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Anyone with a passing knowledge of CrossFit understands that it is decidedly not for someone who possesses a mere recreational interest in fitness. Before pressing play on Fittest on Earth: A Decade of Fitness, a new documentary now streaming on Netflix, I tacitly understood that CrossFit was fairly difficult. “I could probably do it,” I said to myself with the same silly ignorance of an 11-year-old Little Leaguer batting .207 who believes he’ll one day become the shortstop of the New York Yankees. But I was wrong. The captivating new doc follows the participants in the 2016 Reebok CrossFit Games — an incredibly grueling five-day, 15-event battle to determine the fittest man and woman alive — who eat, sleep, and breathe the ultra-competitive world of professional CrossFit training.
To these competitors, CrossFit isn’t a fitness regimen so much as it is an all-encompassing lifestyle. These are professionals who are addicted to becoming the absolute best in the world.
“Champions don’t have balance, and the reason that they’re exceptional at what they do is because they focus all their time and energy on it,” Icelandic CrossFit athlete Katrin Davidsdottir explains in the documentary.
Fittest on Earth follows these elite athletes as they compete against one another in an assortment of insanely difficult feats of physical and mental strength. As if these tasks weren’t taxing enough, the challengers are left in the dark as to the specific events they’ll be competing in until moments before they participate. That’s like the Patriots arriving at the Super Bowl only to discover that the championship will be now be determined by a rock climbing relay race, which would honestly be kinda rad.
You want to know what’s decidedly not rad? The idea of participating in this arduous CrossFit event called the Murph.
The documentary does a tremendous job of providing insight into the personal lives and specific motivations of the competitors. Knowing their individual stories and learning all about the obstacles they’ve overcome provide a humanizing element that makes the journey to discovering who will win the title of fittest man and woman on earth all that more satisfying.
Fittest on Earth is a captivating voyage into an unknown world, but will it inspire or exhaust you? Spending 115 minutes with this cadre of fitness fanatics initially left me with a surge of workout-related optimism, which was sadly squashed by the always sobering reality that 6:30 a.m. is entirely too early in the morning to repeatedly lift heavy items over my head. This interesting documentary didn’t inspire me to become the fittest person on earth, but it did provide me with a newfound respect for the determined individuals who decide to chase that particular dream.
