The Overlooked and Undervalued Benefits of CrossFit

There are many clear and obvious benefits to CrossFit® such as the improvements in fitness, confidence, health and movement that it causes.

There is much empirical evidence to back up these claims. These are all well documented.

This article seeks to uncover and highlight the lesser known and more idiosyncratic positives that CrossFit® causes, both as a force in the fitness industry and on a communal and individual level.

CrossFit® Promotes Function over Aesthetics

One of the central principles of CrossFit® is that function comes first. What you can do comes first. The way that this method of training and eating makes your body look comes second. Function is always the top priority.

This is good for many reasons.

It makes Progress Objective

If an athlete’s goal is simply to “look better” then this goal is vague, limited by self-perception and difficult to measure and track.

How would you do this?

One option is that the athlete could take before and after photos to measure aesthetic progress but ultimately it still comes down to personal opinion.

Another more scientific way would be to or measure parameters such as fat loss or muscle gain. These are often hard to measure accurately without more sophisticated apparatus and difficult to make part of an everyday routine.

Additionally, there is no end goal, or clear milestones along the way. This makes it harder to stay motivated and keep training.