until the next blog…

Read Darren’s tory at: http://darrenritch.blogspot.com/

As I sift through articles and books on training, year after year, every once in a while I come across something that makes sense.

Dr. Mel Siff, a highly regarded sports scientist and author of the book Facts and Fallacies of Fitness, points out that “twentieth-century scientists have raised the heart onto a pedestal, where it remains relatively unchallenged by any other bodily system.… Fascination with the heart has also spawned an industry which has captured the attention of health entrepreneurs and the public—long, slow distance (LSD) athleticism. Cardiac health and prolonged longevity came to be regarded as the consequence of ‘aerobic’ exercise.” Sound familiar? Moreover, he points out, all non-aerobic exercise has been deemed of little consequence in promoting cardiac health. Siff responds to that contention by citing study after study of anaerobic training and its effects on the heart (see, for example, Ralph Paffenbarger‘s studies of longshoremen and stair climbers). Astonishingly enough, hardly any studies have been conducted to show that “aerobic” (LSD) exercise is superior to any other form of exercise for preventing heart disease. So could the LSD/endurance community have it wrong?

Saturday was a big day for Athletes for a Cure. First we watched Athlete for a Cure (did you see the “running man” on his left shoulder) Craig Alexander winning the 2008 Ironman along with millions of others on NBC.

To top off the day we got a Twitter that another Athlete for a Cure, Josh Cox won the Rocket City Marathon in Alabama. Just think, three short years ago there was no Athletes for a Cure! Thank you all for being part of the solution.

Woke up this morning and looked at all my Twitter tweets and saw people getting ready to go to class, ride outside, Christmas shop, basically everyone’s “plan for the day.” Today millions of people I don’t know and don’t know Twitter from Tweety Bird are waking up wondering how long they’re going to live, how much more time cancer is going to give them.

In my job I get to meet a lot of those families and it’s amazing how un-mundane life is to them. My goal for the day today is to appreciate everything that happens in my life and to remember what I forget. It’s an awful, beautiful life.

“Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them – every day begin the task anew.”

– Saint Francis de Sales