The CrossFit Open is a great challenge to test mental and physical endurance once a year. For those of us relatively new to CrossFit I think a monthly or quarterly checkup tool would be great to tell us where we are making progress and give us some road markers along the way. While the benchmark workouts are fantastic indicator of overall fitness, they rarely tell us how we are progressing in terms of strength or endurance and what we should work on most. I always liked the Level 1-4 benchmarks coined by CrossFit Seattle and it inspired a simple benchmarking tool.
I wanted to track over time progress in 4 specific areas: strength, technical gymnastics, bodyweight exercises and endurance. I created a spreadsheet to give me the 4 metrics for each of these areas and track average and overall progress over time. The strength benchmarks are a function of bodyweight the others are standard for all. The results are showing below the overall progress and also the need to work as much on endurance as on strength. I now have 3 quarterly results since I started CrossFit last June until this month. Great progress in all areas, but clearly need to go for a long run today for endurance… (Anyone interested in the spreadsheet please email me (tamas AT rxthewod.com) and I’m happy to send along. Hope you can improve on it.)
