Your Fitness Development

This is no new theory.
Going back to 2002, CrossFit HQ posted about the "Hierarchy of Development"

It looks like this...

Want the TL:DR now? Master the first level before moving on to the next level.

Why you might ask?
Safety and to give you the best long-term results.

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We all know how pyramids work. We know we need a solid foundation to build upon.
Even though you could obviously go out of order, let's get a little breakdown of each level and why this order is important.

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Nutrition

Every gym everywhere has preached Nutrition as the basis for the results most want.
"Abs are made in the kitchen", "Eat big, lift big", etc.

As CrossFit put it: "The quality of an athlete’s diet influence metabolism and therefore the molecular foundations of muscle, bone, and the nervous system. For this reason, any training system that does not consider and duly correct an athlete’s diet will be suboptimal. Long-term training depends upon a solid base of nutritional support."

Simply put, you can be great at your sport, but you can be better with a great diet.

There is also the long term effects of nutrition on chronic diseases society faces today.  Many can be greatly influenced by a better diet.

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Metabolic Conditioning

Metabolic Conditioning = Cardiovascular efficiency.

Poor conditioning = fatiguing sooner = strength and coordination down = not optimal performance.
If you are not conditioned to play all 3 periods, all 4 quarters, run all whatever distance, play both halves...you will risk injury to go longer than you are ready for.
In our world, this means when you fatigue, it is more difficult to safely clean that barbell, or even safely do that burpee, etc.

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Gymnastics

Spacial awareness and body control. If you can not control yourself, how you are going to control an external object? If you can not air squat properly, why would you add load to the equation? CrossFit gets a bad rap for this and we have certainly let athletes advance before they are ready.  We are doubling down on telling our athletes NO when we should.  It's not to take away, it's to progress you farther!

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Weightlifting and Throwing

Or the control of external objects. The motor patterns you learn from conditioning and body-weight movements can now be applied to moving an external load. This is basically transferring power and momentum from your person into another object....safely.

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Sport

All of the above help you work toward what we call GPP, or General Physical Preparedness. Really, it's getting your body ready for everyday life.
It also is the solid base needed to apply the fine-tuning needed for a specific sport.

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Last, we also use this hierarchy to find limitations. If you are limited or missing parts of the pyramid, eventually something will suffer or plateau.
You ever hear a coach tell you to work on your weaknesses? This is the basis of it all.

Where are you lacking the most?