Fit for Anything: Why CrossFit Trains All 10 General Physical Skills

The List That Explains Everything You Do in the Gym

If you have ever wondered why CrossFit looks the way it does — why you run and lift and flip and jump all in the same program — the 10 general physical skills are your answer. Originally developed by Jim Cawley and Bruce Evans, founders of Dynamax Med Balls, the list appears in the CrossFit article, “What Is Fitness?” and defines exactly what a complete fitness program should develop.

If you’d rather watch or listen to this conversation, you can do that here.

The 10 skills break into three tiers. 

The top four — cardiorespiratory endurance, stamina, flexibility, and strength — are developed primarily through training. 

The middle two — power and speed — require both training and practice in equal measure, drawing heavily on neurological capacity as well as physical development. 

The bottom four — coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy — are developed almost entirely through practice.

The tiers are not rigid walls. All 10 skills are deeply interrelated. Better coordination improves the strength you can express. Better balance unlocks more power. Missing one skill creates gaps in the others, whether you notice it or not.

Why You Train Everything

CrossFit pursues all 10 skills because the world does not announce which ones it will demand of you.

An elite marathon runner has made a deliberate trade-off. Strength, flexibility, power, and speed have been sacrificed to get to a sub-two-hour finish. That is an extraordinary achievement, but it is built around a single goal. Your goal is different. You are training for the full range of what life might ask of you.

A friend invites you to go paddleboarding. A family member needs help moving heavy furniture. A storm rolls through, and there is unexpected physical work to do. These situations call on different combinations of skills in ways you cannot predict. The broader your fitness, the better your odds of meeting the moment.

What This Means for You

Understanding this list changes how you think about the workouts you least enjoy. The movements that feel awkward or neurologically demanding, the ones that require coordination and precision and practice, are exactly the ones you need most if you tend to avoid them. That discomfort is usually a signal that a skill is underdeveloped.

It also reframes what “weakness” means in CrossFit. When the program pushes you toward something uncomfortable, it is not randomness. It is the program finding gaps along this list and filling them. That is the design.

One more thing worth knowing: As you get older, the instinct is often to simplify. To drop the complex movements. To stick with machines or low-skill alternatives that feel safer. But pulling the neurological component out of your training does not preserve your capacity; it erodes it. Power and speed require practicing the skills that produce them. There is no shortcut around that.

Fitness That Shows Up in Real Life

CrossFit Seminar Staff member Eric O’Connor (CF-L4) trains a 75-year-old client who was 2 miles into a hike when he came across another hiker who had fallen and couldn’t get up. He deadlifted the person off the ground using strength and technique built over years of consistent training. Then, he helped them walk back to the parking lot, a task that required the endurance he had also developed. There was no cell service. There was no other option. His fitness was the plan.

That is what this list is building toward. Not the fastest marathon time. Not the biggest squat. Something harder to measure and more broadly useful: the capacity to do real work, across a wide range of demands, whenever it is required.

Developing all 10 skills will not make you elite in any single one. It will make you capable across all of them. In most situations that actually matter, that is the better deal.

About the Author

Stephane Rochet is a Senior Content Writer for CrossFit. He has worked as a Flowmaster on the CrossFit Seminar Staff and has over 15 years of experience as a collegiate/tactical strength and conditioning coach. He is a Certified CrossFit Trainer (CF-L3) and trains athletes in his garage.