## General Physical Skills – Strength

Read more – General Physical Skills – Stamina

Most training focuses on strength, indeed most body building can be classed as strength training, and you get specialist strength and conditioning coaches. But the definition of strength in this spectrum is limited, typically it refers only to how much weight can be lifted. Which in reality is only one dimension of strength.

When we look at the Crossfit definition of strength it states – The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply force. – so what we’re looking at here is a far broader context of what strength means, indeed when you factor in broad time and modal domains, and you start to consider different weight and rep protocols, strength becomes far more than simply how much you can lift.

as an applied example, a power lifter is strong, but so is a sprinter, yet neither would be remarkably strong in the other’s sport, this is because strength isn’t simply about how fast you can run, or how much you can lift, its about force generated.

And if you recall your highschool physics – power = force x distance /time = work done/ time

so strength is typically what we look at when we consider the ‘force’ in our equation for power, but the other factors, distance, time can significantly change who we define as strong.

this is where Crossfit is unique, sometimes it isn’t the one who lifts the most that wins, and some times its not the one that runs the furthest that wins, its usually the generalist, who has the highest base level of General Physical Preparedness (GPP) over the 10 General Physical Skills that wins.