Lol Thos crap fitt workouts amaze me. No rhyme or reason. Its like they just make it up as they go. The worst part is the people running the crap fit have no ideawhat they are doing, nothing specific, nothing tailored toward the individual, just a random workout. I bet that workout was also done by a soccer mom, a prego lady and a 60 year old man.
Crapfit was created by a fat guy who never played a sport in his life, and people love it. He is the reincarnation of Jim Jones.
T-Slow has provided us with specific links to the information regarding Max Velocity Mechanics
I don’t see anything wrong with this “challenge”. First of all it’s a challenge so I believe that it’s not happening on the regular/ daily basis, also who this challenge is for “athletes, private clients and the normal population” and thirdly is the instructor looking for particular outcome or not.
Some of my athletes are fitness instructors and they work with top athletes (triathlon) and private clients.
So the story starts.
One client said to athlete I coach that he’s not paying him all this dosh for some crappy workouts (they were well planned, with tests good assessment etc…) so he asked him what do you want out my workouts and the answer was straight forward “I want to feel it” The next workout was so demanding that the guy felt on his face doing Rockys and stayed on the ground for 5min.
Two day after the workout he came back with two friends. They were willing to pay $80 each for the session.
Also you have stated important factor above “people love it”.
As for triathletes, workouts were totally different, tempo, series of exercises with medballs, circuits, mobility etc… designed to contribute to further development.
So there you go, who’s this workout/ “challenge” for?
I would not say that Crossfit is that bad - just inefficient for the more serious sportsman. Just looks like what used to be called circuit training, which used to be carried out pre season for general fitness in various sports.
Trouble with this type of mixed training is it contains all forms of activity - endurance, speed, strength and explosiveness. That can be better trained by separate and controlled sessions of tempo, speed, weights and plyos. The risk in circuit/crossfit is the too high a volume of of any one component particularly when combined with the others.
it might be useful in low volumes for getting couch potatoes to a moderate level of fitness due to the variety and time efficient nature.
Thats the problem, Some of these nits cant tell the difference between a couch potato and a real athlete. Once size fits all. WHy are there so many injuries that are crossfit related. Olympic lifts to failure followed by bad form deadlifts and no form pull ups.
Yup, crossfit is indeed a cookie cutter program.
Charlie posted that his people did 4X4X60 with 4.5 minutes rest. Crossfit uses something like 20 seconds. That’s far less than CFTS uses for tempo, and while the crossfit crowd calls what they do “sprinting,” in reality those are aerobic workouts, more in line with what Sebastian Coe did for 1500 workouts than what a real sprinter does. So even if you survive the training, it’s still bad for you if you’re a sprinter. I think their champion has a 400m PR of 61 seconds, and their people struggle to break 14 seconds for 100, because they essentially do everything wrong in training.
And if anyone still wants to do any of that, look up on the web the study of 700+ crossfitters done at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. 15% of the crossfitters they interviewed ended up in the hospital from the so-called training.
I think there is a problem with messaging/email?
My impression of Crossfit has been it’s a great deal of medium work.( I think it’s all medium work for most people doing it) Nothing is low intensity and the high intensity is not suited for those doing it. High intensity training can vary widely from person to person. THe reality you need to carefully choose the type of work for the individual and this will change from day to day over time.
As you said Seb Coe was doing this type of work? I don’t know what he did but what I do know is it took Seb Coe years to train as reported.
Generally speaking it takes 7 years to develop an elite athlete and this is if the training is at the correct level and performed the right way.
I remember one of my clients years ago saying " there is more than one way to train". I remember thinking yeah " A right way and a wrong way".
Simply put there are better , more effective ways to train and most importantly a key objective is to stay healthy and avoid serious injury.
[ Olympic lifts to failure followed by bad form deadlifts and no form pull ups.[/QUOTE]
[b]When is low quality ever a good idea in training?
Training to failure ( depletion push-ups for example) has a place but generally it’s a recipe to increased risk for injury.
Why do I ever need an increased risk to injury? Why would anyone need that unless you have no options and that still is likely better than blowing out your shoulder or popping your Achilles tendon.
I did not need injuries when I was trying to get partial seconds in my 100 meter hurdle race. I sure don’t need it now when I have less time to train and less time for therapy.
Oh and then there is the technical aspect of a very complicated Olympic lift. So complicated there are generations of highly successful athletes that were never taking advantage of such lifts as there was no one around to teach it.
Exercise is great.
Fitness is great.
But how you exercise and how you get fit is very personal and I get that.
I think we want to make sure that we make a distinction that Crossfit is NOT going to work for the training required to run highly competitive events in sports like track , football, basketball, rugby,etc[/b]
What messaging are you looking for Rich? PM?
Send me a note if you have a question.
Yeah the " I want to feel it" workout prescription for sure appeals to a certain type of person. " I want my monies worth" sentiment comes from the same type of person. This thinking is very much a part of the consumer of fitness opposed to the athlete for performance . Don’t you think so? I have had those clients and they don’t last for very long in my experience.
I also think a challenge is great but whether you are speaking about fitness or elite sport you always want to set people up to succeed not fail.
Unless you have unlimited time and energy and money for the what if’s then this is how I was always trained to operate.
I have at least five athletes leave because I “haven’t been working them hard enough” yet after three weeks they have needed their recovery week…
I run my group with an iron fist, and there’s a mandatory exit tax if they quit
You are absolutely right.
I would like to think that xfit was a good idea. Idea to develop the whole body across all skills and bio-motor abilities, unfortunately like some of other great ideas eg. plyometrics (depth jumps), turned to be a disaster for some participants especially for those one taking the concept to the extreme. Please correct me if I am wrong but in my opinion everything started to go down when they have introduced extreme challenges eg clean and jerk to failure, that’s just brilliant concept. Can we give that brilliant mind Nobel prize for the contribution to failure?
You know, reading and watching Charlie’s materials I like to think that I have learned a lot. I think the most valuable lesson was to question yourself in regards of what has to be done to take your athlete to the next level. What is important what’s not so important, that we need to take our time when analysing the whole process and reflect. Being critical and honest about it, cause no performance athlete has been coached over the night therefore pathways have to be designed with sense of care not only for the result but also for the athlete.
Somehow is some cases of xfit athletes and other, certain coaching/training principles has been lost in the process. There are many cases in different sports where the result is a priority and chasing the target is the only one thing in mind. I think that kitkat used important term “sense of self-preservation” which should be applied across all activities.
DMA. it sucks that some athletes don’t understand the concept which you are trying to run. I guess you are better off without them.
bmarcho1 just an advice, be carful with your iron fist approach, I have seen twice in the last five years exodus of athletes from one coach with iron fist approach. Have to say it’s really unusual thing but its happening. Quite astonishing phenomenon.
regards
wermouth
Not sure if you received my email?
I will send you a note as I have not heard from you. My wi fi was down for a few days.
Crossfit (that I’ve witnessed) has people convinced that they don’t need to separate training components and can, instead, do a workout which will give maximal strength, speed, power, endurance, flexibility, skill results etc… While a program over the long haul (Charlie’s!) can develop these qualities with some aspects at times receiving major emphasis while other are emphasized to a lesser degree and over times the roles/focus changes, Crossfit sells that they can achieve all of these by emphasizing everything, every time it seems. It does appeal to those people who believe they must leave every session totally spent, bleeding, sore for days etc. and if not, the workout could not possibly have been productive. That’s another issue-too much focus on the WOD (workout of the day!) crap and not enough (at all?) about how the week, month, phase sets up and allows one to correctly potentiate qualities and offer a systematic overload/progression. It appeals to the mindset of some children who can’t see past the moment and think longer term/bigger picture.
30 reps of Olympic lifting is a bad idea and I laugh how they don’t even scale it properly with the guy weighing 220 lbs. and the other at 150 lbs. doing the same weight!? Assuming they have approx. the same relative strength Crossfit takes the lazy approach and give them both the same weight which is typically going to crush at least the lighter guy if not both. I’ve heard that some of the best people who compete in it don’t even train in the typical crossfit manner but actually moreso with a template more familiar to track and weightlifting coaches.