About nine years ago, a guy who owned a +CrossFit affiliate had a great idea. He wondered, given CrossFit founder Greg Glassman's belief that there exist 10 basic physical skills that indicate fitness, how to test for those skills.
The 10 skills are:
1. Cardio-vascular/cardio-respiratory endurance
2. Stamina
3. Strength
4. Flexibility
5. Power
6. Speed
7. Coordination
8. Accuracy
9. Agility
10. Balance
The people at CrossFit headquarters have helpfully weighed in on the subject & provided several such tests. Others from across the CrossFit community have added their own considerable expertise.
Coach Burgener has become a staple in the CrossFit community, and the Burgener warm-up alone, for example, taught many people how to lift over many years--well in advance of the advent of CrossFit. Similarly, U.S.A. Weightlifting Hall of Fame coach Bob Takano's insights helped many become better lifters prior to his affiliation with CrossFit.
Glassman's original, elegant concept and program, though, has been able to incorporate these (and many others', obviously) teachers' insights & methods. And consider how CrossFit has amplified these teachers ability to influence and benefit others.
The same online technologies that allowed Glassman to take CrossFit so far beyond its Santa Cruz home so fast are those that would allow a revolution in education. Thomas Friedman recognizes this possibility, enthusiastically writing, "I can see a day soon when you'll create your own college degree by taking the best courses from the best professors from around the world...paying only a nominal fee for the certificates of completion." The results, Friedman thinks, will be (at least) as positive and revolutionary as Glassman's have been for fitness. "It will change teaching learning and the pathway to employment," he writes.
That is, more or less, the process that CrossFit has adopted in popularizing the instructional methods of outside professionals. But it is not at all CrossFit's practice in each of its affiliates. There's a lot more to it than that*. Notice, for example, how popular coach Burgener is at any event in which he teaches in person.
Friedman, I suspect, is too sanguine about what an online education can do. Information, of course, is more widely available than ever before. But college, and the instruction available there, is much more than information. Just as CrossFit affiliates (find an affiliate anywhere in the world with this map) teach a lot more than online videos ever could, a collegiate education that consists in no more than knowledge attainment isn't a college education at all--it's an impoverished facsimile.
CrossFit instructors at affiliates teach people to develop physical, intellectual, and practical skills (Hence Burgener's injunction, "That's why they call you coach!" from the video above). And they do it in person, because these skills are notoriously difficult to acquire at a distance, as Hilary Achauer details.
I am interested in considering what tests, drills, exercises, or activities might look like for the top-10 (or so) list of mental skills. And who the teachers are in academic disciplines that might lend their expertise like coaches Glassman, Burgener, and Takano. Charlie Munger's idea of a latticework of mental models provides the kind of organizing structure to intellectual pursuits that Greg Glassman did for the physical.
Before the endeavor could succeed, though, we would still need to follow Glassman and identify and define what the most important intellectual traits are that comprise general intellectual preparedness.
*CrossFit icon Chris Spealler writes, "If you ever lose the community, the accessibility that CrossFit offers to everyone that walks through the doors regardless of their fitness level, and just throwing down with your friends, you may have lost CrossFit." His take on what affiliates, he calls them 'playgrounds' offer is available on the 'teamspeal' blog.
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| Rich Froning has all 10 Physical Skills |
The 10 skills are:
1. Cardio-vascular/cardio-respiratory endurance
2. Stamina
3. Strength
4. Flexibility
5. Power
6. Speed
7. Coordination
8. Accuracy
9. Agility
10. Balance
The people at CrossFit headquarters have helpfully weighed in on the subject & provided several such tests. Others from across the CrossFit community have added their own considerable expertise.
Coach Burgener has become a staple in the CrossFit community, and the Burgener warm-up alone, for example, taught many people how to lift over many years--well in advance of the advent of CrossFit. Similarly, U.S.A. Weightlifting Hall of Fame coach Bob Takano's insights helped many become better lifters prior to his affiliation with CrossFit.
Glassman's original, elegant concept and program, though, has been able to incorporate these (and many others', obviously) teachers' insights & methods. And consider how CrossFit has amplified these teachers ability to influence and benefit others.
The same online technologies that allowed Glassman to take CrossFit so far beyond its Santa Cruz home so fast are those that would allow a revolution in education. Thomas Friedman recognizes this possibility, enthusiastically writing, "I can see a day soon when you'll create your own college degree by taking the best courses from the best professors from around the world...paying only a nominal fee for the certificates of completion." The results, Friedman thinks, will be (at least) as positive and revolutionary as Glassman's have been for fitness. "It will change teaching learning and the pathway to employment," he writes.
That is, more or less, the process that CrossFit has adopted in popularizing the instructional methods of outside professionals. But it is not at all CrossFit's practice in each of its affiliates. There's a lot more to it than that*. Notice, for example, how popular coach Burgener is at any event in which he teaches in person.
Friedman, I suspect, is too sanguine about what an online education can do. Information, of course, is more widely available than ever before. But college, and the instruction available there, is much more than information. Just as CrossFit affiliates (find an affiliate anywhere in the world with this map) teach a lot more than online videos ever could, a collegiate education that consists in no more than knowledge attainment isn't a college education at all--it's an impoverished facsimile.
CrossFit instructors at affiliates teach people to develop physical, intellectual, and practical skills (Hence Burgener's injunction, "That's why they call you coach!" from the video above). And they do it in person, because these skills are notoriously difficult to acquire at a distance, as Hilary Achauer details.
I am interested in considering what tests, drills, exercises, or activities might look like for the top-10 (or so) list of mental skills. And who the teachers are in academic disciplines that might lend their expertise like coaches Glassman, Burgener, and Takano. Charlie Munger's idea of a latticework of mental models provides the kind of organizing structure to intellectual pursuits that Greg Glassman did for the physical.
Before the endeavor could succeed, though, we would still need to follow Glassman and identify and define what the most important intellectual traits are that comprise general intellectual preparedness.
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| Richard Feynman had (at least) the top-10 mental skills. Can we test for them? |
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