I don’t hate crossfit because it’s different from what I do and I don’t hate it because they’re vocal about their beliefs. I hate crossfit because it is fucking stupid and retarded and everything they say is wrong.
Crossfit, on paper, is not bad. Its the application by under trained practitioners that will end up giving it a bad name.
Many CF affiliates do their own programming and get great results with the typical clients (out of shape 25-45 year olds looking to lose fat) using mostly metabolic conditioning workouts. I have no issue with that. I’d much rather see these people deadlifting than jazzercising and they actually do get results with CF.
I do take issue with the sloppy o-lifting form and lack of proper instruction on major lifts. Many affiliates just pack in as many clients as possible and count the money without really taking the time to properly instruct the client on proper form and progression on movements. When people start getting hurt from this lack of quality instruction and retarded programming putting excessive stress on the shoulders, that’s when we will start to see the poorly run affiliates close up shop.
I have done CF and I think the metabolic workout is a very effective tool to have in the body comp and conditioning arsenal. I just think what they’re doing is overhyped and the drivel that comes out of Glassman is absurd. That’s a guy who’s going to end up cutting off his nose to spite his face.
I have limited crossfit experience but here is my 2 cents. Crossfit is a solid gpp program and one of the best ways to lose fat. No it is not the best bodybuilding/strength program, just like how most bodybuilding/powerlifting programs won’t do much for you conditioning/gpp. Crossfit has many attractive, athletic females and many of the top crossfit males have solid physiques. No they are not IFBB level physiques.
However the top crossfitters tend to be around 180-195 pounds ripped year round which is noteworthy. Greg Glassman is a douchebag, even a lot of crossfitters realize that. However it is somewhat admirable in my opinion that he has challenged the coaches that question his methods to send an athlete of their to compete against a crossfit girl. Scratch that he is still a douche. It is admirable that he gets people like Dave Tate to work with their program. Yes their are some people in it with bad form. However the people at your local gym have probaly never attended a legit crossfit gym.
Yes their are many people who have drunk the kool-aid. This is common in every system. Just like how some believe a variation of Westside is the solution to every problem. Or how doing a 5X5 powerlifting program is the best for every sport/bodybuilding situation and will get you huge biceps despite not including any direct arm work ect.
Summary of above
Crossfit is an excellent fat loss routine or if your sport requires a wide variety of demands such as martial arts or rugby.
If you prefer Matt Wettstein or Greg Plitt’s build compared to Lacour’s then Crossfit might help you along with more basic bb techniques.
Glassman is a douchebag.
Every system has kool-aid drinkers and those with bad form.
Use a program specefic to your goals.
[quote]Transform wrote:
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.
[/quote]
I agree with this.
Crossfit is not the end all be all. I use it to loose body fat %. Then I switch to the traditional strength exercises.
I alter or do what I need based on my goal.
When I am doing crossfit I make sure my form is the best regardless of the time I need. In fact I do not give a fuck about the time I just want to get through the workout with form.
At the end of the day just do what you enjoy doing and let others do what they enjoy. I honestly do not care if the guy next to me can do barbara faster than me. Nor do I care that you lift more than me on the squat. I compete against me.
I enjoy crossfit. I was introduced about a year ago and enjoy mixing the met-cons w/ traditional strength methods. Not everyone wants to be a swollen meat head who can’t wipe their own ass contrary to popular belief. I enjoy getting stronger and staying as well conditioned as possible. Mixing in crossfit allows me to do this.
As in any industry there are those who are ethnocentric towards the training style that has worked for them.
I would frequent their board and kind of got sick of when someone would post some fitness related video and one of the Kool Aid drinkers would then ponder as to what the guy in the video’s Fran time would be.
I think when some of them said it about NFL great Jerry Rice that I stopped going.
That and I hated their T-shirts that said shit about ow they’d smoke you like cheap crack. Not a very good attempt at a pitiful insult or in-your-face tough thing.
Also, every time someone talked about one of the women that did Crossfit there’d inevitably be the comment about how “…she could kick my ass!”
I find coming to that conclusion all the time when someone’s big is kind of weird. Like I’m complimenting a girl by saying she could beat me up. I dunno…just sounds stupid.
Also there was always that person in a thread where someone came even close to criticizing Crossfit that would mention that the WOD is provided FREE OF CHARGE!!!
Big fucking deal.
much better.
Main issue with crossfit is that it’s basically a “cult”.
“Crossfiters” think they’re above all and that their training methods are t3h best.
Truth is, from what I could witness from personal experience, a lot of the crossfitters started with great strenght already, or started with great endurance.
Basically this:
[quote]Nicky_Boy28 wrote:
did they get strong doing crossfit or were they strong when they started. Has ANY crossfitter in your entourage(or that you’ve heard of) strated in cross fit being able to deadlift to squat 100lbs and then went on being able to squat 400-500 doing exclusively crossfit? really? because that’s exactly what they crossfit folks are selling.[/quote]
It’s never the sword; it’s the hand that wields it!
I just though of something else I didn’t like.
They get all cultish about even small things…like running barefoot or running using the POSE method or eating The Zone and I believe there’s even a political slant to them. There are always articles from the right. I’m fiscally conservative and socially liberal myself, but I don’t know what a fitness website has to do with it.
[quote]njrusmc wrote:
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. [/quote]
That in itself is one of the most fundamental problems with the program in my opinion. It is one of high intensity, often utilizing difficult to learn and pot. dangerous exercises to be done for time. This is then put out there on the web with limited info and teaching material for any random joe/jane to pick up and go at. In addition, while it has improved the cert. process is still a weekend seminar whose knowledge and experience requirements are on par with the bottom of the barrell personal trainer certs. In addition to this, the main organizers of Crossfit are arrogant and close minded. Over the last couple of years some of the original pillars of the orginization like Rippetoe as well as highly repected professionals they had brought on such as Robb Wolf who was teaching their nut. seminar, have left the orginization due to petty bullshit and bad leadership on the part of the Crossfit “mothership”.
Using terms like mothership doesnt really make your organization look less like assholes ALSO.
[quote]Nards wrote:
I just though of something else I didn’t like.
They get all cultish about even small things…like running barefoot or running using the POSE method or eating The Zone and I believe there’s even a political slant to them. There are always articles from the right. I’m fiscally conservative and socially liberal myself, but I don’t know what a fitness website has to do with it.[/quote]
this too.
[quote]duke15CML wrote:
first let me say that if crossfit is getting more people to work out, then great. i’m not going to bash them for getting people in shape.
i have two issues with it though, one is that this isn’t something new. i believe it was stated before, but this is just taking a type of training and trademarking it. go into any great strength coaches facility and you will see some of these types of workouts being done. they just don’t put a name on it. my second issue is the fact that there really is no periodization scheme for these workouts. its based on throwing together obscene amount of reps on a daily basis.
oh wait i got a couple more, i don’t see how its safe to let anyone become a certified crossfit trainer with no previous background in training. and i know its not all places, but some of the videos i see, the form makes me cringe.
but hey its getting people in shape right?[/quote]
Duke,
I’d like to agree and disagree with you, but I will first say I am an olympic lifting coach and a CrossFit owner. Some of the form I’e seen on utube makes me cringe too. I also see some form in my own chosen sport (olympic lifting) that makes me cringe and it’s taught by coaches who have concentrated on that sport only for years.
As far as CrossFit merely being circuit training, I agree with you at a basic level(although some workouts are obviously not that)but in all the years I’ve coached and trained, I never saw anybody put movements from agility, gymnastics, strength, olympic weightlifting, strongman lifts, track and more into a circuit and put a timer on the workouts. If they did, they should have pateneted it long before CrossFit came along.Also, the reps are not always exceedingly high (21-15-9) and there is, or should be, an ebb and flow to the yearly training, just as there is in periodization. Now, it is not as specific in intensity and volume as periodization is but it has many more modes of training than are typically covered by programs using periodization.
I agree that certifications are given to some who have no backround in training but the same can be said of the NSCA, USAW and every other major certifier. Initial certification is usually given to those who pass a weekend test. CrossFit offers (not demands) that trainers be certified further in hands-on testing in specific areas and has recently added a written re-certification test of sorts. The NSCA demands a college education and has an ongoing CEU program that demand that trainers take written tests and/or attend seminars for points or other various tasks (but no physical competency testing). The USAW (olympic lifting) requires no education level and has a weekend training and written testing precedure (nobody is failed because of physical testing). They have no required continuing education program. You rise in coaching ranks by taking other written tests and producing higher level athletes.
I remember when I got my NSCA cert., talking to a guy right before the video testing (there is no actual lift testing)who was hoping he could recognize enough of the lifts because he had never personally lifted but worked for a client that wanted him to get the cert. The guy taking the test was a business partner, a college grad and had an MBA. He did the taxes for the business. This guy had memorized the material for the multiple choice written test and thought that he had aced it. So he only had to do pretty well on the visual mult. choice test.
That took a little of the shine off that day for me.
CoachMc
I can see some of this hate is warranted but alot of posts seem like people are talking about stuff they know nothing about or heard from someone else and put it to words…I like how everyone brings up Robb Wolf and Mark Rippetoe leaving the organization…Robb Wolf still promotes crossfit and its fundamentals, so what if they had a falling out with Rippetoe 2 years ago they went and hired Louie Simmons a guy that is worshiped all over this board…I get it the name crossfit pisses people off, I have been skeptical about some of the things with the community also but that doesn’t mean there program is shit and they don’t know what there talking about…They put a name on some training methods that has been around for a long time and made a lot of money doing it…
But even the fact that people can have “falling outs” with CrossFit is worrying.
[quote]Nards wrote:
But even the fact that people can have “falling outs” with CrossFit is worrying.
[/quote]
Really?? How is any relationship perfect? I thought we were talking about a community full of alpha types? I would really like to know what really went down with some of the falling outs I guess…I could care less what some people put in there blog after they had been released or walked away.
I would say the main problem I have with it is that sport is specialization. That’s (IMO) what makes sport worth paying attention to and worth doing. I watch baseball to see the people best able to hit a ball or play the field IN THE WORLD. I watch hockey to see the best in the world on ice with a puck. I swam to adapt my body to make it the best I could at going as fast as possible in the water.
I like bodybuilding because the guys push their bodies to carry as much muscle as possible. Crossfit lacks that. I wouldn’t want to watch a mediocre swimmer swim, then a mediocre powerlifter deadlift, then a mediocre runner run, and lastly a moderately muscular guy pose when there are people out there much much better at each of those things.
That’s fine for whoever wants to be those things and do that, but it just doesn’t make sense to me. I say pick something and get as good as you can at it.
[quote]crossfit_infidel wrote:
[quote]Nards wrote:
But even the fact that people can have “falling outs” with CrossFit is worrying.
[/quote]
Really?? How is any relationship perfect? I thought we were talking about a community full of alpha types? I would really like to know what really went down with some of the falling outs I guess…I could care less what some people put in there blog after they had been released or walked away.[/quote]
Because the way things appear to have played out is the administrators/corporate folks have alienated the people who bring years of experience and scientific knowledge to the table, leaving what administrators. Yes, they still have people like Burgener and Simmons, but these are also specialized coaches many of whom are overjoyed when they find more people who have an interest in their sport. Tate also did a seminar or two for them a couple of years ago, so we will see how long Simmons sticks with them. The program was great because it was comprised of people with years and years of experience. Now it is being led by people who think that their weekend certs and an impressive fran time are enough to make them great coaches and biology gurus.
Now since you seem to have ignored what I said before I will state it very clearly. To me there are three fundamental problems with Crossfit, none of them related to the actual programming.]
- There is nothing new or original about crossfit. Even their def. of fitness is adapted from others writings. So why affiliate yourself with A BRAND (because it is NOTHING more than that) that has a growing reputation for being close minded, disrespectful, overly political for a fitness corp.
- The overwhelming focus on time, combined with the belief that every workout/exercise is scaleable right out the door. These detract from the main goal, which is to improve fitness. EG. If you DL for high reps, use bumper plates and drop and bounce after every rep, are you getting a faster time, yes, are you getting the maximal training benefit, absolutely not. The person who lowers that weight every time, lifts from basically a dead stop and finishes one minute later just increased their fitness more than the bouncer. So we have an incredible focus on speed, combined with the idea that quality/type of life may have left many people unable to safely perform some complex ex. like full cleans even with a pvc tube.
- The certification process, while improved is still a joke, in addition to that the program is put up for free on the web with limited disclaimers. Sorry, but if the prgram is easier to find than the warning, you arent warning people. The cert, although five times as expensive, is on par with bottom of the barrel PT certs. The only problem is the dumbass with the ISSA cert is faR less likely to hurt his client having them do cable chest presses with 10 lb dumbell lunges than the over eager crossfit coach, who has his 405 year old client doing box jumps ring dips and front squats right out the gate.
[quote]crossfit_infidel wrote:
[quote]Nards wrote:
But even the fact that people can have “falling outs” with CrossFit is worrying.
[/quote]
Really?? How is any relationship perfect? I thought we were talking about a community full of alpha types? I would really like to know what really went down with some of the falling outs I guess…I could care less what some people put in there blog after they had been released or walked away.[/quote]
So you want to know but are unwilling to believe that you can get an accurate picture from four or five blog posts from different people with different perspectives. What would you suggest, that somehow talking to people face to face would allow you to be more clear about the facts. Both sides of the story are out there, it’s not that hard to compare them. I dont like to speculate, I would like to hear what you have to say , but when I hear this argument I cant help but think that this wouldnt be your stance if there were more blog posts agreeing with you than vice versa.