Functional
Exercise should be as functional as possible. Exercise should help us carry out life’s tasks. All physical tasks demand moving a load over a distance. Whether we are moving ourselves: running, jumping, biking, swimming, or something else: lifting, carrying, pushing, pulling, we are always moving a load over a distance. For this reason, 320 Gym includes running, jumping, pulling, pushing, squatting, and rowing. We do it for long, medium, and short periods, with heavy, moderate, and light loads, because each time period and load develops strength and conditioning a little differently. The goal is to be prepared for any physical task. The result is confidence in your physical ability, and a variety of training that keeps your mind fresh and your body balanced.
Flexible
Everybody’s goals, ability levels, and schedules are different. In fact, your goals, ability level, and schedule are going to change as you progress through life. This is why 320 Gym provides a framework instead of a prescribed workout. With 320 Gym, you can workout 3, 4, or 5 days per week. You can use the framework with a full CrossFit gym, a garage gym, or just you and a dumbbell. You can move your intensity levels up or down based on how you are feeling on a given day or week. The important thing is that you are working on your strength, conditioning, and flexibility each week. Rigid systems can lead to burnout and injury. No system at all can lead to minimal progress and poor commitment. 320 Gym tries to strike a balance between these two extremes to bring a flexible system that can lead to a lifetime of fitness.
Measurable
CrossFit has done a great job taking measurable exercise beyond the sports of powerlifting, olympic lifting, running, biking, swimming, and rowing. These are great sports, but the average person does not want to specialize in one. Rather, the average person is looking for broad fitness.
In order to track fitness, we use the tool Beyond the Whiteboard. Beyond the Whiteboard was developed in the CrossFit community and leverages the popular benchmark workouts done within the community. Because so many people have done the same workouts, a reliable distribution of times or weights exist for a wide range of exercises. For example, the distribution for a 1 Mile Run looks like so:
By using Beyond the Whiteboard, you may find out that you are in the 40th percentile of bench press, the 70th percentile of 1 mile run times, and the 90th percentile of 5 km run times. With these stats, you learn where you are weak and strong compared to other people. Maybe you want to be well conditioned and just maintain a reasonable strength level. Then you can be satisfied with a 40th percentile bench and 90th percentile 5k. However, if you are looking to be as well rounded as possible, then a 40th percentile bench and 90th percentile 5k show your need to prioritize training upper body strength and deprioritize endurance running. Beyond the Whiteboard will give you a fitness level in 8 categories and then a cumulative fitness level. This gives you a comprehensive measure of your overall fitness and a reliable way to track your progress over months and years.
To be clear, all components of your workout do not need to be measured. You can warm-up, cool down, stretch, and work on technique without having any concern for measurability. But the main course of the workout session should be a conditioning and/or strength workout that can be measured. The measurability will up your intensity, allow you to track your progress, and create a fun way to compare your results against others. Do not get obsessed with your numbers, because the goal is to become more conditioned and stronger over a lifetime, but the numbers can be a lot of fun and a motivating way to maintain great fitness.
320 Gym 