What Still Holds Up After 18 Years

What do you still believe to be true and what has changed?

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That question has been on my mind since the 18 year mark of InnerFight, when someone asked me what are we doing differently and what remains. It’s given me some good thinking.

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A few weeks back I was in CrossFit Noosa. Framed on the floor ready to be hung on the wall was a picture of “Fitness in 100 words.” Greg Glassman wrote it in the late 90’s early 2000’s.

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Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Practise and train the major lifts. Master the basics of gymnastics. Bike, run, swim, row, hard and fast. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense. Regularly learn and play new sports.

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I distinctly remember reading those words in the early 2000s. I have read them a number of times since. It’s cool. Most of it still holds. I'd put it at 80% to 90%. Varied functional movement, done hard, done with other people, has made more humans better at life than almost anything else I have seen in over twenty years of coaching. The training half of those hundred words has aged beautifully.

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Other parts we can debate. No sugar made me laugh when I thought about the amount of sugar-selling brands in CrossFit. Flip to endurance where we coach athletes taking 90 to 120 grams of carbohydrate an hour and it is the difference between finishing strong and falling apart in races. Go easy on the recreational lollies, but glycogen is glycogen. Sleep is not mentioned once. Neither is stress, or the nervous system, or what happens to a womans training across her cycle. When it was written the narrative was different.

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All things considered, a hundred words, two decades and roughly 85% of it has survived. For all his flaws Glassman served up some pretty decent advice. Which brought me back to us. Eighteen years of InnerFight. We have changed the programme multiple times, changed how we coach it, built an endurance arm, and killed things that did not serve us. Some of what we tried still applies today. Some delivered amazing results for two years and then quietly stopped working. Some things never really took off but we tried and that’s important.

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Our decision-making process though has not changed. Our intention to make humans better at life remains. That underpins what we do. Some of the interventions that we achieve that through are fluid. They have to be. Humans have changed over two decades. They continue to change at increasing rates. We must be ready. We are ready. We have different conversations now than we did then. It is insanely exciting.

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Tools come. Tools work. Tools go. New tools arrive. That is the 20%. The 80% remains in the vision and the values. The core of who we are. We accept that some things are open to constant change but others never will and that is a positive.

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So why not go out and get your 100 words. Your true vision and values in both your personal and professional lives. Be clear with them. Then live them for two decades and see where you end up. There is no downside.

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About InnerFight

InnerFight is a premier fitness and endurance coaching company based in Dubai. Whether you’re a busy professional seeking peak performance or an athlete pursuing ambitious dreams, InnerFight offers a supportive community where hard work, honesty, and simplicity drive extraordinary results.

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We share insights, advice, tips and success stories to empower your fitness journey:

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• The InnerFight Podcast features fitness, mindset, and personal stories

• The Endurance Podcast covers running, cycling, and triathlon training

• The InnerFight Blog delivers expert articles from certified coaches
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Follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and X for weekly motivation, training tips, and behind-the-scenes content from our Dubai community and international training camps.

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If you’re based in Dubai, visit our 5,000 square foot facility to experience our world-class strength and conditioning classes, personal training, and endurance coaching. Receive 3 free sessions to experience our approach firsthand.

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Fun  - Honesty - SIMPLICITY - Smash Life - Mental Toughness - Hard Work