Stop Talking To Myself: I've Got 99 Problems and CrossFit's One

As soon as anyone finds out that I am a sports performance coach for a living, the inevitable third question I get (after, "So, you're like a personal trainer?" and, "How do I get rid of this?" *points to fat on obscure body part*) is, "What do you think about CrossFit?" Growing weary of answering this same question over and over, I figured this blog is as good a medium as any to lay out my thoughts on CrossFit once and for all. This way, I'll have tons more time to answer inevitable question number four: "So....like a gym teacher?"

CrossFit was created by Greg Glassman and began to gain a massive following after the launch of their website in the year of our WOD, 2003 (If you're already educated on CrossFit then you know that WOD joke was hilarious, you don't have to tell me). The basic idea behind CrossFit is that it supposedly trains you to be ready for anything life throws at you. In principle, it is not a terrible ideology and from its humble beginnings in Santa Cruz sprung the knee sock wearing, paleo-dieting, kool-aid drinking cult (yes, cult) it is today. I am willing to bet nearly all of you either know someone who CrossFits (because, believe me, they will tell you) or you are CrossFitters yourselves. If the latter is the case, you're probably already stewing that anyone would dare blaspheme against your savior, but give me a moment to explain my stance and then decide whether or not you want to throw your lifting shoes and weight belt through the computer screen.

First off, CrossFit is by no means an original idea - almost nothing in the fitness industry is. If you think up an exercise or modification of a lift, chances are pretty good you aren't the first person to think of it. Exercise has been around for a long time. The original "creator" probably just wasn't so pretentious to claim ownership of it. (A quick side note: a general pet peeve of most fitness professionals without their heads a mile up their own asses is the statement, "You stole that from [insert name or organization here]!" It's a movement, not a dissertation. Get over yourself). In CrossFit, a "WOD", or workout of the day, (abbreviations are big when you're busy addressing the 324 dimensions of fitness) is generally a prescribed list of exercises and repetitions to be completed in a given amount of time. You do as much work as you can in that time and then move on.

This is the basics of circuit training, which was first researched and developed by R.E. Morgan and G.T. Anderson in 1953 in England. (Ever heard of them? Probably not, since they don't claim anyone who circuit trains stole their idea). Wikipedia (yes, Wikipedia is a credible source) defines circuit training as, "...a form of body conditioning training, resistance training, and high-intensity aerobics. It is designed to be easy to follow and target strength building as well as muscular endurance. An exercise "circuit" is one completion of all prescribed exercises in the program. When one circuit is complete, one begins the first exercise again for another circuit. Traditionally, the time between exercises in circuit training is short, often with rapid movement to the next exercise." Sound familiar? To clarify, I am not alleging that Glassman "stole" CrossFit. He simply took something that already existed and slapped a name on it. Some may call it shrewd business skills and I wouldn't disagree with you. Just stop acting like it is the most revolutionary thing in fitness since the Shake Weight.

Secondly, CrossFit, by their own definition, is broad, general, and continually varied. It makes sense then that people who participate in CrossFit (when it is done well, which I will get to later) can expect gains in broad and general fitness over a wide range of movements. If that is your goal then by all means knock yourself out. Just don't be surprised in a year or so when suddenly you cannot get your lifts to increase any further. This is the drawback to general programming: broad training philosophies will only get you so far when you begin placing importance on specific movements. To continue progressing these, you need a specified program geared towards improving specific movements (a shocking concept, I know). A colleague of mine best summed it up recently when he said, "CrossFit has become its own entity; its own sport. If you CrossFit, you will become good at a lot of things, but great at nothing, save for CrossFit."

If you want to become a better squatter, guess what? You need to squat and you need a program geared towards increasing your squat numbers. It is for this reason that CrossFit should not be considered a training tool for specific sports, as programs like CrossFit Football try to advertise. The need for program specification is the reason I have a job right now. When looking at different sports, one size does not fit all when it comes to training. A soccer player has different needs than a softball player. Do some needs overlap? Sure, but there are others that are uniquely suited to each sport. What CrossFit lacks is this specification of program development. If you are looking to increase your general fitness then maybe CrossFit is your best bet, but if you are looking to be a better hockey player you need to be playing hockey and lifting in a manner that will aid in playing hockey and you need someone educated in how to write that program.

When it comes to a profession where you are required to demonstrate or teach a particular skill to novices, generally there is some sort of certification process you must go through first. At the moment, I am a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist through the National Strength and Conditioning Association, a Sports Performance Coach through USA Weightlifting, and a Level One Track and Field coach.

I'm also certified in CPR and the use of a defibrillator.

I have been deemed competent by these organizations to teach people various aspects of sport performance training. This also means that there are certain things I am not proficient in. If an athlete comes to me asking for nutritional advice I can give them a few very basic tips, but, as any self-aware instructor should, I know when to admit that I am out of my element. In this case, I refer them to a registered nutritionist because I know that is where they will get the best information and care. It would be selfish, egotistical, and irresponsible of me to assume that I am smart enough to give anyone information on topics that I have a very tenuous grasp on myself.

I bring this up because CrossFit has their own certification process that they regulate themselves. To clarify, this would be the equivalent to deeming myself a certified bad ass just because I printed off a piece of paper that says so. As there are no official regulations from an external governing body on what criteria a Certified Bad Ass has to meet, no one can argue that I am not, indeed, a bad ass. Judging by my experience with those who have been deemed proficient by CrossFit, for one to become CrossFit certified you have to go through the rigorous process of writing a check for $1000 and handing it over to them. That appears to be about it. It also serves their corporate structure to have as many CrossFit certified people out there as possible because they require it if you want to open your own CrossFit gym. This also skews the emphasis away from rigorous teaching practices and towards a streamlined process to get the certification done. It is a simple numbers game - more certified people, more potential gym owners, more money.

Now, you may be asking what experience I actually have with all of this. I joined a CrossFit gym for a few months a couple years ago. I purposely did not inform them of my background in strength training as I wanted to see how they would treat someone off the street. My second day there we were informed the workout included numerous power snatches. For those of you who may not know, the power snatch is one of the more complicated of the Olympic lifts, where the loaded barbell is taken from the ground, pulled the length of the body, and then caught in an overhead squat position.

A basic breakdown:

I tried to find a video, but ironically they were all of people doing fifty of these in a CrossFit workout (more on that in a minute). Back to the story, playing my role as "uneducated new guy" (for which I was infamously snubbed from Oscar consideration) I asked the owner and "head coach" how I was to go about doing a power snatch. His response was, "Well, you take the bar from the ground and then basically just get it over your head however you can." I shit you not, those were his exact words. The following best characterizes my reaction:

While I acknowledge this was an extreme case and not all CrossFit gyms are run as such (many owners actually go through the process of obtaining further certification in order to, you know, appropriately teach complicated Olympic lifts), the fact of the matter is that there is ample opportunity for situations like this one to occur hundreds of times a day. As it turns out, a CrossFit Level One certification is based around doing "CrossFit moves" like thrusters and muscle-ups. Only after you fork up a grand for this certification can you move on to more advanced certifications in which they cover Olympic lifts for another handsome fee. Luckily, I knew enough about lifting to keep from hurting myself, but Johnny Weekend Warrior off the street may not be so lucky and, especially in movements such as the snatch where the shoulders are put into an extremely vulnerable anatomical position, devastating injuries can and do occur. A running joke I've heard is that the perfect business model for an orthopedic rehabilitation center would be to simply open it across the street from a CrossFit gym. Unfortunately, there may be some truth to this.

As I previously stated, the Olympic lifts are very intricate movements that need to be taught in a step-by-step manner. If they are being used for the purpose of power development, which is their primary application in most programs, it is also important that fatigue not play a role in poor technique, as poor technique is where most lifting injuries occur.

To ensure fatigue doesn't play a role, low volume and adequate rest are crucial. You would be hard pressed to find any coach educated in Olympic lift progression programming more than five repetitions of any Olympic lift at one time and that would be followed up by three to five minutes of recovery. It is a relatively simple chain reaction: high volume leads to fatigue, fatigue leads to poor form, poor form leads to increased risk of injury. If your number one goal is injury prevention, as it should be of any coach, then anything that increases risk of injury (and I acknowledge there is inherent risk in any lift or activity of daily life, but the key here is minimization of said risk) should be very closely considered, reviewed, and probably discarded.

Now, to this point the CrossFit argument is often made, "Well, what if we aren't training for strength and power? We use very low weight." In this case, I agree that a lower load would decrease chance of injury, but if your goal is not power development then what is it? To say you can do thirty snatches in ten minutes? I bet the novelty of that statement wears off pretty quickly during a six month rehab for labral reconstruction. Is it simply to use multiple large muscle groups in coordinated movement to reach a metabolic effect (translation: do something hard that will jack up your heart rate and wear you out)? Then there are literally hundreds of movements you can do that require a fraction of the training that also minimize, if not eliminate completely, placing the joints in vulnerable anatomical positions. For you CrossFit literate, how about a medball burpee with jump to a wall ball? You can have that one for free. Unfortunately, when it comes to proper Olympic lifting the 'how' is only part of proper implementation. Equally important is the 'when' and 'why' of training.

I mentioned earlier the need for specification if you want to improve a given lift. Well, if you want specification then you need planning because if you are going to write a program with a goal in mind then you need to plan out how to reach that goal. If you have someone begin a training protocol and you don't have a pretty good idea where you are going to take it for the next six weeks (at the very least) then chances are you probably aren't going to end up where you want to. When you show up that day and throw together a workout off the top of your head it isn't the admirable quality of spontaneity or a means to make a client "ready for anything". It is lazy coaching. I know. I've done it. I've been a lazy coach and lazier lifter who would show up and "shoot from the hip" with my workouts. It is fine to do on occasion when you need to change things up, but it cannot be called a program. CrossFit workouts often remind me of waking up the morning a project is due with nothing done and simply throwing together anything you can for a passing grade.

"Let's begin with 13 pull ups, then run over here and do 50 lunges, then skip 400m, then, uh, pick up this desk and spin in a circle three times. As many rounds as possible in 20 minutes." -The birth of a CrossFit workout

This lack of education and the elitist "pain is weakness leaving the body" mentality that comes with many CrossFitters is often the mixture that leads to serious injury. Sometimes pain is your body telling you that what you are doing is about to result in serious harm. Torn rotator cuffs or rhabdomyolysis, where the muscle fibers break down to the point that their components enter the blood stream (often resulting in hospitalization), from performing 100 hang cleans followed by 100 push ups, 100 squats, and 100 sit ups on your first day, which was my first (thankfully injury-free) workout, does not make you "harder" than other athletes. It makes your training program stupid and no one looks tough in a sling.

To sum up, I am not saying that every single CrossFit gym is as poorly run as the one I went to. There are many out there with coaches who are well educated on the subject of proper training and they do a great job producing good CrossFitters. That being said, the lack of accountability required of the gym owners by an independent body that has no stake in CrossFit leaves too many people being supervised by inadequately trained individuals often of the "no pain, no gain" mindset. It is also inaccurate to advertise that CrossFit produces the best athletes on the planet, if for no other reason than because that is completely unquantifiable. If you own and operate a CrossFit gym, your attention should be focused on how safely exercises are being performed, not on how many people are throwing up after the workout.

If you are a client or considering joining a CrossFit gym, or any gym for that matter, do your research. Some gyms really do know what they are doing. They just may take a little digging to find. Find out if the owner has any certifications other than those passed down from CrossFit. Ask if they have an introductory course that allows you to properly learn the movements before being thrown into a full workout. You wouldn't walk into a car dealership and buy a car simply on the salesman's word. You would want to know what is going on under the hood. Do your muscles and joints a favor and give any gym you consider the same due process.

One final note to all those out there who treat CrossFit like the fitness version of vegetarianism, where, no matter what, all conversations invariably lead back to how you CrossFit: unless someone specifically asks you about CrossFit, chances are no one cares. Personally, I equate the knowledge that you do CrossFit with the knowledge that you watch porn. I know that you do it and respect your right to do so, but I don't want to talk about it and don't send me a video unless something really messed up is going on.

You know, like this: