Some Motivational TV and Crossfit

I'm sure we'd all love to say that we're always 100% committed to training hard, but... that's not always true, at least for everyone.

Martial arts films and books are often good ways to get re-inspired, and I've talked about some in the past.

Another type of documentary I've been enjoying lately are related to professional athletes in Crossfit or strength events. These are people who are in amazing shape, and can do amazing things, even if they aren't making newspaper headlines on a regular basis.

On Netflix in the US, catch Fittest On Earth - there are at least a couple of them out, and each covers one of the Crossfit Games events. These are the highest level Crossfit competitors on earth, and in pretty much every event each athlete does things I can't even imagine doing.

There's also a documentary called Functional  Fitness, which has more coverage of run of the mill Crossfitters (as opposed to the absolute elites). Seeing passionate amateurs doing some impressive things may be more (or less) motivational to you than watching the elites.

While you're on Netflix, if you want some good martial arts action watch the Daredevil TV show. Great fun. NOT realistic, but it's not supposed to be.

For some strongman stuff, Eddie Strongman, Born Strong, CT Fletcher, and Generation Iron were all fun (I clearly spend too much time streaming and not enough training).

None of these films are particularly worthwhile if you're looking to develop a training routine or learn more about fitness, but they're entertaining and motivational.

Now a word about Crossfit: martial artists often ask whether 'doing Crossfit' will help their martial arts. The short answer is that it might. Not all Crossfit gyms are created equal, and MANY Crossfit gyms (they call them boxes) pay too little attention to scaling workouts. Crossfit in general emphasizes workouts that push you into a very, very fatigued state, and doing high risk explosive movements when you're very tired is a very, very good way to get hurt.

In other words: doing Olympic lifts until you are ready to throw up is probably not safe. If you're a fantastic athlete you can probably get away with it, but this blog is not for people who are already fantastic athletes.

So if you want to do Crossfit, be careful that you find a gym that is less gung ho and more about scaling and safety. And no, you don't NEED to do Crossfit to get into very good shape.