The 10 General Physical Skills and Why They Aren’t the Most Important When It Comes to Training
There are ten physical skills that the body possesses and they are broken down by their response on the body.
Endurance, Stamina, Strength and Flexibility are Trained skills. Meaning they are skills that provide a measurable organic change in the body.
Coordination, Agility, Balance, and Accuracy are practiced skills. These skills are measured by changes in the nervous system.
Finally, Power and Speed are adaptations of both.
These skills are what we work on every day in our gym. We use a variety of movements and workouts to increase our performance in all of these skills. We try to do that without focusing on any one skill specifically. We feel this gives us the best opportunity to increase our fitness in the most efficient way possible. That said, training one or a couple of these skills more frequently than others is not necessarily a bad thing. We just recognize that focusing more on specific skills is sport.
Take, for example, a Marathon runner. They are certainly focused on Endurance and Stamina, as well as Speed. The other skills, however, tend to take a back seat or are not even trained at all because the focus is to optimize the most important skills for that sport.
Another example I like to use is the Power Lifter. This person is focused on Power and Strength and not so much anything else. Again, this training is for competition and can be viewed more as a sport rather than a fitness discipline.
As CrossFitters the results produced by these specified training methodologies are not what we hope to achieve because of their specificity. Our goal is a more well rounded fitness adaptation. We aim to be overall healthier and fitter than we were before so that we can achieve and optimal life. That is not to say that training for sport cannot happen. We certainly can train for sport if that is something we enjoy.
As a matter of fact, CrossFit is also a sport. If you ever observe a sport specific CrossFitter you will see that they have to put in more time than the average Joe in order to achieve optimal levels of fitness in each skill. What I mean by that is they must be better than others in those skills not necessarily competent for their overall fitness.
These skills and the way we train them in CrossFit are necessary for our health and a hopefully disease free life but they are not the most important skill.
Consistency is a skill that can be trained. Think about all of the things you do in life. All of those things from fitness to sport, from sleeping to cooking, from driving to playing with your kids can all be trained to optimize results. The best way to train anything is to be consistent in that training.
We understand that failure happens. We can never “get” something the first time we try it but we can train it over and over again so that we can improve it.
As a CrossFit coach the biggest obstacle I see to a successful gym member is their consistent approach to training. I can tell within a couple of weeks whether a new member will last or not. They must fall in love with training but they don’t realize the only way to do this is to show up as much as they can for the first two to three months. They have to develop a habit even when the training is the hardest and it is the hardest in the beginning.
As a gym owner my mission is to train consistency. A coach trains physical skills. An owner trains mental skills. How do we get a new member to overcome those life obstacles that prevent them from getting into the gym? That is the million dollar question and the one we constantly have to work on.
As a member when you first come to our gym we try to hammer home that this type of training, as with any training, is hard. It is certainly physically hard, but it is the mental part that is the hardest to overcome. It is easy to make excuses to not show up. We find excuses to not do something every single day. We have to recognize when we are doing this and it is of the utmost importance to have a plan to combat this.
Our mission is to help our members through this process. We understand it is difficult, but we are here every step of the way to assist you.
God Bless!!!