Introducing Fitness Level

In the weeks following the CrossFit Games, we will be releasing some powerful new features for Coaches and Athletes alike. We will be introducing, for the first time ever, a Fitness Level to gauge your overall Fitness and Progress. This is a single number that captures how your performance stacks up to the rest of the community. We are also releasing our new “Analyze” section, which will better harness our 5 million+ results to give you more actionable information about your Programming, Strengths, and Weaknesses. Check out below for more details and a Sneak Peak at our Android App.

Fitness Level

Your Overall Fitness Level number can range from 0-100.  It is a relative measure of Fitness, meaning it compares your performance to the rest of the community.  A Fitness Level of 77 means you are more Fit than roughly 77% of the community.  As athletes everywhere continue to improve, it will become harder and harder to stay in front of the curve.

Your Overall Fitness Level is determined by averaging your performance across 8 different categories.  For each of these categories you will receive a Category Level, as seen in the bar chart above.

Fitness Level Categories

The categories include Power Lifts and Olympic Lifts, which are determined by your average levels of those respective lifts.  The Speed category looks at your average levels for Shorter Runs and Rows (100m to 1000m), while the Endurance category looks at Longer Runs and Rows (1000m to 10km).  There are also four Conditioning/MetCon Categories.   We have divided Benchmark workouts and other popular workouts into four different categories.  The first three include Bodyweight, Light, and Heavy workouts, all 20 minutes and under.  The Long category includes workouts where the average time to completion is greater than 20 minutes.  By combining your levels in these 8 categories, we get a very broad measure of your overall Fitness.

Notes about Fitness Levels:

• There is a specific list of Workouts and Movements that are used in calculating your Fitness Level.  These workouts must be done as Rx’d (not modified) in order to receive a level for that workout.  If you don’t have any qualifying results for a category, you won’t have a level for that category.
• Modified workouts do not receive a level.  At this point, there is no acceptable method for comparing differently scaled workouts (that doesn’t mean we haven’t been trying, or that we’re giving up…)
• Modified workout results are all put below Rx’d results when calculating levels.  It’s a standard practice across our community that someone who completes a workout Rx’d automatically beats someone who scales, even though sometimes the scaled time might be considered a better performance.  We realize this is not always true, but looking through the data, we discovered the exceptions were pretty rare and not statistically significant.
• We only consider your best score/time/lift over the Last 6 Months.  We don’t look at your awesome Fran from 4 years ago, because it doesn’t tell us very much about what you are capable of currently.  Conversely, if you are sick, having a bad day, taking it easy, etc., we will not hold that against you.  As long as you have a better performance on that workout/lift in the last 6 months, your level will not go down.  You will have a little time to redeem yourself while that older result is still within the 6 month window.
• We automatically pull in Power Lifts and Olympic Lifts from lifting workouts, so you don’t have to do a specific 1RM workout to get credit.  We also pull in run and row intervals (e.g. 4 x 400m runs) if they are your fastest, and use them for your Speed and Endurance Categories.
• By drilling down to the Category Pages (Analyze > Fitness Level > Bodyweight, e.g.) you can see all the workouts that count for that category, and which one you have done in the last 6 months.

Fitness Level History

We have calculated Fitness Levels retroactively, so you will have accurate Fitness Levels for your entire history on Beyond the Whiteboard. We have graphed the history of your overall fitness level, as well as the history each of the 8 categories, so you can see how those have progressed over time.

Analyze

Analyze your Programming by Type, Modality, Duration, Reps, and Scheme. This breakdown is modeled after the CrossFit Coach’s Prep Course. This heatmap will show you your individual workout trends, by Month or by Day. This will be available for Coaches to look at their Gym Programming as well. The numbers represent the number of WODs from that category during the time period. Higher numbers are a brighter Blue, giving you a visual idea of the balance of your programming.

Weaknesses

The Weaknesses Status Bar is a bird’s eye view into a deeper analysis of the Strength, Mobility, and Technique issues an athlete might be facing.  In each weakness area, we compare your levels on certain lifts and movements.  Large discrepancies in levels indicate possible weaknesses.

• Green dots indicate that there isn’t a large discrepancy in levels for that particular weakness area.
• Orange dots indicate a spread of 5-10 between the highest and lowest levels in that area.
• Red dots indicate a spread of 10+ between the highest and lowest levels in that area.
• Gray dots indicate that we don’t have enough results from the last 6 months in that area.

Clicking “View More Details” will take you to the “Analyze > Weaknesses” section, where you will be given 12 different graphs that will help you identify different types of weaknesses.  Above is an example of one of these graphs.  Each graph uses your individual levels in each of the lifts/movements to compare your proficiency and highlight discrepancies.  In this particular graph, we compare your level for Shoulder Press, Push Press, and Jerk.  If all of your levels for these three lifts were the same, that would indicate that you are balanced between the three lifts compared to the rest of the community.  In this example, we have the chart from a member of CrossFit Kinnick (Danny O.).  As you can see, as the lifts get more dynamic and technical, his level goes up.  This indicates that his strict strength is not as developed as his hips and Olympic weightlifting technique, compared to other CrossFitters.  So we might recommend that Danny focus more time to developing his strict overhead pressing strength, to help bring that level in line with his other overhead lifts.

Sign Up (Free 30 Day Trial)