​Prepared by the CrossFit Medical Society with contributions from Dr. Janette Watkins and Jennifer Pishko, MS Nutrition Education
CME Article: Smith, A. N., Choi, I.-Y., Lee, P., Sullivan, D. K., Burns, J. M., Swerdlow, R. H., Kelly, E., & Taylor, M. K. (2025). Creatine monohydrate pilot in Alzheimer's: Feasibility, brain creatine, and cognition. Alzheimer's & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions, 11, e70101. https://doi.org/10.1002/trc2.70101
 Key Takeaways

• Creatine is a manageable, everyday supplement for a wide range of people—not just competitive athletes.
• Creatine may support cognitive health and mental sharpness, not just physical performance.
• CrossFit coaches have a unique opportunity tto position creatine as both a performance enhancer and a long-term health tool.

Fitness is such a loose and ill-defined term that it really helps to break it down into understandable and useable parts. If we want to become more competent physically, regardless of whether this goal is for athletic performance or functional longevity in life, there are ten improvable factors which we must address, separated into the path by which you can force adaptation:
Adaptation achieved through trainingThe first 4 skills are significant in their ability to improve through training, if you push yourself inside and outside of the gym in a systematic and measurable way then you will receive a systematic and measurable increase in your biological capacity

1. Cardiovascular / Respiratory endurance - The ability of body systems to gather, process and deliver oxygen
   
2. Stamina - The ability of body systems to process, deliver, store, and utilise energy.
   
3. Strength - The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply force.
   
4. Mobility - The ability to maximise the range of motion at a given joint.
   
   Adaptation through training and practice.
   These 2 skills adaptation is achieved by doing training and practice in tandem to illicit an improvement.
5. Power - The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply maximum force in minimum time.
   
6. Speed - The ability to minimise the time cycle of a repeated movement.
   
   Adaptation through practice.
   These 4 skills require an adaptation primarily in the nervous system, achieved through practice
   
7. Coordination - The ability to combine several distinct movement patterns into a singular distinct movement.
   
8. Agility - The ability to minimise transition time from one movement pattern to another.
   
9. Balance - The ability to control the placement of the bodies centre of gravity in relation to its support base.
   
10. Accuracy - The ability to control movement in a given direction or at a given intensity

In any successful athlete, all 10 aptitudes are present to a high degree (to varying degrees, dependant on the demands of the sport). A training plan is effective if it improves on these factors.
As you begin to train and practice in a structured and measured way, as we do at CrossFit Cairngorm, you will see these factors individually begin to improve in the gym and on the hill. Cumulatively you will feel more “athletic” but if you were to cut up the adaptation into distinct chunks they would fall squarely into the 10 buckets outlined above. Follow the statement below and your overall athleticism will improve the most:

Prioritise that which you are weakest at

​There’s a moment, after years of ignoring a warning light on your dashboard, when the car finally gives out. You knew it was coming. You drove anyway. And now you’re on the side of the road, staring at a smoking engine and wondering how it got this bad.
That’s where we are as a society — only the dashboard is our healthcare system, and the engine that’s failing is our collective health.

The enso ('circle') is one of the deepest symbols in Japanese Zen. The enso is the revelation of a world of the spirit without beginning and end. Once you complete a revolution around the circle, you start again.

The enso is often drawn in one fluid brushstroke using an ink brush on washi, a thin Japanese paper. The circle can be open or closed, with an open circle representing imperfection and a closed circle representing perfection, enlightenment, the universe, emptiness, unity infinity, strength, elegance and the circle of life. 

When we start CrossFit Encircle, our first attempt at a name was CrossFit Enso however there was one already in the world and in CrossFit you can only have 1 with such an unusual name. We had to become creative and the meaning of enso, ​Encircle - to form a circle around, to surround was fitting  hence we became CrossFit Encircle. ​