Measure of Success

How do you measure the success of a training program? That question was hotly debated on the Slowtwitch triathlon forum last week as well as on the CrossFit Endurance blog. The thread was a response to the interview of Brian McKenzie, developer of CrossFit Endurance, on the TriMax Fitness blog.

In that debate, many of the Slowtwitchers disregarded CrossFit Endurance as an efficacious training method because it has yet to produce a World Champion, or even solid age group champions for that matter, despite the fact that the program has only been available to the public for about a year and has been under development by Brian McKenzie for only about 4-5 years.

If the measure of a program's success is that it must produce champions, well then, really only a handful of programs throughout the world can be considered successful. To me that seems like a ludicrous yard stick. There are tons and tons of great coaches out there who have done great things for their athletes but have yet to produce an overall local race champion, let alone a world championship. That doesn't mean that their programming sucks, they can only take their athletes to the limits of each athlete's potential. Beyond that, no program in the world is going to squeeze out any better results.

There are countless people who are following the CrossFit Endurance method and significantly improving their performance, all the while reducing their overall training volume. To me that's success. I don't care if an athlete finishes DFL (Dead F*cking Last) in every race he/she does. If he/she is now finishing those races faster than before, but is still DFL, well, in my book that's a success. How about this...what if your time doesn't improve, but the required training hours to stay at the same level are cut by 40%? I think you can call that success. If I can run the same distance in the same amount of time but now I do it on 6 hours of training per week versus 10, that's great. That's 4 more hours I can spend with my family or getting things done around the house or hell maybe even I could sleep in on a Sunday.

Suggesting that a program is worthless because no current world champions follow the method is ignorant. I'm not necessarily saying that CrossFit Endurance IS the future of endurance training, but it seems to be working for a lot of people. I'm currently putting it to my own personal test and am eagerly awaiting my first go at running 50 miles on May 9th. If I don't win the race does that mean that CrossFit Endurance is a failure? Come on, use your head.