It is CrossFit Games season. At last count, nearly 20,000 athletes from all over the world were competing for the title of "Fittest on Earth". I am among the 20,000, but at 40 years old, I have no disillusions that I will win. For me, it is about the test, the competition, and the community - and I suspect it is that way for most folks.
This year, qualifying rounds for The Games are being handled differently. Once a week for six (er, "seven") weeks, a workout (or "WOD") is posted on the CrossFit Games website. Those who signed up have a week to execute the WOD and submit their scores. At the end of this "Open" round, qualified individuals will advance to live rounds of head-to-head competition in the Regional Competition. Those winners then proceed to The CrossFit Games, held in Los Angeles later this summer.
We are seeing athletes of all levels compete this year and this experience has further solidified my interest in CrossFit and its relationship to education. In this week's blog, I will detail why CrossFit is a better learning/testing pedagogy than we use in our public schools, and in my next, demonstrate how the intangible / non-measurable aspects of CrossFit (i.e. - coaching and community) fulfill educational goals that our current system does not. I'm not sure how many times I'll write on this correlation, but we'll at least get started with those two.
CrossFit, in its purist sense, relies on a "true score." In other words, a valid and reliable test is employed against an individual's physical abilities to determine their "fitness." For CrossFitters, "fitness" = "work capacity."
In CrossFit, the "valid and reliable test" of an individual's fitness is determined through a series of workouts (WODs) that combine three fundamental fitness applications: weightlifting, gymnastics and traditional cardiovascular / metabolic conditioning movements like running and jumping.
In order to achieve "fitness," an athlete has to demonstrate proficiency in ten basic (aka - fundamental) domains: cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, agility, balance, coordination, and accuracy. Importantly, CrossFit is scalable, making it available to anyone, regardless of experience.
Okay, that was a lot of words, this is what I was saying:
CrossFit measures your actual physical ability by using workouts comprised of gymnastics, weightlifting and running/jumping. Things like the amount of weight used in a WOD, number of repetitions, etc. vary from one WOD to the next, and are established to give a benchmark to measure against individually, and summatively. The "most fit" use the prescribed weight and repetitions, but "newbies" can scale back the workouts to their ability, gradually increasing the weight and repetitions as their mastery of the fundamental movements improves.
Importantly, there is no "final fitness score" in the sense there is in education. You might win The Games, but you never actually "win" or "graduate" from the School of Fitness. This unknown finishing point and the fact that you are ultimately testing only against yourself is what makes CrossFit a pure, or true test. To borrow a Billy the Kid quote from the movie Young Guns, "You have to test yourself every day, gentlemen. Once you stop testing yourself, you get slow.... And that's when they kill ya."
Okay, that quote is a little extreme, but the truth is we don't really have a similar application in our education system. We look at collective scores of a standardized test or a grade point average based on a 100-point scale and see how we (or our kids) measure up versus another individual or group, but we never really know our personal "true score."
Additionally, tests are too often used to measure rote ability, and not metacognitive ability (where Bloom's higher levels of analysis and synthesis might be employed.) In other words, we don't spend the time developing and mastering the fundamentals, and then test the logical extended application of those fundamentals (i.e. - advanced cognitive skills). Instead, we layer foundation on foundation with an ultimate goal of a standardized test score - and sadly, those scores determine funding for school districts (Title IX funds under NCLB, for example.)
Further, the information tested is typically based on a curriculum defined by people who are disconnected from any particular school, and without consideration for individual limitations or distinguishing cultural factors -- these tests are not "true," yet they define our education system and ultimately, the success and failure of individuals and their communities.
Accountability is important. Taxpayers should "get their money's worth" for their tax dollars, but they should also get good citizens who are taught to think beyond the book and not merely to it. Without the proper foundation and a true test, students will never achieve this potential. Instead, we will continue to work towards the middle, and ultimately wind up with a bunch of people who know nothing more than ACCA-CCA-CCAA, DABACCA-CCA-CAA, CA-DACCA-CAA-CAA...
BTW - at 40 years old, after the first week of the CrossFit Open, my true score vs. the rest of the world puts me in the top 1/3 against all male competitors -- lotta young punks should be ashamed an old dude like me is kicking their ass. Okay, that was mean. What I meant to say was "keep trying young punks, there is still plenty of time to try to catch me!"
Congratulations to my fellow team-members at CrossFit Cedar Park for being 9th in our region after week one of the Open!
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The author of this blog is a proud parent, devoted, happily married husband, early morning CrossFit Coach at CrossFit Cedar Park, recently certified to teach 4th-8th grade and is pursuing a Masters Degree in Curriculum and Instruction. He also loves to cook (especially Cajun food), work in his garden, watch LSU and the Saints play football, and he has a law degree. If your school could use an excellent teacher with some real world experience and amazing credentials, please let him know!
