One has opened up near me i have just heard - might check it out.
I do some complex Routines with dumbbells that i have heard are similar to Crossfit - what’s different is the Rest between sessions and the duration of the Sets/session, and not letting people do it if they are not ready physically for it - form, technique, r.o.m. ect
I get Meat-head paying clients who want Results - but they assume super hard works like you listed that leave you shattered is the way to go. I spend more time Convincing these people Less is More than with anybody. Once results start to be shown, then the conversations become less and less.
Last night I was at the gym and there were 3 meat-heads who were all doing a leg day together. I had to share the squat rack with them (only one) so I counted…
They did something like 6x8 with heavy half squats, then 6x8 with heavy leg press (a seated, 45 degree inverted smith machine), then I think only 5x8 smith machine lunches - heavy weight of course, then then did supersets of quad extensions and ham curls, then I left as getting on to another leg press machine (sitting upright, push platform horizontally).
UM went from having HIT from 1979 until 07 with Gittleson then a non HIT program with Barwis (though his program was certainly not without issues as has been documented frequently on this site) and now they go back to a Ken Mannie version of HIT with the new guy (Aaron Wellman) having been at MSU in the early part of the last decade.
This kind of thing has been happening in CrossFit for years. Here’s an article in the NY Times from 2005.
Mr. Anderson, a 38-year-old member of the special weapons and tactics team in the sheriff’s office in Tacoma, Wash., left the gym with his muscles sapped and back pain so excruciating that he had to lie in the driveway to collect himself.
That night he went to the emergency room, where doctors told him he had rhabdomyolysis, which is caused when muscle fiber breaks down and is released into the bloodstream, poisoning the kidneys. He spent six days in intensive care.
Yet six months later Mr. Anderson, a former Army Ranger, was back in the gym, performing the very exercises that nearly killed him. “I see pushing my body to the point where the muscles destroy themselves as a huge benefit of CrossFit,” he said.
CrossFit’s other mascot is Uncle Rhabdo, another clown, whose kidneys have spilled onto the floor presumably due to rhabdomyolysis.
You would think that if the goal is increased strength the S&C coaches would look at the sports that specialize in strength (i.e. Olympic lifting, power lifting, strongmen, gymnasts) to see how those athletes train and then adapt it to supplement other sports.
Imagine trying to convince power lifters and Olympic lifters to adopt HIT or the UI type training protocols. I can hear the laughter already. Start with the people who actually specialize in how to build strength and then go from there.
the problem with many strength coaches is that they are often former athletes. This is by no means problematic in itself, but there tends to be a culture of “my coach did this so I do this” attitude. They tend to not learn outside of their narrow paradigm. I was lucky enough to have been in school when S&C was just beginning to become more prominent. There is no excuse for this antiquated methodology. I deal with a program where the coaches trash the hell out of athletes all the time. I could hang the guy on his own words. For one season I wrote and directed every speed and strength workout and the coach was quaoted in the paper as saying it was the “strongest and fastest team” he had ever had there. Guess what, I never did the crazy conditioning. The following, they adopted the Barwis methodology and I said sayonara. Not interested in wrecking kids. Just plain stupid.
have to hear “we failed too many times and now we are going to find out who wants to be here” drivel one more time, I am going to hang myself. When in the hell did football become bootcamp and not about performance. You don’t treat Ferraris like Hummers. Why is it that NFL teams S&C is much less rigorous than college when the NFL game is much more rigorous? I hope that some of these idiots learn something from this situation. I have a gut feeling that there is going to be some massive fallout and some major changes pusuant to this.
This really reinforces my opinion that a lot of Charlie’s success as a coach seemed to be based more on what he didn’t do to the athletes than what he did do.
Ian King once told me that many programs screw athletes up more than they help them. I have always kept this in mind when programming. Charlie had the same philosophy, that the health of the athlete was priority one. I always told my athletes that if I ever injure them, I will fire myself.
What’s really sad about this is that the sports news casters have more common sense than the S&C coach in this case. I think this coach just made it alot harder to get your foot in the door to these high level programs…
So I just read that one of the 13 players was all Big Ten safety Tom Prater. While he is recovering, he will be out for one month of workouts. That effectively just pissed away 3-4 months of progress just to prove a point. The guy stepped over the line and now Iowa will pay a price with many good players being way behind in where they could be in the training process. When will these fools learn?
Last night at the track there was a trainer encouraging a guy through what looked like the following done continuous in socks
Deads x 20 with 95kg (210lbs) then 5 x 400m with ‘recovery’ between reps 1 & 2 Burpees x 20 and reps 3 & 4 Front squat and press x 20 using a Strength Bag http://www.getstrength.com/Strength-and-Power-Bags/Powerbags/flypage.tpl.html
Yeap! Don’t miss another chance! I am sure he’d thank you! EDIT: or rather shoot both for their stupidity, for prescribing and executing, respectively!
I’ve seen this EXACT workout at Austin High this past summer. It was either Crossfit guys, or the Navy Seal wannabe’s. I’ve never seen more pathetic burpees in my life. The 400’s were in about 90 seconds too. Super!
