Every time I’m out running at Austin High, there is invariably either Hooton’s group, or a bunch of Crossfit people.
Don’t ask me what Austin’s deal is, but people here are nutso for Crossfit. I’ve never seen crazier workouts in my entire life.
I’m going to start collecting Crossfit workouts directly from the mouths of those who do them, and post the workouts here just so we can all drop what we are doing and start copying them.
Austin did get voted the 10th “fittest” city in the US according to Forbes. It’s amazing of how many people working in the fitness industry use Austin High’s track, I’ve seen a lot of crossfit and boot camp stuff happen there.
It’s a shame USAW has aligned themselves with Cross-fat but no doubt they were looking for revenue streams.
Cross-fat is perfect for those people who feel the efficacy of a single workout or even a program as a whole is based upon how beaten down you are afterwards. Complete exhaustion=great workout.
For non-athletes, one of the best criteria to judge a training system by is how well it motivates an individual to start, and continue with, the program, along with safety, of course. Regardless of how beaten down someone is after the workout, as long as there are no health concerns, so what. They’re not preparing for a competition. But the greatest program in the world does nothing for you unless its implemented with consistency over a some period of time. How many people do you run into on a daily basis doing CF’s GPP, which would obviously be a great program fitness program in itself for the masses? For an athlete, I agree with the opinons expressed here, but if it gets people off the coach and working out without causing more injuries than playing hoop, hockey or tennis…I’m not going to complain.
While I did mean that primarily from the perspective of training an athlete, I don’t see how regularly trashing the body is going to be that great for long term health either. It’s great to improve fitness levels but I don’t believe that such training to failure (if that’s the direction the training takes and often that is the case) would not come without potentially negative consequences.
The other aspect of this is for those who do associate great workouts with complete exhaustion eventually (at least from what I’ve witnessed in a few cases) begin to fall off the wagon. I’ve found they are so beaten down from chronic, long-term fatigue and actually grow to hate the training because they don’t believe it can be both sub-maximal and effective. I think Cross-fit promotes this mind-set.
I’m not so sure that the cross-fitters have any better injury rate than the average recreational basketball, hockey or tennis player. The people I’ve spoken with who are “reformed” cross-fitters stayed injured. Granted that’s the experience of only a few.
For a non-athlete, training to failure might bring with it the need to manage recovery, but since performance is not necessarily an issue, its less of a problem. I have not heard of any reports of increased injury or health problems that are out of the ordinary, but I haven’t really looked at it that close.
The other aspect of this is for those who do associate great workouts with complete exhaustion eventually (at least from what I’ve witnessed in a few cases) begin to fall off the wagon. I’ve found they are so beaten down from chronic, long-term fatigue and actually grow to hate the training because they don’t believe it can be both sub-maximal and effective. I think Cross-fit promotes this mind-set.
I guess the proof is in the pudding. If what you say goes for Crossfit, then it will boom then fade away. But from the OP’s comments, it seems as if crossfitters are everywhere.
I’m not so sure that the cross-fitters have any better injury rate than the average recreational basketball, hockey or tennis player. The people I’ve spoken with who are “reformed” cross-fitters stayed injured. Granted that’s the experience of only a few.
I don’t know for sure either, but weightlifting and other resistance exercises, even if to failure, have lower injury rates than most other sports.
For a non-athlete, training to failure might bring with it the need to manage recovery, but since performance is not necessarily an issue, its less of a problem. I have not heard of any reports of increased injury or health problems that are out of the ordinary, but I haven’t really looked at it that close.
Though it is certainly more important for an athlete as performance depends upon the management of such stress, health can also be compromised in the longer term for even the non-athlete. I can’t say I’ve done any research either as most of what I’m basing my opinion on is anecdotal information.
I guess the proof is in the pudding. If what you say goes for Crossfit, then it will boom then fade away. But from the OP’s comments, it seems as if crossfitters are everywhere.
I’m not even contending that it will fade away and no doubt it is growing trend but I think there will always be a new generation to jump in where other might depart. I don’t disagree at all that the promotion of cross-fit to a degree can improve general health and fitness (obviously this a good thing) but many of them-the instructors and their devotees- seem to take the training to the extreme to the point where health is at greater risk-perhaps more from an orthopedic sense. Again this is just opinion based on the comments to me made by recovering cross-fitters.
I don’t know for sure either, but weightlifting and other resistance exercises, even if to failure, have lower injury rates than most other sports.
[b][i]Yes, the Hamill study in particular has shown this but that study (I don’t know if you are possibly referencing that or another study?) but that was done in 1994 (I think) well before the cross-fit generation popped up though by and large I do believe weight training and weightlifting are fairly safe just maybe not the way the cross-fitters are doing it.
While I know Stone will at times in GPP have his athletes work up to a single cluster set of 10 reps of power cleans with between 15-45 seconds between reps, the cross-fitters will do up to 30 power cleans with little intra-set recovery. I think prescriptions like this can cause a lot of issues with both increased injury risk and lower power potential by making a technical lift into a component of extreme, in my mind, metabolic conditioning. I don’t claim to know that much about cross-fit but the stories I’ve been told were not positive.[/i][/b]
Do a bunch of pullups, run 400m (in 75 seconds), do a bunch of burpees, run 400m (in 90 seconds), do a bunch of pushups, run 400m (in 90+ seconds), do a bunch of burpees (that barely leave the ground), run 400m (in 2 minutes +). That’s the kind of stuff I’m seeing lots of. Did I mention its 103F outside?
It may be better than getting off the couch, but I’d like to know what kind of periodization / recovery is happening. If there’s almost no recovery in the workout, I can’t imagine they’re thinking too much about the overall need for recovery. It just seems like it could be a bit dangerous for those doing all that Olympic lifting.