You’ve heard people talk about it, you’ve watched the commercials, and you’ve seen the socks.
Founded in 2000 by Greg Glassman, CrossFit is a fitness movement that uses high-intensity workouts with weightlifting, bodyweight exercises, plyometrics, gymnastics, and endurance training, among others. With over 5,000 affiliate gyms, it’s a fast-growing organization, and its workout program has been used by law enforcement, military organizations, firefighters, and even the Miami Marlins.
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They also created the CrossFit Games, with its inaugural event in 2007, as their premier competition to decide the world’s best CrossFitter. The cool thing: Anyone can participate.
Benefits
The CrossFit program aims to build complete athletes that excel in their ten fitness domains: cardiovascular and respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy. Unlike conventional athletes who might focus on just a few of those areas, the CrossFitter strives for overall fitness and is ideally prepared for anything.
They ditch the foo-foo treadmills and ellipticals of health clubs in favor of kettlebells, sleds, tires, ropes, and medicine balls for conditioning. And because of its group environment, CrossFit workouts will push you to your limits while fostering camaraderie.
Not to mention, CrossFit produces some sexy female athletes, too.
Effectiveness
There’s no question that the men and women who compete at the CrossFit Games are tremendous athletes. They have a unique combination of strength, endurance, power, and dexterity. Yet it is critical to understand the drawbacks of CrossFit before trying it (and there are a lot).
It can be dangerous. Olympic weightlifting is a highly-detailed, technique-driven sport, which takes months (if not years) of consistent practice. It also demands significant mobility at the hips, ankles, thoracic spine, and shoulders to perform safely and properly. With that said, it is extremely tough on the body because of the amount of weight thrown around. Yet, CrossFit may ask you to do 50 snatches in a row. For time. And maybe spin around too. (Seriously.) Competitive Olympic weightlifters don’t do that.
Injuries are commonplace:
But eventually you’ll learn you’re not in Pleasantville. You’re in real life, and CrossFit will hurt. Three years ago, I would have hidden that truth. Now, I think CrossFit’s ability to hurt is also its most commendable quality… How do I know you will hurt? I am a CrossFitter and affiliate owner, and, like a bad ex-girlfriend, CrossFit hurt me. I have a tear in each patellar tendon to prove it. To be fair and as is often the case, I arrived at CrossFit from a life of poor training habits and I decided not to correct them as I dove in. CrossFit showed me my folly through large loads moved quickly. That was my first big CrossFit lesson.
– Josh Bunch, trainer at Practice CrossFit, “It’s CrossFit and It’s Going to Hurt“
And also commendable? Sorry, bro.
I don’t mind if you decide to try it after analyzing the pro-and-cons, but please don’t mistakenly promote it as a great form of general fitness.
It’s arbitrary. Here’s a random Workout of the Day (WOD):
Nancy:
Five rounds for time of:
400 meter run
95 pound Overhead squat, 15 reps
Why? An overhead squat is a difficult squat variation that requires great mobility and strength in your hips and shoulders. The exercise is hard and complex — then you add a 400 meter run? For time? The fatigue from the run will manifest itself in sloppy squats and poor technique that can cause injury. If you have to do those two exercises, why not just divide them into two separate clusters or workouts? Alwyn Cosgrove, a highly-regarded strength coach, notes:
“Another [CrossFit workout] was 30 muscle-ups. And if you can’t do muscle-ups, do 120 pull-ups and 120 dips. It’s just random; it makes no sense. Two days later the program was five sets of five in the push jerk with max loads. That’s not looking too healthy for the shoulder joint if you just did 120 dips 48 hours ago.”
Poor trainers. Just as anyone can try CrossFit, almost anyone can open a CrossFit gym and teach it. That creates some problems: there becomes great disparity in coaching abilities. Reading some articles and watching a few videos on YouTube, you can see some have a proper background in training, while some really don’t.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzrKVPhgfXs&hl=en_US&version=3]
If a workout program I created had a video compilation of fails, I’d be appalled and embarrassed.
Founder of CrossFit, Greg Glassman, has also received a fair bit of criticism over the years, possibly stemming from silly comments like this:
“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.”
And,
“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.”
It’s worth mentioning, however, that a CrossFit gym looks exactly how I would construct a gym: lots of bumper plates, Olympic barbells, kettlebells, pullup bars, and rings. These are great tools to burn fat and build lots of muscle, and that should be used in everyone’s programming. However, it’s the way they use these tools that cause alarm. Yes, CrossFit can help you get into great shape, but beware of the costs.
To find the CrossFit affiliate nearest you, check out this map of all their locations.