Crossfit: The Good, The Bad and The Not So Different
You either hate it or love it when it comes to Crossfit, or thats how it seems. We as a culture are so wrapped up in the idea that you have to be for something or against it and we seem to bypass all the people who decide to sit in the middle. This is no difference when it comes to Crossfit, every internet article/blog post is either bashing the unsafe injury plagued activity or praising the sport as the bringer of health and elite fitness to this sinful world, or thats what the world of facebook shows us and if its shared on facebook it must be true, right? Like almost all things in life there are pros and cons, context surrounding any decision is key and there is more than one way to curl in the squat rack. Here is my 2 cents on Crossfit.
Some say that Crossfit is a chiropractor's best friend, many people blame Crossfit for being inherently injury prone and that it does not put the safety of its clients in mind. Now before I place some very funny but weird Greg Glassman quotes I want to get this out there, I highly dislike Crossfit HQ, HQ is a money hungry ass hat that cares more about being different than actually improving people's overall health and completely shit talks about the science behind Strength and conditioning that itself is based on. Now that I let that out I would like to clarify, when I am talking about "Crossfit" in this article I am referring to the individual Crossfit boxes out there, even though these are affiliated with crossfit HQ I believe that most of them do not entirely hold the same values as HQ but if they do then they are too a ass hat. So to differentiate the two here are some Greg Glassman quotes and if a box has these same "beliefs" than those are (hopefully) the few not the many.
The Glassman:
“We have a therapy for injuries at CrossFit called STFU.”
“It can kill you…I’ve always been completely honest about that,” he said. “If you find the notion of falling off the rings and breaking your neck so foreign to you, then we don’t want you in our ranks.”
“The bodybuilding model is designed around, requires, steroids for significant hypertrophy. The neuroendocrine response of bodybuilding protocols is so blunted that without "exogenous hormonal therapy" little happens. The CrossFit protocol is designed to elicit a substantial neuroendocrine wallop and hence packs an anabolic punch that puts on impressive amounts of muscle though that is not our concern. Strength is. Natural bodybuilders (the natural ones that are not on steroids) never approach the mass that our athletes do. "
“No successful strength and conditioning program has anywhere ever been derived from scientific principles. Those claiming efficacy or legitimacy on the basis of theories they’ve either invented or corralled to explain their programming are guilty of fraud. Programming derives from clinical practice and can only be justified or legitimized by the results of that practice.”
Well that is that and a simple google search will show more of Glassman's idiotic rants or check out this article for an in depth of glassman and crossfit (1). Back to the possible high injury rate of Crossfit WODs, there is one study that has shown a 16% drop out rate from “overuse” (2), but the study did not explain overuse and this is only one study so we can not make absolutes about any topic off of one sole study. So it seems there might be something with injury, but its nothing that is not uncommon with other sports. Anecdotally I think everyone has heard or seen a friend on facebook who went a little to hard and injured a shoulder or their lower back, but thats not just in crossfit. It is just as easy to hear of the war stories by the bench bros at any commercial gym who were on their 5th set of half rep bench press with 315 when they missed reped and droped the weight and almost tore their supraspinatus but thankfully Brosef was behind them to save the day. As you can hopefully see with my in depth sentence there are people who use less than safe form and let their ego get the best of them in any fitness setting, not just in crossfit. I believe that the reason for crossfit being targeted more is the fact that instead of just your bench bros and gym rats hurting themselves we now have soccer moms and former high school athletes in greater number doing it now. So Crossfit is not solely exclusive to people not training smart. My problem with crossfit when it comes to these injuries is that people attending crossfit classes are paying somewhere around 150 dollars to learn and train so the least these trainers and coaches can do is implement solid technique and ego check their clients so people who are cleaning 135 for 15 reps or maxing out on deadlifts do not harm themselves. The fact is there are great boxes out there who do not allow for ego and terrible technique to run rampant but its the few/many who are not qualified or care enough to go the extra mile to allow for injury prevention that ruin Crossfits image when it comes to injury.
Get primal, eat paleo and rid ourselves of our modern diseases and ailments. This is a pretty common held belief in crossfit boxes, they have adapted the newest diet fad and ran with it and held on to it with every dogmatic and elitist finger they have. The fitness industry is not new to diet fads veganism, clean eating, low carb, raw food, the zone, atkins, these are just some of the diet fads that the fitness industry has seen and held on to. So again being dogmatic in a diet is not exclusive to Crossfit, you're just as likely to be told about the magic properties of clean food in a commercial gym as you would in a box about paleo. So to single out Crossfit is wrong, this though does not excuse the problems of boxes and their dogmatic view when it comes to nutrition. Context and preference are key when it comes to ones own nutritional plan/diet. Arbitrarily excluding foods and pushing a cookie cutter diet to everyone is never going to work. Yes, some people may love and do well on a paleo diet but the next person might love milk and bread and restricting those may be the downfall of their fitness journey. Having a flexible approach to diet and understanding that moderate intakes of most things and eating a varied diet is actually healthy and will allow for people to reach their goals and keep them.. Here are some articles debunking paleo (debunking the idea that legumes, dairy, starches, gluten and yes even some say fruit is inherently unhealthy):
Look back three or even a year from now and you can see the massive increase of more women and men training with strength and performance in mind. This has to do with the expansion of crossfit (along with internet). It was not uncommon to see most women who worked out stick to pink dumbbells and bosu balls and even some men saw the free weights and strength training as things only those big powerlifters did. Crossfit has helped change the stigma of strength training and that along with its expanding audience has and will continue to be one of crossfits biggest contributions to the fitness industry. More now than ever it is common to hear a group of people talking about cleans, snatches, squats, hitting new pr's and just over all loving strength training.
So to wrap it yes crossfit does have injuries (anecdotically), they do (usually) promote a fad diet, but this is not exclusive to crossfit, these are things that already are in the fitness industry. Main point is, the the fitness industry is corrupt that lies, tells half truths and lives off of people who will continue to throw money away without seeing the results they seek. So a question to think about is, will crossfit with its major audience and continual growth help the fitness industry or just follow footsteps of the people before and let the lies and half truths continue (I am looking at you progenix).
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