The reason CrossFit is better - for me - than the ordinary gym, is because in the past I would join a gym and not know what to do, and not know how to use the equipment, and not have a specific time to be there, and not have anyone to ask what to do, and feel silly, and stop going (but keep paying).
CrossFit is like group personal training, not a cult.
The trainer is very good and there is a big focus on safety and avoiding injury. The trainers are always available to help and guide you on how to exercise properly and safely. In fact I think it's much safer than going to an ordinary gym where you are left to work it out yourself and you'll probably do it wrong, endangering your health.
I don't love exercising - I value it but nothing more than that. So at CrossFit I don't need to think about it. I go along and get told what to do and it's a balanced exercise program. I just try not to go too hard - I'm in it for the long haul.
It's friendly but it's not a church or a love-in.
I did get a shoulder injury (currently recovering from it) but it's because of my years of sedentary living my muscles are weak and things like shoulder muscles aren't held together well by atrophied muscle. That's not the fault of CrossFit.
>> The trainer is very good and there is a big focus on safety and avoiding injury.
>> I did get a shoulder injury (currently recovering from it) but it's because of my years of sedentary living my muscles are weak and things like shoulder muscles aren't held together well by atrophied muscle. That's not the fault of CrossFit.
My mother used to be in a cult and I spent a good part of my childhood living on one of the compounds. Still, I am always surprised to find how easy it is for people to believe and say things that make no logical sense.
Quite obviously, if your trainer really was very good with a big focus on safety and avoiding injury, he would've known that you had weak shoulder muscles. I would bet good money that you suffered this injury during an exercise suggested and supervised by a 'safety conscious' CrossFit instructor.
This is no one's fault _except_ CrossFit and your trainer. You paid them a ton of money to help you train safely and they failed.
> The trainer is very good and there is a big focus on safety and avoiding injury. The trainers are always available to help and guide you on how to exercise properly and safely. In fact I think it's much safer than going to an ordinary gym where you are left to work it out yourself and you'll probably do it wrong, endangering your health.
You are fortunate to have a good trainer at your box, but you don't have Crossfit to thank for that. The minimum requirement for opening a box is a one weekend training course to get your Level 1 certification. That's it. Considering the skill level required to properly coach some of the Olympic lifts involved in Crossfit training, a weekend hardly scratches the surface.
As for the big focus on safety and avoiding injury, a number of WODs have heavy lifts for time that invite form breakdown and injury (e.g. "Diane"). Then there is always the "Uncle Rhabdo" mascot and the strange glorification of ripping blisters off your hands doing kipping pullups, but I digress.
I doubt many professional personal trainers would have recommended someone do the routine that caused you an injury. Working out is kind of intended to do the exact opposite - I'm surprised you do not hold place more responsibility for the injury on the instructor. If, after some kind of initial evaluation, they encouraged you to do something you couldn't actually safely do, I think the fault lies more in the crossfit trainer than yourself.
I am not surprised that you don't like exercise. There is a general trend in society to exercise instead of just live an active lifestyle by playing sport, going for walks, helping your friends move house, and so on.
Being active develops your body in a much better way as well. Muscles and tendons are much more complex than what is suggested by people who lift weights. Squatting heavy for 10 reps is only going to result in a very specific type of muscular development. Muscles have multiple compartments as determined by the various nerve endings. They have different types of muscle fibres and there are multiple smaller muscles all over the place.
It is pretty easy to recognise people who lift weights and don't do anything else because their bodies look strange. Many people at gyms have bigger chests than the worlds greatest fighters, bigger legs than the fastest people in the world, and wider shoulders than the fastest swimmers. Their muscles are counterproductive to being athletic as their legs rub together when they walk and so on. It is not just about size, it is about everything.
No it was the fault of crossfit. Most likely you had overdeveloped internal rotators which caused impingement due to poor posture. Any responsible trainer would get you to do facepulls and rows and maybe posterior chain exercises like deadlifts to correct your posture before you did overhead work. Injuries at the gym are extremely common because the body is more complex than some people think.
Having fun outdoors should be people's main source of exercise, not rep 1, rep 2, protein shake. Nutrition is another topic. Weight lifting is to being active as supplements, frozen meals, processed shit is to actual real food. And no you don't need 500 grams of protein per day. The whole fitness industry is garbage. It presents these bizarre bodies that nobody finds attractive as ideals and so people try to obtain them.
I'm not sure you're addressing Crossfit. While it has its faults, CF is all about "functional movements" similar to what you're arguing for. No WOD consists of "[s]quatting heavy for ten reps;" instead, they're combinations of lightweight movements. CF athletes are generally built more like a gymnast (or a Navy SEAL) than a gym rat.
Yes I am. There is no such thing as functional movements. Whatever you do is functional to whatever you are doing. They do lighter squats and heavier squats for reps.
massive arms that are completely out of proportion with their shoulders. Most people are not designed to have arms that big, which is why they don't match their shoulders.
They are a joke and the media is trying to make people think those types of things are attractive but the general population do not find them attractive at all.
Most people who do crossfit don't look like that, and they don't want to. Guys have less beer guts and better arms than the general population, girls are slimmer and have shoulder muscles. That's about it. There are very few ultra jacked dudes and women.
> There is a general trend in society to exercise instead of just live an active lifestyle by playing sport, going for walks, helping your friends move house, and so on.
Your friends move house only so often. The trend to exercise is unfortunately a direct consequence of technological progress - the move away from physically demanding jobs towards sitting for most of the day. Also, honestly, there's so much other stuff to do besides work, that not many have time for "an active lifestyle". So it's exercising for most of us, because it's more efficient.
> Having fun outdoors should be people's main source of exercise,
It should be, but it can't be. Not in our society, while we're still expected to work. Maybe after UBI comes, we'll have time and means to have fun outdoors.
> The whole fitness industry is garbage.
That I agree with, but it's mostly because it's pseudoscience and making money off people's vanity.
I think it is also due to the individualistic nature of modern society, which is often related to work commitments, but not entirely. People want to work out at a time that suits them and it is hard to organise everyone. Crossfit seems to have this problem as well so I don't see why people don't just play sport. Most people who do crossfit don't even look that fit. When in ancient history did humans need to lift 60kg over their heads anyway?
I've been doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for the past 8 years and I sometimes joke that it's my church because it's very much the "third place" for me. The camaraderie has kept me coming back, it's great to train with a group of people you know and trust several times a week and help each other progress over months and years. I've met many of my friends at the gym, of whom several have since quit training, but we still keep in touch. I can see the appeal of Crossfit because it also taps into the camaraderie that people crave, as opposed to a traditional gym where you put in your headphones, zone out and never talk to anyone.
Someone opened a Crossfit gym next to my house a couple of years ago, which is in a mixed residential-commercial neighborhood. The building is closely surrounded by residences. They operated largely outdoors, they woke me and my neighbors up every morning before dawn yelling and throwing stuff outside, and they kept it up until after dark six days a week. A lot of cops hung out there, and the city PD wouldn't enforce the noise ordinance against them. In a way, I spent 16 hours a day 6 days a week at Crossfit, for a couple of years.
It really did seem kind of like a religion or a cult; clearly the owners and the more serious customers had deeply invested their identities in what they were doing, and were seeking approval from one another. I perceived a kind of aloofness or elitism in the way that they valued validation from the in group over the rights and values of their neighbors. I came to recognize many of the customers, some whom were often there 20 or more hours per week. It seemed that one of the core tenets of the religion was that one must always have an audience while working out, if not willing then captive. Cheering, yelling, throwing large objects like tractor tires, and just generally doing everything outdoors, at maximum volume, in a public space, was apparently mandatory.
I worked at home for a couple years next to these guys. I could hear them inside my house all day, which they ran laps around in groups, with the leader shouting commands like a drill Sargent. When I worked in garden they were they there, throwing weights – it was required that all weights be thrown forcefully to the ground, in a dominance display accompanied chimpanzee-like shrieks, never merely set down on the pavement. When I retired to my porch for a cup of coffee, they were there, milling around next to my yard taking about their core workouts and protein shakes.
So it was almost like I lived at Crossfit for a while. In principle, I love the idea of a community gym. Now and then I would see one of the instructors cheering on a chunky middle aged person lifting weights, and that was so great it almost made up for it. Almost.
They moved away last year. My life has become much more pleasant, and I have had several months to reflect on this strange phenomenon. I value health and fitness, and I'm really not just jealous because they were more “swole” then me. For what it's worth, I ran 25 miles and lifted this week, but you probably wouldn't guess by looking at me. I'm not perfect, but I'm pretty much where I want to be with fitness – trying to do my best mostly, and not be nut job about it.
But is it really necessary to serve up personal fitness with a double side-order of external validation and group identity? Good health is it's own reward, and when our self image is so narrowly invested in one aspect of our lives, especially appearances, it's easy to overlook other personal growth opportunities. My neighbors muscles were big enough; I think they should have taken a break to work on their personalities.
I'd like to close with a joke: “If a Vegan does Crossfit, which one do they talk about first?”
> But is it really necessary to serve up personal fitness with a double side-order of external validation and group identity? Good health is it's own reward,
For some, it may be. I feel like it could be good for me, as a way to hack my mind. I hate exercising - not because of the physical effort, but because I'm too attention-deficient to experience it, or "good health", as any kind of reward. Exercising feels like a waste of time that could be spend on something else, e.g. reading a book or helping someone with some problem. I know my mind simply doesn't factor future health in day-to-day computations. I have to consciously and explicitly force* myself to care about it, and any way to push that care back from System II to System I is something I appreciate.
> and when our self image is so narrowly invested in one aspect of our lives, especially appearances, it's easy to overlook other personal growth opportunities.
True, though if your other areas are well-cultivated, then it may be worth to take that risk.
> I'd like to close with a joke: “If a Vegan does Crossfit, which one do they talk about first?”
They'll tell you how everyone from their Crossfit group loved their new fruit smoothie.
"I'd like to close with a joke: “If a Vegan does Crossfit, which one do they talk about first?”"
Excellent joke :) But also, we all know the only sanctioned diet in Crossfit (tm) is the paleo diet! :)
I did crossfit for about a year and must say that the workout is excellent and it's nice to have "personal trainers" always running the workout.
But it sure felt like a cult. It was mandatory to "disrespect" other forms of fitness etc training, they were all seen as stupid and pointless compared to Crossfit (tm).
And yes you take your kids there also etc. Once a pregnant woman did workout with another baby strapped to her back. You know training with lifting barbells over your head etc. And "to the max!". Seemed kind of stupid and over the top...
Lots of ill-informed comments in this thread, and some good stuff sprinkled in here too.
If you get injured, it's a combination of luck, morphology, and activity, ie the interaction of your genes with the environment, just like anything else. You can follow an excellent routine with exemplary form and still pick up injuries, although good technique should reduce this. However good technique and appropriate routines are hotly debated.
So here's the truth: what works for you will work for you. And that's it. There's no magic formula that works for everyone. Consequently you have to experiment, and consequently you risk injury. That's the story.
Trainers are (probably) not medically qualified, or qualified in rehabilitation. ("Qualified" is a technical term, it does not mean "enthusiastic about"). Consequently they (probably) do not know why your shoulder/whatever got injured, and what to do about it. "Imbalances" and "core" and "posture" are (probably) nothing to do with it. Do not follow their advice. Do not follow the advice of the guy who's had the same injury as you. Do not follow your friend's advice. Go see a professional. And shop around to find the right one for you.
Here the secret secret to recovery from nearly all injuries: Stop doing what caused it, and what makes it worse. Quit that stuff for 3 months. Replace it with something else if you need to (analyse your goals; think long-term not short term). Stay motivated and realise that your body is hugely resilient and adaptable. When you go back to the aggravating activity start from square one, real beginner-level basics, and sloooooooowly phase up the frequency and intensity. Modify, adapt, find your own path.
I believe it's good to engage people in any kind phisical activity, but when it's fueled by marketing rules and encouraged competitivity might especially for people without any sport background cause sometimes unreversible phisical harm.
It seems like a lot of people who write about crossfit haven't seen a significant amount of crossfit. We're 'competing', but someone is doing overhead squats with 60 kilos and someone else is doing it was a plastic bar. Someone's doing strict pull ups, others are using giant elastic bands. Cross fit has scaling built in. At the three boxes I've been a member of, coaches ask yo to take off weight when your form breaks down.
You can be injured doing any activity, especially activities incorrectly. You can also die prematurely from inactivity.
I've been doing CrossFit for 2 years and feel better than I have in decades. I do have a background in weightlifting (college football). However, my wife does CrossFit as well and prior to starting she never touched weights. Again, she feels better than ever. But then again she isn't being stupid about doing movements she is uncomfortable with and isn't loading until she has got the technique down. Furthermore, there are 70+ year olds in our classes, some of them first timers as well. They are obviously not snatching their body weight but scale the exercises appropriate to them.
I guess this just goes along with a general societal trend to eschew personal responsibility and blame externalities.
I completely agree. Your comment seems to support my assertion that there are "well-documented hazards" which I took the time to cursorily reference. And yet you replied with "Thanks for the laugh! :) 'Hazardous'. Haha."
Your comments don't seem logically consistent. (Plus there's more than a touch of ad hominem attack in there, which isn't necessary.)
You follow this with bandwaggoning and appealing to anecdote: "I do X, I know someone who does X" etc etc.
> "general societal trend to eschew personal responsibility"
I just have absolutely no idea how you arrive at this.
For the record: I lift weights. I highly recommend it. It mitigates the risk of certain diseases. It increases the risk of certain injuries.
The reason CrossFit is better - for me - than the ordinary gym, is because in the past I would join a gym and not know what to do, and not know how to use the equipment, and not have a specific time to be there, and not have anyone to ask what to do, and feel silly, and stop going (but keep paying).
CrossFit is like group personal training, not a cult.
The trainer is very good and there is a big focus on safety and avoiding injury. The trainers are always available to help and guide you on how to exercise properly and safely. In fact I think it's much safer than going to an ordinary gym where you are left to work it out yourself and you'll probably do it wrong, endangering your health.
I don't love exercising - I value it but nothing more than that. So at CrossFit I don't need to think about it. I go along and get told what to do and it's a balanced exercise program. I just try not to go too hard - I'm in it for the long haul.
It's friendly but it's not a church or a love-in.
I did get a shoulder injury (currently recovering from it) but it's because of my years of sedentary living my muscles are weak and things like shoulder muscles aren't held together well by atrophied muscle. That's not the fault of CrossFit.