What Is The Touchstone Series?

The Touchstone Series is a set of four fitness tests held across the year at CrossFit Brisbane. Each event looks at a different part of fitness. Together, they create a much clearer picture than any single workout, lift, run, or score could give you.

This is not about finding the fittest person in the room. It is about learning something useful about your own fitness. Where are you strong? Where do you avoid discomfort? Which skills need attention? What has improved since the last time you tested?

Think of the series as an honest checkpoint. It gives you a mark in time, then turns that information into direction for the training ahead.

Why Call It A Touchstone?

A literal touchstone is a small piece of dark, finely grained stone once used to test precious metals. Gold was rubbed across its surface, leaving a visible streak. That streak could be compared with marks made by gold of known purity, revealing the quality of the metal being tested.

Over time, the word became a metaphor. A touchstone is now understood as a reliable standard - something that helps reveal the real quality of an idea, a piece of work, or a person under pressure.

That is the idea behind our series. Each event gives you clear feedback. There is no need to hide from the result or turn it into a verdict. A test simply tells the truth about today, and that truth gives us somewhere useful to begin.

This Is You Versus You

There will be scores, divisions, and other people taking part, but the most valuable comparison is not the person in the next lane. It is the person you were the last time you stood at the same test.

Your result might confirm that your strength work is paying off. It might show that your engine drops away sooner than you thought. It might reveal that your raw fitness is good, but a skill is holding you back. None of those results is a failure. Each one is useful information.

The goal is not to be best at everything. The goal is to become more capable across more things, while reducing the gaps that limit you.

Four Tests. One Complete Picture.

CrossFit develops broad, general and inclusive fitness. The Touchstone Series reflects that by deliberately changing the demand from one event to the next.

Why We Test The Things We Avoid

Most of us naturally spend more time doing what we enjoy and what we are already good at. Strong athletes may prefer the barbell. Endurance athletes may feel safest when a workout becomes long and steady. Skilled athletes may rely on movement efficiency while avoiding the simple work that exposes their engine.

That is human, but it can also make our fitness narrow.

The Touchstone Series encourages breadth. If cardio is your weakness, the series gives you a reason to build it. If strength is limiting you, that gap becomes visible. If a skill prevents you from expressing the fitness you already have, you now know where practice will have the greatest return.

The tests do not demand that every weakness become your favourite thing. They ask you not to ignore it.

A Standard We Can Return To

A useful benchmark needs to mean something beyond one day. The Touchstone Series is designed to return year after year so your results can build a history.

One score tells you where you are. Repeating the test tells you how far you have come.

That progress may show up as a faster time, a heavier load, a higher division, or a movement you could not perform before. It may also show up in better pacing, more confidence, cleaner execution, or finishing a test that once felt out of reach.

Because every event can be scaled, you do not need to wait until you feel "ready." Choose the version that suits your current ability, make your mark, and give your future self something honest to come back to.

Forged. Refined. Revealed.

The alchemy theme is not about pretending that fitness is magic. It is about transformation through a process. You train, you practise, you face the test, and you learn. Then you take what was revealed and return to the work with greater purpose.

That is what the Touchstone Series is for: not to prove that you are better than somebody else, but to help you become a broader, more capable version of yourself.