CrossFit claims to their athletes are “The Fittest on Earth.” Yet I’ve repeatedly mentioned NFL players are, bar none, the best athletes in the world.
For instance, with leaping ability, many would default to NBA players being the best. However, two years ago I showed that’s not the case.
Looking at the top jumpers of the 2015 NBA and NFL combine–
NBA: | NFL:
1) J. Anderson 38…………………….1. C. Conley 45
2) P. Connaughton 37.5 ………….2. B. Jones 44.5
3) J. Williams 35……………………..3. A. Abdullah 42.5
4) K.T. Harrell 35…………………….4. D. Tull 42.5
5) K. Oubre 34.5……………………..5. B. Dupree 42
6) J.P Tokoto 34.5…………………..6. J. Strong 42
7) J. Young 34.5………………………7. K. Bell 41.5
8) M. Thornton 34.5……………….8. R. Darby 41.5
9) K. Sykes 34…………………………9. K. Johnson 41.5
10) K. Cochran 34…………………..10. D. Johnson 41.5
Nobody in the top 10 of the NBA draft would even be in the top 10 of the NFL draft. The NFL has more than 15 guys over 40 inches! The NBA has zero! The top ten NFL guys are on average 20% better. That’s not “NFL players are somewhat better jumpers than NBA players.” That’s “NFL players destroy NBA players in vertical jumping.”
Most other sports are obvious. Track and Field goes in a straight line. Beyond the fact many NFL players were all-state in track but went into football for monetary / status / love violence reasons, it’s questionable to state anybody in track is more athletic than a sport requiring all the different dimensions football does.
Baseball you can too often have a beer belly and be a hall of famer. You can too easily specialize, barely having to do more than a single movement. For instance, good hitter, fielder who doesn’t move (first base), pitcher. Even in the positions which throw a ball, pitcher and quarterback, there is a hell of a lot more going on for quarterbacks than pitchers. Like that whole potential of getting your head torn off.
Nobody actually thinks hockey players could out run, jump, lift, NFL players. Let’s be real. If your sport has no black athletes, it’s not that athletic.
I’m not going to go into every sport here. I realize those in other countries largely don’t even care about these sports, and are thinking “What about football to the rest of the world? Or rugby?” Succinctly, I’d say the same thing about CrossFit. Pure speed, change of direction, leaping ability, size, every athletic measure but endurance is borderline obviously in favor of NFL players.
When in doubt, a simple way to view it is take NFL players and put them in the sport of question. Ok, now take the sport in question, and put them in the NFL. If the NFL players would obviously have an easier time with the transition, that tells you who is the better pure athlete.
Now for that endurance question…
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CrossFit
On the surface, CrossFit is actually a much harder comparison. Because it’s meant to be all over the place, it’s tough to give a head to head comparison.
CrossFit does have agility, sprinting and strength events. Agility / sprinting wise, again, we’re not drunk here. These guys can’t move like NFL players do.
Strength wise? We might think hey, CrossFitters are pretty strong. Then we realize NFL players are dramatically heavier. The only way there is a comparison is if we only look at wide receivers.
Black lines are recent players.
NFL players are overwhelmingly not fat. Given a similar height, considering how much more muscle they have, they’re going to be stronger.
Granted, many NFL players are taller than CrossFitters. Let’s think about positions which are around the same height. Corner Back, Running Back, Linebacker. CrossFitters run 5’7″ to 6’3″. That’s about right for these NFL positions.
The biggest debate a CrossFitter is going to have is endurance. “NFL players can’t last like we can. If we only lifted like they did, or let ourselves be that heavy, then we’d be stronger too.”
How do we compare this?
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Superstars
It occurred to me athletes used to take part in a show called Superstars. Athletes from all kinds of sports would compete in a version of the decathlon. NFL players would golf, baseball players would shoot hoops, they’d all have to run.
The show is off the air now. The last time it ran was 2001. Here are the results from the 2001 half mile run:
- Tiki Barber was a 205 pound running back for the Giants.
- Ronde Barber was a 185 pound corner back for the Buccaneers
- Ray Lewis was a 240 pound linebacker for the Ravens
Rich Froning and Mat Fraser are the most dominant CrossFitters of all-time. They are 195 and 190 pounds.
- According to an interview with Chris Hinshaw, Froning’s running coach, when Froning won his four CrossFit games, he had a six minute mile best.
- In Sports Illustrated Fraser said he’s trying to squat 500 pounds and run a five minute mile. Let’s say his best is 5:30.
-> By the way, here’s Derrick Henry, an average NFL running back, squatting 500 pounds…at 6’3″:
Saquon I’m-not-even-out-of-college-yet Barkley, another running back, repping 495 lbs:
Using some random pace converter,
- Ronde Barber’s 2:09 half mile converts to a 4:40 mile.
- Tiki Barber’s 2:18 half mile converts to a 4:59 mile.
- Ray Lewis’ 2:20 half mile converts to a 5:04 mile.
I hope that floors you. RAY LEWIS IS TWO HUNDRED FORTY POUNDS!
“Lewis is rare.”
Ray was 6’1″, 240 pounds, and ran a 4.58 40 yard dash. If we look from 2004 to 2017, just at the NFL combine -not everybody even participates in it(!)- there have been 78 players similar to Lewis. That is, linebackers who have run a 4.68 40 yard dash or under.
NFL players typically go into the combine at 21 years old. So, if you go in 2004, then 2017 you’re 34 years old, which was the oldest contestant in CrossFit this year. The CrossFit games are 40 athletes per year. That means in the last 13 years, there have been enough NFL, Ray Lewis like linebackers, at 21 years of age (not even peak athletic age), to have taken up TWO CrossFit Games’ fields. Meaning not a single CrossFit athlete would get into the competition. They wouldn’t even get into a second tier competition. And we’ve only examined one position.
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By the way, NFL players do not train to run half miles! They did the Superstars show with I guarantee at most a couple weeks of dicking around training. It’s not like they spent years training for this like CrossFit athletes do.
Even if the NFL players had, at worst, the same endurance capacity as the CrossFit athletes, they’re going to destroy them on every other metric. I mean, if CrossFitters were better at every metric, why the hell would they be doing a sport they can barely make any money in??? (To win the Games isn’t even close to a game check for a good NFL player.) Again, Ray Lewis is fifty god damn pounds heavier than the best CrossFitters. Is he really losing any type of lifting contest??? He chased down the most elusive humans in existence for a living. Is he really losing any sprint or agility contest?
Mat Fraser actually ran a mile as part of the Murph event. He did it with a 25 pound vest on. His first mile, where his legs were freshest, was about 7:20.
Even if you want to say he was saving some energy for the rest of the event, you’d have to take TWO MINUTES off that mile time to get to Tiki Barber, and he’d STILL be 15 pounds lighter than Tiki and over THIRTY pounds lighter than Lewis.
Besides offensive lineman, NFL players are going to easily run six minute miles. (If you gave the linemen time to train and lose weight, they’d be there too. They are very athletic, but being so heavy doesn’t make it as apparent.) Meaning they would easily be more than sufficient CrossFit endurance wise. This is, I cannot overstate, with no dedicated endurance training.
The only other metric left would be mental toughness…have you seen Ray Lewis speak? He talks as if he’s a professional human hunter motivational preacher. Have you seen what NFL players are willing to do to win? Run around with a catheter in them? Play with broken limbs, ruptured ligaments. Willingly accept a greater likelihood of brain degeneration. Pay one another thousands of dollars if they injure an opponent? Happily say they’d prefer to die on the field than anywhere else? I’m not going to say NFL players are by themselves in this category (combat sports can’t be ignored), but at worst they’re standing with friends at the top.
I enjoy CrossFit the sport. It’s entertaining and certainly physically impressive. But CrossFit, particularly the males, have progressively been giving an impression of genuinely believing they’re the fittest on Earth. (Even Fraser looks to be falling into this.) In reality, they are other sport rejects. (Fraser was a mediocre olympic weightlifter.) Which makes a lot of sense. One reason they think they’re so fit is because they’ve never gotten to a level, such as high stakes football, to see what true freaks are. NFL players are rare people. Most will not come across them in their lifespan, certainly not in an athletic contest.
Let’s not allow clever marketing to cloud reality.
Jennifer
September 9, 2017
Just wondering how male gymnasts would rank? Strength – check, speed -check, endurance-check, but let’s add balance and flexibility. One would assume NFL players are mighty stiff. How does flexibility play out when it is such a huge factor in regards to aging? Thank you for your insight.
b-reddy
September 12, 2017
Hey Jennifer,
Interesting bringing up that population. Didn’t think about them.
Relative strength they definitely have. Absolute strength is going to be lacking though. For instance, the guy who won the men’s all around in 2016 is only 121 lbs. You can’t be too strong at that weight. (At least not in the sense of NFL strong.)
With being that short and light, speed is going to be lacking too. You just don’t see guys killing it in the sprints at that light of a bodyweight. Furthermore, the predominant gymnasts of recent memory are Asian and Russian. Those aren’t fast genetics.
Endurance and it’s going to be primarily upper body. There isn’t really much being asked of the legs in gymnastics, certainly not on the order of a mile run.
Balance and I’d point to what a NFL running back encounters. Their ability to control their body is going to be hard to surpass. It’s just in a different manner than a gymnast. Though, if someone wants to say gymnasts have better body control, I wouldn’t fight them much on it. I would say the control is easier though. That’s because it’s all able to be anticipated. A gymnast knows what they’re doing next; a football player does not, due to needing to react.
Overall, I’d still point to the transfer of sports. With training, could a gymnast be in the NFL? No. If nothing else, size wise they couldn’t make it. (You could also point to the lack of Asians in the NFL despite so many living in America.) Could a NFL person make it in gymnastics though? There are enough NFL players around 5’10”, with enough gymnasts close to that height, that I’d say they have a much better chance making it in gymnastics than the other way around. (But the NFL guys would probably need to cut a good deal of weight.)
Muscle flexibility and I wouldn’t worry about NFL players. Stretching is pretty big in the football world. Of course not gymnastics big, but it’s done. Joint flexibility is different though. Doing a split isn’t something everybody can just practice their way to. There are genetics, and developmental factors involved in that. For instance, if you grow up attempting splits, you’re much more likely to be able to do it as an adult than if you only start trying as an adult. So in that regard, if you took current NFL players, many could very well have an issue with that. If you took those guys and had them do it since childhood though, it’d be less a concern.
All that said, that type of flexibility isn’t healthy. When joints can move like that, it comes with risk. For instance, the more mobile a joint is, the more easily is dislocates. Ballerinas are notorious for hip dysplasia as one example. Longterm, such as aging, that is *not* a joint you want. Too much flexibility is just as bad as too little.
Adam
September 14, 2017
Fun article. It’s hard for regular people to fully appreciate how big AND fast elite football players are. I had a close friend play at univ of Texas from roughly 2002-2007 and met some players in person.
-Brian Robinson (Vikings def end) was a high school discus national champ and I think set some Texas high school records. 40.5 inch vertical at combine.
-Jamaal Charles (chiefs RB) was a Big 12 100m sprint champ. Ran a 10.23
-And my favorite freak show Roy Williams (former reciver for the lions and cowboys). In 2000 at the State Track meet he entered 3 events. He won the long jump competition with a jump of 25’6″. He placed 2nd in the high jump with a jump of 6’10”. Then followed that up with a 3rd place finish in the 100 meter, with a time of 10.38. So he could basically jump further/higher and run faster than any high schooler in Texas. His high school, Odessa Permian, got 4th place in the state track meet and he was the only one who scored points! Haha
And this is just a few guys from ONE college roster.
b-reddy
September 15, 2017
Haha, great stories! I remember those players well. Remember when Roy had that cameo in Friday Night Lights. Thought he was going to challenge Randy Moss there for a while, but unfortunately didn’t pan out. Which is part of the crazy aspect of NFL players. Many guys nobody really knows, or those with mediocre careers, were still outrageously good athletes.
My college coach spent time at Oklahoma. We were a small d-1 school. He always said whether you could make it to d-1 was based on how strong you were. Whether you could be a standout at a Oklahoma / be a NFL prospect was whether you were strong and fast. Whether you could make it in the NFL was whether you were strong / fast / had some mental acuity for the game. So many NFL players are just as athletic as the famous guys, but may not have the mental trait to be a standout. It’s a rough approximation, but I found it largely accurate.
Jordan
January 14, 2018
How can you compare Fraser’s mile time to Barbers? You’re not meant to sprint the mile in Murph. You’d blow all your energy right off the bat. Joe Scaly ran his mile in 5:55 ish in the 2015 individual Murph- the fastest time. You know where that got him? Pretty much last.
b-reddy
January 16, 2018
Hey Jordan,
Perhaps you missed this. From the post, regarding Fraser’s Murph mile time, this time bolded for emphasis,
I also only didn’t use his Murph time. Again, from the post,
Sarah
February 25, 2018
This is a great post, but one critique: you’re taking half mile times and simply multiplying them by 2 to get their projected mile times. That’s just not how it works. Your best 800 means you’re totally spent. Running the same distance again, back to back, reduces the overall mile time. I ran the 800 in track for 8 years, and my best was 2:24, but no way do I go around saying that I could do a 4:48 mile. It’d probably be more like 5:20. Taken another way, your logic is like saying that if someone can do a PR of a 5:30 mile, to get get their best marathon time, you multiply that by 26.2. Doesn’t work that way.
b-reddy
February 27, 2018
Hey Sarah,
Believe you misread the mile projection section. That’s not what I did. First, just to be clear, I used someone else’s conversion factor. I didn’t make up my own. For some reason the link in the post isn’t working right now, but secondly, the factor comes out to almost 2.2.
For instance, I listed Ronde Barber at a 2:09 half mile, converting to a 4:40 mile:
129 seconds * 2.17 = 280 seconds
For Ray Lewis, his mile time projection is a doubling, plus 24 seconds. His 800 meters was 2:20; his mile projection at 5:04. (Not far from what you’re saying your own mile projection would have been.)
Here is another conversion factor, close to what I used: http://nvrun.com/index.php/racing/miscellaneous/equivalent-times
There are a bunch of opinions out there, and naturally, no one conversion factor will hold up for everybody, but I’m right in the neighborhood of the debate, and certainly did not just double the number. If that was my logic, I would have taken Ray Lewis’ 40 yard dash time and assumed he could run that fast no matter the distance.
Josh
August 4, 2018
Everyone is welcome to compete in the Worldwide Open. Hopefully some of these football players take a shot at it during the next Open period so we can truly measure everyone head-to-head.
b-reddy
August 7, 2018
I agree. Unfortunately, until CrossFit starts paying something like the weekly NFL game minimum (~30k) to participate in each open workout, I don’t think that’s going to happen.
Plus, it’d be a type of training that, if anything, would make them worse at football.
Tim Morrison
May 20, 2019
Perhaps the best Out-of-the-cult look at Crossfit I’ve ever read. Learned, compelling, Refreshing.
I cringe every time I hear ‘Fittest on Earth’.
Thank you sir
b-reddy
May 21, 2019
Glad you liked it!
Tim Morrison
May 20, 2019
Would love to here b-reddy from a sport performance standpoint reflect on Crossfit Training.
To me recommending 24 High Intensity sessions a month is idiotic from every bit of the literature regarding high intensity Glycolytic Training, concurrently training strength and ‘Met-Cons’ on the same day and my coaching results.
b-reddy
May 21, 2019
Good idea for an article.
The randomness of the training is not something I’m a fan of, nor is the “just go hard every day.”
I hit on this here, where I allude to their top athlete, Fraser, clearly having some kind of systematic approach: https://b-reddy.org/mat-frasers-crossfit-games-training/
James
May 22, 2020
Having recently watched the UAE CrossFit documentary on Netflix, and seen Mat Fraser pick up a solid 6 figure sum for a couple of days of work, I started looking into the sport for the first time. I was quickly at a loss. The guys all seem far too heavy for the actual demands of the sport, and their size isn’t coming with the strength you’d expect them to have regardless. You don’t need to be a lean 190+ at 5’8/5’9 (and often well over 200lbs for the 5’11+ guys) to deadlift 500lbs, press 185lbs, or put up a 1200lb total.
b-reddy
May 22, 2020
Agreed! I hit on that point some in this post: https://b-reddy.org/how-to-beat-mat-fraser-in-crossfit/