Randomly mixing different modes of training and eating cleanly isn’t a bad idea if you want to be mediocre at different things and look skinny lean.
Working to a pukey or rhabdo finish with blood all over your torn up hands is just stupidity.
Mouthing buzz word after buzzword to justify mediocrity and stupidity is my issue with @fit.
Know some very in shape folks who do @fit without the stupidity.
Good for them.
because of gay ass threads like these
no homo
I’ve only personally talked to two Crossfitters, one from each end of the spectrum. The first guy was about a buck fifty soaking wet, and the second was a friend I hadn’t seen for a long time that lost 90 pounds so far. The one thing they had in common was that as soon as we started talking training, they refused to listen to any of my statements about my goals being strength first, or that I do complexes/sled/prowler work for conditioning.
After a few minutes of this, I got tired of it and just said crossfit was great for making you great at crossfit, but not that great for sports or any competitions other than the “crossfit games”, and when I said that they turned into rabid fanatics that started asking me where I heard that, and it must have been from some meathead in the gym that didn’t know how to do anything but bench and eat McDonalds.
Perhaps not all X-fitters are like that, but I’ll take my chances on missing the few intelligent ones.
[quote]Westclock wrote:
We don’t hate crossfit for any REAL specific reason.
We simply hate everyone and everything that is even slightly different than ourselves, because they are wrong.
We hate other people, and anything that they think or believe that doesn’t fall in line with our beliefs.
Trick is, we are large enough that no one can do anything about it, we are giant assholes backed up by physical over development and legions of like minded, similarly oversized fuckers.
Welcome to the Iron Game. We are an army of bigots and hypocrites and no one can do anything about it.
/Thread.[/quote]
congratulations! this is one of the best posts i have ever read on any strength/conditionong/bodybuilding website ever.
I think Crossfit is a great tool to add to the arsenal. I started doing Crossfit exclusively in April in preperation for some physical agility tests, and I can’t imagine having done as well as I did without it.
BUT… I made the system work for me. I was smart about keeping the bodyweight/metabolic conditioning workouts seperate from my heavy weight (squat, deadlift, presses, etc) workouts. Within the weight workouts I kept an eye on grouping the press workouts (shoulder, bench work, etc) so that my shoulders didnt explode. And lastly, I kept my deadlifts and lower back work seperate from my squat work.
There is a Crossfit Program within Crossfit called Strength Bias, and in a nutshell it incorporates low-rep deads, squats and presses into every workout (not all on the same day, obviously), followed by a conditioning workout. It has worked really well for me. My numbers arent spectacular, but they are MUCH higher than they were before I started Crossfit.
Pre-Crossfit (1-2rm):
Deadlift: 275
Squat: 225
Shoulder Press: 115
Bench Press: 185
Current (6 months later):
Deadlift: 365
Squat: 325
Shoulder Press (my weakest link): 145
Bench: 235
I think there is a problem with the “randomness” of Crossfit, but if you take what’s there and arrange it so that it makes sense, it’s pretty good. Once a week I also do a non-crossfit workout at the park where I do tire drags, sandbag shuttles, sprints, etc, so to me it’s good to diversify a little.
I think some of you are right in saying that the Crossfit folks think it’s their way or the highway. I think there is more than one way to skin a cat, but if you combine a few of those techniques, you’ll probably skin it faster and cleaner.
-I
[quote]mapwhap wrote:
I don’t hate Crossfit. I hate Crossfitters, and their elistist attitude that they can’t back up. I get tired of having 135 pound douchebags tell me how “intense” Crossfit is, and how it’s the be all, end all of athletic development. There are a number of points I want to make, so excuse the rant.
Josh Everett. Yes, he is strong. Everett is an animal. That doesn’t make the rest of you Crossfit douchebags animals too, just because you do the same workouts that he does (which you don’t, by the way). It simply means that HE has put in the work and intensity to succeed. I mean really…if you ass clowns did the same workouts that Ronnie Coleman did, does that make you just like him? Does that mean you and he are now somehow the same? NO!! IT DOESN"T!!! So stop holding up one or two elite examples and trying to make the case for the rest of you skinny little pukes.
So Speal can do a shit load of kipping pull-ups. WOW! That’s just awesome. Here’s the problem…go face a seven foot brick wall or wooden fence. Make sure you have forty or fifty pounds of gear on, plus a weapon. Jump up and grab the top edge of the barricade with your fingertips. Now see if that kip bullshit works. When it doesn’t, go ahead and fall to the ground, scratch your head, and say, “But Coach told me this was functional!! This should work!” Then tell the wall that it isn’t being functionally compliant. I don’t care how many kipping butterfly bullshit pull-ups anyone can do. They don’t translate to REAL pull-ups. And they are functionally worthless.
The certification program is a joke. You pay Glassman a thousand dollars, and he sends a bunch of skinny nerds out to teach you how to do a clean with a med ball and how to push press PVC pipe. No test required, and POOF!!! You’re a Certified Level One. (And yes, I’ve been to one. Thank God I didn’t pay out of my own pocket.)
Crossfitters seem to automatically think that they are entitled to question everything. I have TWICE witnessed on the Crossfit forum occasions where recognized Subject Matter Experts wrote essays into the journal. (This would be Dave Tate of EFS and Bill Starr, who should need no introduction.) I then witnessed a bunch of Crossfitters, who know virtually nothing in comparison to these two men, QUESTION what they were teaching, and even CRITICIZE IT!!! Where do you bunch of shit bricks get off questioning two men who are acknowledged WORLDWIDE as experts, when most of you just started training with weights in the last three years?? That’s the elitist BULLSHIT that runs rampant through the Crossfit community.
And lastly…where the fuck does Glassman get off, telling people how to work out? Every other coach I have ever had the honor of learning from could walk the walk…not just talk the talk. And don’t try to use his injuries as an excuse. On Crossfit’s very own website, there are pics and videos of soldiers who are double, triple, even quadruple amputees doing some kind of modified workouts. What’s his excuse? He’s hurt worse than them? No…Glassman just likes to thing he invented the push up and circuit training, and that he’s too good to do it. He goes by the “if you can’t do, then teach” model. And that is crap.
Crossfit as a program is a decent way to workout, for skinny little “hard gainers”. CROSSFITTERS suck. At everything. [/quote]
Everett. He’s a great example that I think a lot of crossfit people aspire to. That is why he’s often brought up. I’d consider him the best crossfit athlete. You’re complaining that people look up to the guy. For me I don’t see it as any different than guys who lift on T-Nation looking up to Dave Tate or Jim Wendler or any other lifter or bodybuilder. I don’t think it means that they thing they are just as good.
Ok, you’re assuming that because kipping pullups are a method we use that it is all we can do. We do L-pullups, deadhang, and weighted pullups. And a lot of them. I have guys who do repetitions with 100+ pounds dead hang. Some of my people (including girls) do ‘Angie’ (100 ea pullups, pushup, situps, squats) Barbara (5 round of 20 pullups, 30 Pushups, 40 situps (GHD), 50 Squats) with a 20# vest on in under 25 minutes. Yes we can do that stuff. Are you seriously complaining that some beginners or undedicated people can’t do the stuff you mentioned?
Level 1 is basically an intro… Here is my thoughts on it, it gives people a chance to learn to do the exercises properly. I’m not saying that every swinging dick there goes away knowing everything about the exercises. But it gives you the base of knowledge necessary to learn the moves and to potentially teach them.
There is no place you can go to to learn these things other than by an internship with one of the handful of coaches in the world who are really good at teaching them (which you would have to spend years doing to be good at, guess what, that stuff isn’t really available!) The only way you really learn how to coach is by coaching movements.
If you go to Crossfit level 2 it has a 60-80% first time fail rate because of the standards that are held. There is no other certifying system that has this testing standard. You will only pass if you’ve learned to coach based on the stuff you had to learn at level one. It is designed for progression for a motivated individual to learn.
Go to any other certifying body and you will not be taught the level of coaching standards available. USAW? Weekend deal but not rigorous at all. You’ll learn a lot more from Mike Burgener who holds the crossfit weightlifting cert. A motivated person can become a pretty competent coach from learning the basics and putting in due diligence with the knowledge presented.
NSCA? They don’t even go over the lifts at any reasonable level. You buy their materials and take their test, which is more geared toward injury rehad rather than getting people stronger or in better condition… a joke. Not to mention you can end up spending 2k once you have all the study materials they sell, which you’ll need to pass.
ACSM? Same deal. ACE…lol. If you go to university, again, no real instruction on how to teach lifts, more geared toward injury rehab. Crossfit is really the only one out there that works hard to teach people to be competent coaches. That is why there must be the level system! I’m not saying its perfect, but come on you’re going to bitch because level 1 introduction isn’t rigorous enough?
Sure, I’d like there to be a written test or something at the end (you just aren’t going to be extremely competent at the end to go through a hands on coaching test), but there is a lot of info and q&a to potentially learn a lot. Crossfit is an easy target because it is big and there are a lot of people getting involved who probably don’t have any business coaching, and it shows through.
Some people get involved, I think because they think, “hey I kind of like working out, I think I’ll start coaching” which isn’t right, but I think people know what they are getting in the end. I have one guy out here who sucks, he became a crossfit affiliate after converting from a normal personal training gym. I had a bunch of people switch to my gym because he was charging so much. These people’s form sucked and I had to reteach them everything.
But he is good at marketing himself and his gym, so he does well, but thats just the way it goes. I prefer to get my people results rather than hype up my gym and be more of a sales person. Speaking of form I have all of Joe DeFranco’s dvd’s, his athletes form has a lot of ranges from acceptable to poor. Now I really like DeFranco and I think he’s a good coach overall, but still, when it comes to form it goes back to places to learn to teach them, there aren’t a lot of opportunities.
There just is no place to learn other than various weekend stuff or possible internships if you can find a good coach (most uni coaches aren’t very good!) and experience, if, of course, you put in your due diligence to learn how to do them properly.
I don’t know what you are talking about in reference to the videos or articles as far as what has been said, but all real life experience I’ve had has been the opposite, though people will and should ask questions in regards to anything.
I remember once talking to Rippetoe and I asked him something in reference to something Joe DeFranco did in his programs and Rip gave his opinion, and I said something to the effect of, Defranco has been successful and has been coaching for a while… Rip said, but it is your job to question everything you aren’t sure about no matter who says it, including me.
I don’t think that there is anything wrong with questioning things, for example, Dave Tate is more experienced teach geared lifters, his method for deadlifting, for example, is different than Rip’s who teaches raw lifters. Would it be bad to ask the question if the differences in technique are due to gear? I don’t think so. And that is for SME to answer if they know the answer. Its what they are there for.
Now, I think there is a difference between questioning and being a disrespectful idiot, which is unwarranted. Same thing with thinking you know more than you do about something and making stupid statements. But that sort of thing is the nature of the internet primarily due to the anonymous nature of it all. I don’t take anything much I read on the internet seriously, which is why I don’t participate in message boards very often.
He probably doesn’t even do much of any boxing himself anymore, but if I had the chance to have him teach me boxing, I’d go for it. Glassman is kind of the same way. He built Nicole from never having worked out before into a machine. Same with Annie. Eva was already an athlete, but her level is high too. Amundson he took from the floor. Many others as well.
He’s been doing this since the 70’s. I like his style of training. As far as acting like he invented it… Not at all. He’s said he didn’t invent any of it. From his own mouth, I’ve heard it. What he did do, is take this style of training which has been done for ever probably, packaged it into a progressive system (using the named bench mark workouts) fitted it together in a certain style and it was actually other people he trained who convinced him to have the website built with the workouts, the free-access to all.
People started getting involved, it was people out there who wanted the certs, the journal and all the stuff you see now. The military picked up on it and it is becoming more and more taken up by the military, especially in the special ops community. I’ve got several Navy Seals at my place alone. I’ve met Glassman personally several times, he’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. I’ve actually told him about my style of training crossfit, and he really liked it.
That’s a lot of typing right there… Sorry, not trying to be long winded.
I have a funny story for those who care as well. I had one of my trainees, a college kid, 20 years old, telling me about how his friends told him not to join my gym because he wouldn’t progress, and blah, blah. He joined and has been doing great and likes it. I told him to have his friends come in and I would give them 100 dollars each if they could beat a 125lb girl I trained.
They came in and I gave them a work out, not too technically difficult. Short enough that it wouldn’t destroy them too much. A shortened “Kelly’ workout. 3 rounds, 400m run, 30 24” box jumps, 30 wallball shots at a 10 foot target, 20lb med ball. The girl did it with the same height box and same weight med ball. The college guys coudn’t even finish the workout. My girl did it in 13 minutes.
I have been doing CF for about 2 years now and been lifting for about 12 years. Although I enjoy CF, it will not put on muscle. cleans, jerks, snatches and most of the other oly lifts wont make you bigger. I was able to bench, squat, deadlift and press more then my box owner 2 years ago and can still lift more then him now. He is leaner but if he took his shirt off at the Hard Rock pool, he’s not getting tons of looks. Is he fit? Sure, he can do 5 rounds of deadlift at 225 20 times and do 20 box jumps faster then me but what does that prove. I was at the regional competition this year and again, most guys are very fit but not very strong. I have never seen anyone bench more the 315 or squat 500. Those are bench mark numbers that can be found at any globo gym.
I think the thing that annoys me most are some of the t-shirts and logos that CF advertises. “Dont suck at Life”? “Live Life-Eat Clean-- Be Fit”… I think thats the shit people hate.
My box now is more of a social scene then it is a gym.
1000rippedbuff,
Firstly, I appreciate you responding. As for the point by point responses…well…I’m going to have to disagree with you on a few of them.
As for the first point, regarding Josh Everett…I think he’s a phenomenal athlete as well. I don’t take issue with “hero worship”, or aspiring to be like him. I take issue with the fact that he is the first (and generally ONLY) name Crossfitters throw up to prove that they, AS A GROUP, are strong. Everett himself is VERY strong. So, I’m sure, are others who Crossfit (Freddy C comes to mind). I just question whether or not Crossfit training methods ALONE got them there. I do not believe they have, or all Crossfitters would be approaching Josh Everett’s strength to weight ratios.
Point two, regarding the pull ups. My issue is with Crossfit making the kipping pull-up into an end unto itself. I’ve heard all the reasons behind teaching it, and sat through the break-out clinics at the Level One cert that teach both methods of kipping. In my opinion, the kip is something you do until you can do real pull-ups. The kip should not be an end unto itself. Please do not counter with the whole “same weight through same range of motion over less time” argument. I have heard the philosophy behind it, and I disagree with it. It is, in the final analysis, a way to improve your times on met-con workouts that are timed. It is taking a basic, strength building exercise, and bastardizing it to meet your needs, and then trying to justify it with junk science after the fact. The other methods you mentioned in your response are all time-honored, well known ways to improve ones pull-up ability, and I do not take issue with them. Better to teach THOSE at a cert…not two different ways to cheat.
Point three, regarding the Level One Cert. I am sorry, but the entire premise of your response is based in nonsense. I have been to other weekend certifications by other coaches, and have learned much more regarding proper coaching of both the basic and the olympic lifts than I did at the Crossfit cert. Am I a world class coach because of them? No. Absolutely not. BUT, I am an intelligent consumer. Simply stated, the QUALITY of the material presented at the Level One cert does not justify the amount of money spent to attend it.
And let’s face facts here…just because some other organizations have low quality seminars or certifications, doesn’t mean Crossfit has to have the same low quality at the Level One. The bottom line is, there are better weekend certification programs than Crossfit’s. The fact that you haven’t been to one doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Point four. You are right…there are a lot of internet idiots. My original point was not about Crossfitters asking questions. It was about the tone in which they present them. In fact, they are often not questions at all…they are subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) digs at a recognized SME because Crossfit taught them to do a particular exercise differently. Go back sometime and look at some of the comments made after Bill Starr wrote in to the Crossfit Journal. The institutional arrogance on display by some of those people was absolutely disgusting. Maybe it’s just me, but I was raised to respect my elders. If I have a question, I ask it of them respectfully. I don’t treat them like some over the hill goon who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Point five, Mr. Glassman. Sorry…it’s obvious from looking at the man that he doesn’t work out. Like I said…there are quadruple amputees doing modified versions of his workouts. To some people (like me) it’s important that a coach be able to walk the walk. I believe Glassman could…he just doesn’t. And that’s wrong, in my opinion.
Let me give you an example. Paul Howe is former Delta Force. Runs a shooting school in Texas. The man sets the standards for his classes, and then goes out and shoots that standard to demonstrate to the class that it can be done. He does that for every class he runs. No ego, no boasting about how his guys shoot the best, no nothing. He just goes out and does it, and then teaches others how to do it. THAT IS A COACH. Glassman is a teacher. He hasn’t earned the right to be called a coach, in my book.
The bottom line is, you believe in what you do, and what you teach. You believe in Crossfit, and that’s fine. I take no issue with it. From what I saw on a different thread, you even make good money from it, and I’m happy that it’s working out for you. I gave Crossfit more than just a passing taste. I did it for two years, with a group of friends who all were very competitive with one another about it. My met-con times improved. My absolute strength did not. My run times did not improve, until I started adding a daily run in before my Crossfit workout. I do not believe in Crossfit as a training methodology, and I do not care for the attitudes of most Crossfitters. I do not believe all the hype that surrounds Crossfit, nor do I believe it is the route to elite fitness.
It is the attitudes of Crossfitters that irritates most people. You can’t see that (or you refuse to see it) because you are on the inside, looking out. You cannot see the forest, due to all the trees. If you were able to objectively look at the way Crossfitters act and talk, as a whole, you would see it. You just can’t seem to do that. They don’t call it “drinking the Kool-Aid” for nothing. I’m sure Jim Jones’ people all thought he was right before they died, too.
Thanks for the response. Sorry it took me a while, I don’t get a lot of computer time most of the times because I’m training people 12-13 hours a day on top of my own training and MMA training, balanced with my girlfriend and other obligations.
The way I see things is as long as people are training and not being fatasses, I don’t care how they train. For some people that might be bodybuilding, others running, or whatever. For me, I think that crossfit conditioning gives a great broad base of gpp that has a lot of carry over to other things, which is important to me. I’m not big on main page crossfit program, which is why I build hybrid programs. I like to lift heavy stuff and I like to do a lot of it, I think it helps you with other areas of conditioning and I think lifting weights is one of the healthiest activities you can do.
For kipping I’m not giving any argument, I do all types of pullups in my programming. but I think kipping for the conditioning work outs keeps your heart rate higher and has a conditioning effect in the pulling muscles (to me, its much like the differences between running (kipping) and doing heavy squats (deadhang), you do them for different reasons). That’s just my take. And then, of course, the number of people who can’t do a deadhang pullup is huge, so kipping can be of use to them as they build up.
Certs- I’m sure there are good ones out there that I haven’t been to, I know Rip is changing his into a 3 day where you test out at the end, which is a good thing. His original one was great. Olympic lifts, I know USAW was terrible, in seaching and asking, everyone says that Burgener’s Oly cert is about the best you’re going to get. I’d like to know some of the ones you feel are good, as I’m always trying to broaden my base and learn from anyone I can.
I’m reading Joel Jamieson’s conditioning book now to see if I can pull anything useful for my programming. I’m a concepts guy, so I steal from wherever I can to get the best results I can. Without crossfit, I feel like I would still do fine, but I consider myself under their umbrella.
As far as the questioning, I think we are saying the same thing, I just don’t blame all crossfit people for a few bad apples. With Bill Starr’s article, yeah people are stupid, but again its internet people, on top of that sometimes people come across differently typing than they intend to (not saying this is covering everyone) I know I do, which is why I don’t post too much on the internet these days. You can go through a lot of T-Nations articles and get the same thing. I see people bitching about Chad W’s stuff all the time.
Glassman- eh, opinions. I gave you my point, agree to disagree, no love lost. In my gym, I feel like I have to perform and look the part. But like I said, Glassman has done a lot with the people he’s trained, I like, at a minimum the concepts from crossfit. Nice guy imo. It doesn’t effect me either way.
Like I said, in the end if people are working out and not being a fat ass, that is cool with me. Of course I believe in the methods I use and what we train for, general fitness. And that should be true for anybody, if you don’t believe in what you are doing it for? When I see anybody doing anything I wouldn’t do, I can just say, if it was me, I’d do it this way. I certainly won’t get irate about it.
I really don’t like Mike Boyle’s fight against squatting. I can give a list of reasons why I think it is wrong, and why I will continue to use the squat as the backbone of my strength training programs. However, if someone else is going to stick to the single leg squat, I don’t care, they are better off doing that than nothing, and they will still probably get stronger doing it.
A lot of people have strange ideas about what is going on in crossfit. There is a thread on the powerlifting forum about Louie Simmons and Dave Tate replacing Mark Rippetoe as SME on the powerlifts. There are a bunch of people commenting on it talking about adding band benches to crossfit METCON workouts… I don’t think they realize there is a lot of heavy lifts, even in the main page crossfit workouts.
A lot of us do different hybrid programs, depending on our specialty. My background is mostly in powerlifting and bodybuilding, and my programs reflect that, but I still keep general fitness aspects involved. For someone like me, Louie Simmons, Dave Tate, or Mark Rippetoe can be a great asset. Not just for doing crossfit METCONs.
Ok, too much typing when I’m trying to eat lunch. Again, thanks for the response!
[quote]mapwhap wrote:
As for the first point, regarding Josh Everett…I think he’s a phenomenal athlete as well. I don’t take issue with “hero worship”, or aspiring to be like him. I take issue with the fact that he is the first (and generally ONLY) name Crossfitters throw up to prove that they, AS A GROUP, are strong. Everett himself is VERY strong. So, I’m sure, are others who Crossfit (Freddy C comes to mind). I just question whether or not Crossfit training methods ALONE got them there.
[/quote]
I wouldn’t describe Freddy as VERY strong. He’s strong, but has phenomenal conditioning to go with his strength. He’s an all-round package (his SLOWEST round of “Barbara” is faster than my FASTEST !!!). But I would have to backup what you say here. Other than relatively untrained individuals (which covers most of the members at affiliates), Crossfit hasn’t really made many all that much stronger. Most of the Crossfit strong guys were strong before they started Crossfit. I know that Freddie’s numbers have gone down a little bit since he started crossfitting (a tradeoff he’s happy with, given the phenomenal conditioning he has picked up along the way).
When I read your original “rant” on this point, I felt you hit the nail right on the head. Nothing, and I mean nothing, has irritated me more about “some” Crossfitters than what you just described.
Its like you take a bunch of newbies, show them something, and then they strut around like they know everything, and start challenging proven experts because what they say contradicts what someone told them once “in a cert”/“before a wod”, so they must be wrong.
To be fair, there are a lot of great guys (and gals) within the Crossfit community who
a) are in tremedous shape, strength and conditioning-wise
b) genuinely know (and ignore) the ‘kool aid’ aspects of Crossfit
Funnily enough, some of them are the very ones whom Crossfit-cult-members think of as their own standard bearers, but anyway …
If you are into conditioning, with power, strength and muscular endurance, Gym Jones Is a better option, in my opinion for what it’s worth. Mountain Athlete is great as well, but these are designed for people who are training for a specific goal, It seems that the crossfit gyms doing well, are the boxes who are doing / designing there own workout / programs. Im wondering if people burnout from the seemingly poor planning on the crossfit webpage. ?
“screw crossfit!!”
[quote]Westclock wrote:
We don’t hate crossfit for any REAL specific reason.
We simply hate everyone and everything that is even slightly different than ourselves, because they are wrong.
We hate other people, and anything that they think or believe that doesn’t fall in line with our beliefs.
Trick is, we are large enough that no one can do anything about it, we are giant assholes backed up by physical over development and legions of like minded, similarly oversized fuckers.
Welcome to the Iron Game. We are an army of bigots and hypocrites and no one can do anything about it.
/Thread.[/quote]
Truthfully fucking awesome.
With any timed event, there is room for sloppiness. If I told you to do X pushups for time, you probably wouldn’t go all the way down whether you were trying to cheat or not. Same is true for squats, or any other motion whereby a partial rep is the result of improper coaching or recklessness due to speed. Crossfit (more appropriately, GPP), done correctly with the correct coaching and mindset, is great.
Crossfit as executed by most people I see in gyms degrades into a dangerous pissing contest of who can do said workout the fastest. Form, ROM, and common sense are very easy to ignore when all you are focused on is a new best time, rather than muscle stimulation or power generation.
Coming from a military background, I have to admit that CrossFit is a huge leap forward from the traditional PT that typical military units follow. I.e. running in formation, pushups, pullups, crunches. The variety and introduction of added weight is exactly what was needed. However, much more is needed to the program. To you “1000” what you’re doing, as from what you’ve said, is not CrossFit.
You’ve essentially taken the idea, seen its flaws (at least some of them), and written your own programs, ect. for your clients. You could then do as the creator of CrossFit did, and copyright that. Really, the ultimate flaw in the CrossFit system is the lack of a “program” or a system. I consider it “Chaos for time.” Sure, you can get fit doing it, and a select few get very fit. But to point to a beginner in a CrossFit program and say they “got strong doing CrossFit” is wrong.
Place that same beginner in another discipline in resistance training and they’ll get stronger as well, focus them specifically on a strength program like 5/3/1 and they’ll become much stronger than a beginner at a CrossFit gym. My personal experience with CrossFit, like I said is from a military aspect, and I am not impressed.
The guys tout this method and compare themselves to me quickly see that they’re on shaky ground and walk away. Like “njrusmc” wrote above, With any timed event, there is room for sloppiness." Doing squats for time quickly turns into doing something resembling a squat for time, dead lifts are like waiting for a train wreck. The average CrossFitter is not impressive physically or strength wise (conditioning is a little harder to determine without observation) then there are outliers, but don’t let them define the average, thats why they’re outliers.
From personal experience, I’ve done some CrossFit workouts with the “guru’s” in my command. Yes, it was challenging, but then I gave him my own workout (days later), which consisted of only zercher squats. Not only did he lack the flexibility to do it properly, his strength was horrible. And those of you who’ve done them (properly from the floor), zerchers are a whole body exercise. I can’t remember what coach said it, but essentially it boiled down to zerchers being the single exercise of their choice for testing overall strength.
crossfit is starting to take more of a strength bias in the last while and i for one love the main named workouts just for the pure challenge and the fact that just lifting heavy weights gets boring after some time.
This thread is still alive???
Die Thread - Die!!!
FYI Transform - theres nothing boring about lifting heavy weight and seeing noticable changes in my physique. Maybe you’re not doing something right or you find yourself disinteresting. j/k
whats boring is getting to a point where you are happy with the shape and level of strength you have and want to actually do something with (other than competitive sports) it rather than your find your self interesting as you put it.
I only know what works for me and what i enjoy in training if you like what you are doing then bloody great but some just some people want to do something other than just lift weights for the sake of it.
Crossfit has infiltrated strength and conditioning at the collegiate and pro levels. Below is an article written by a Div 1 Strength coach discussing the pros and cons of crossfit. He has a coworker who is crossfit certified and uses crossfit with his teams.
of course athletes should train specifically for their sport - you would not use a ice scaters program for a football player.
This does not mean the average gym goer could not benefit from throwing in the odd crossfit metcon every week.