Guest guest Posted August 8, 2010 Report Share Posted August 8, 2010 Hi, Thankfully Crossfit is more popular in the US than in the UK, but it is growing, and with all fads it will soon be cramming our gyms also. In an interest to find out more I went straight to the source to see exactly what they say about themselves and was disturbed to read the following... " The CrossFit program is designed for universal scalability making it the perfect application for any committed individual regardless of experience. We've used our same routines for elderly individuals with heart disease and cage fighters one month out from televised bouts. We scale load and intensity; we don't change programs. The needs of Olympic athletes and our grandparents differ by degree not kind. Our terrorist hunters, skiers, mountain bike riders and housewives have found their best fitness from the same regimen. " To categorically say that everyone on the planet should do the same exercises is against all the key principles I have ever worked by! I have been guilty of ridiculing the profession of personal training in the past, but they are forced to pander to the fads if thats what the paying public ask for. My issue is that the message Crossfit are promoting is fundamentally wrong on two levels 1) One workout is not right for the every human walking the god damn globe, it just isn't! 2) Olypmic Lifts are complex, technical power exercises, the notion that i could perform these exercises 75 times in twenty minutes powerfully, and in a way wouldn't pull every muscle in my body and turn my spine into dust is ludicrous. The phrase " fit for purpose " springs to mind, if they want to promote a high volume, low recovery lactate tolerance method of training (which as existed for many years, through the use of properly researched metabolic investigations) then fine, but pick exercises that are appropriate and don't presume that octogenarians and pregnant women can do Hang Snatches, when most 18 year old athletes can't! Mark Helme Wakefield, UK Re: 2 Crossfitters 1 Chalk Bucket : " Thank God " you can do the play by play, as I train exclusively in my Private Quarters. Fad is the key word, but the Trend is frightening. It Reminds me of the Novel, " Return of the Primitive. " Landau Aventura, Florida _www.exercisefraud.com_ (http://www.exercisefraud.com) In a message dated 8/7/2010 3:02:08 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, deadliftdiva@... writes: Sigh. Hence my recommendation that we encourage them to go to their own gyms and learn from their own kind.... If they use poor gym manners in their own gyms, full of crossfitters, at least they will only be impacting their own members and not the members of more general gyms. When the fad truly got rolling and we started to see more than 2 or 3 in our gyms here, the toys didn't get put away, and the attitude got started that they had the only workouts worth doing... as I said before, including highly dangerous " sprints " across the foots of the bench press, and other nonsense! I don't think all of them have come from some magical place lacking their own kind and instruction, although I'm sure some of the people have come from solely looking at web sites or from poor second source instruction (like another member with questionable form passing it on). Fads tend to get zealous buy-in and oversell and you get the attitude that aggravates people who are not faddists around them lol. I mean, kettlebells and other fads can be a bit irritating when people say we must all do it, or we aren't working out . I'm sure that there are properly performed lifts in some crossfit venues with some members. It is, however, yet another guru driven program like the informercial one cited originally in the same vein, and your mileage may truly vary. As others have pointed out, reading their mother ship sites is pretty entertaining, including WOD recommendations, etc. The notion that someone can do just cross fit and perform at a truly " elite " level in sports is not likely....and I don't think just doing cross fit will get you onto the OL team for the Olympics, nor make you a 1000 lb squatter or bencher - or deadlifter. So it sounds like despite the unhappiness at my tone, you are saying we should send them to their own gyms to learn better form...and I said that, encourage them to seek their own kind, apart from the rest of us - for the sake of all of us! ============================= Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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