The fitness industry has been evolving like all other industries. The west and the east have

different starting points and they have evolved differently. East had its starting point with

Yoga which the West is beginning to appreciate currently. It had its starting point in fitness

programs which if you dig deep, owes its roots to self defense arts like kalari, kung fu and

weapon based war arts. The west on the other hand has its roots in war culture which later

evolved into ancient Greece sports in Olympics. With more scientific advancement and

measurement methods, those ancient fitness art forms have taken the current form of Aerobic

and anaerobic training. The classification is based on where the energy source is — if its from

the presence of oxygen, it is aerobic and anaerobic is from the ‘absence’ of oxygen. Looking

back, it does feel safe to say that a lot of modern day science validates eastern ancient wisdom

about fitness, Patanjali being the first formulator of yoga. In the modern world, Charles Atlas

is arguably the father of training system for physical fitness. Many others such as Vince

Grinido and Joe Weider, followed up to perfect his work. Weider has a whole body of material

called Weider systems named after him. All famous Arnold Swazenneger popularized his

concepts. The father of modern aerobics is Kenith Cooper. He created a body of science

around aerobics and made it reach the majority. Aerobics gained popularity largely because of

the growing number of obese population that needed alternative flexibility exercises which

the then-existing system didn’t offer much. While the traditional fitness methods were

prevalent, minimalists such as Mike mentor and Auther Jones broke into the scene with

radically different and simpler methods to achieve extraordinary results. They gave the fitness

space a new dimension. They insisted that you don’t have to do extraordinary things to

achieve extraordinary results. They set new intensity and frequency standards for weight

training by literally demonstrating that best results are achieved when you only perform a few

‘sets’ and take a lot of rest with right kind of diet to go with it. This seemed like a gift to

athletes and other sporting communities who could benefit from short but high intensity

training, setting new standards for strength and conditioning. This was the beginning of

modern day ‘Functional training’ which found its way to not just sporting community but also

into every day lives of millions of others, who could spare just a few hours a week. That was

good enough, argued Mike Mentor.

A normal human is exposed to lots of lifestyle and postural stress to muscular and skeletal

systems.This is even more relevant to sporting community where this method has evolved to a

new form called ‘Corrective exercises’. All this had its starting point to yoga, Pilates (John

Pilates is its father).

To put them all in a nutshell, the whole game of fitness programs can be split into three

components — Corrective, Functional and Resistance training.

Every individual requires different permutation and combination of these approaches. The

ultimate goal of CFR training is to ease a busy modern human into understanding deeper

principles of fitness and create a combination that works best at optimizing his or her own

personal fitness.