Crossfit: a standard for measuring the work — the Felsted!

One of the innovations of Crossfit was developing a series of standardized workouts that allowed athletes to compare their level of fitness.  The workouts involve a combination of  many, many domains of strength, agility, and endurance.  So it’s a great way to make a comparison of an individual’s ability.

But I was thinking the other day that I wanted to come up with a way to measure ability at a more granular level.  So let’s say athlete 1 is a 150 lb. man, and athelete 2 is a 245 lb. man, and they do the same set of exercise at the same rate — who worked the hardest? I thought it must be the smaller man.  But by how much?

Well I came up with a way to answer that question.  The Felsted!  The Felsted measurement is named after Angela Felsted, a very talented athlete who was named  Crossfit Games MVP by the Crossfit Games MVP Committee [full disclosure: I am the sole member of the Committee].

Anyway the idea is to measure pound-for-pound the output of two atheletes based on a 100 lb output standard.  For example, Crossfit Games workout 12.1 was max burpees in 7 minutes.  The Felsted standard  is 100, based on Angela’s ouput (I’ve normalized weight and results).  So how does that compare to a 200 lb. man did 125 burpees in 7 minutes? Simple!  Take a weight coefficient of .75, multiply by the number of burpees of 125, which yields 93.75, multiply that by 100 and you get .94!  So the 200 lb man exerted .94 of a Felsted!  Neat, isn’t it?

The 12.3 WOD is a bit trickier because you have to account for the difference in WOD weights.  But if a 200 lb man had a score of 300, we adjust for the percentage of barbell weight, yielding an relative output of 363.45 (75 lbs vs 115 lbs for 32% of the workload). Then we adjust for body weight using a coefficient of .75, multiply that by the relative output, divide by 243 (Angela’s output) and you get 1.12 Felsteds!

I have no doubt the Felsted measurement of output will re-revolutionalize Crossfit.

Well that’s it for now.  Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

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4 Responses to Crossfit: a standard for measuring the work — the Felsted!

  1. Pingback: CrossFit: Peak Fitness Revisited | The Writers Block

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  3. travis says:

    how curious that im the first and sole comment… scott you are a nut case.

    • scharles says:

      Travis: your Felsted Quotient based on a score of 370 for WOD 12.3 is .98! Almost 1 Felsted! Nice work dude. Cheers!

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