a.) stimulate discussion and opinions of others as to why this may or may NOT work for athletes- If I hadn’t stated before, I am definitely not in favor of crossfit training for athletes- period.
General population, perhaps, but athletes, no.
b.) Shed light to the forum about this, since I believe that this will eventually lead to crossfit (insert sport); which unfortunately will excite lots of people with not much knowledge to training. I’ll give them one thing, they sure know how to market and make it sound like the next GREAT thing.
I just don’t like the fact that crossfit principles are based around randomized workouts and extremely taxing metabolic conditioning- like I said this could be great for your average Joe, but athletic preparation IMO needs structured well though out planning and applied to the given demands of the sport. Anyone can come up with these randomized workouts and make you feel like you’ve done something after training; that’s easy- It takes a great coach to structure a training plan that produces long term, consistent results.
I don’t understand the negative towards crossfit. It’s general training and builds on the thoughts that extreme variation will give best results on general preparation. Is that possible to argue? Modification of loads and reps is needed thought to fit individual capacity.
I’ve tried some crossfit workouts, most of them modified because i’m not so strong and to avoid massive DOMS with unfamiliar exercises. I have to say that the exercise selection is really good, and that it’s very time effective. Some of those 20 min workouts is really demanding and great if you have limited time available.
Some positives: (based on workouts on main page)
Good exercise selection
Great general programming. Variation between horizontal/vertical pulling/pressing. Also variation in CNS/metabolic. Good use of variation between whole body workouts and workouts only focused on either legs, pressing or pulling.
Great videos available to learn lifting mechanics (Rippetoe) and they’re actually trying to share knowledge on training (crossfit journal).
Negatives:
Personally i don’t see the value in 10k runs.
Only general training and needs modification to avoid overtraining.
Poor power development. Will propably develop good relative strength, but all power elements are trained in high rep endurance workouts (double unders, med ball, box jumps, kipping pull-ups). Good power endurance.
I like crossfit and believe it’s valuable for off-season training and early general phase in many sports (not sprinting). The program is better organized than 99 % of the training population is capable of doing themselves, and it’s growing fast for a reason. Maybe it’s actually working?
There is no real reason why Crossfit cannot become a Sport in and on itself. Just because it causes great Lactic build up should not stop it. There are tons of sports that do just that.
Even a decathlon is a power sport, yet at the end they have to run a Aerobic event… Most guys (and girls) in this event are for the most part, Good at all, master of none.
Still - if your gunna use it for a sports purpose (other than crossfit comps) your have to realize Sports Specific planning - i can think of a few sports where it might come in handy (Surf life saving perhaps?). Full power sports, NO. Full aerobic sports, NO.
Crossfit is the exercise equivalent of the Swiss Army knife. Sure you can do lots of things with it, but you get a short knife, crappy scissors, useless fork, cheap-ass tweezers and piss-poor saw (and a re-usable toothpick).
If you want to train for your sport, train for your sport properly. Don’t substitute proper training (proper tools) with cross-fit (swiss army knife).
I have members at my gym who have trained crossfit and still do. I can tell you the one guy is super fit, but he scares me watching him train. Rapid fire, sloppy clean and press, completely sloppy chins. I could go on. I dont think that anyone is arguing that crossfit isn’t a great way to train if you are an average person/weekend warrior. There are far too many problems to utilize it at all in training athletes, unless maybe MMA guys. You hit the nail on the head earlier with the DOMS comment. If your athletes are sore, injury potential jumps massively. Athletes need to train ALL facets of their given sport year round. That means speed in particular. Sore athletes tend to end up injured. I honestly don’t see where it fits in in any annual plan for sports other than perhaps combat sports. That’s just my take.
[i]“Unsafe is unacceptable,” Sherwood said. “But perfect form is also unacceptable. What we look for is CrossFit slop.”
If you’re doing a high-rep, high-effort set of cleans, and your back starts to round, that’s unsafe and therefore unacceptable. But if you’re doing that same set of cleans with textbook-perfect form on every rep, that’s also unacceptable. You’ve either chosen too light a weight, or you’re not working hard enough.
The sloppy ideal is a small breakdown in technical form, maybe 20 percent off from perfect. In CrossFit, that’s the optimal balance of effort and safety. “That’s where the intensity is,” Sherwood said.
“Technique only has to be good enough to increase the intensity,” Sherwood answered. “The goal is never perfect form. Remember, it’s the speed of the set that is the goal.”[/i]
So who determines what defines sloppy versus unsafe? Sounds like semantics at that point.
Exercising with HEAVY weights (where form should
always be paramount)against a clock to see how
many reps one can do IS just plain STUPID.
“perfect form is unacceptable” - AMAZING!
I am pretty sure they just made up a number, but 20%? I can’t think of any athletic activity where a 20% drop-off, no matter how, exactly, you define it, wouldn’t be massive.
I am pretty sure that I have 80% of the running form of Ben Johnson, and the only time I run is when I am late to the train.
Lets hope this article puts an end to this waste of everyone’s time here and that the professional site whores who troll the internet for opportunuities to get their “message” out will just go away.
