Just to keep me on my toes, I'm going to resist the urge to use the term "audacious radical fitness zealots" when referring to CrossFit, a strength and conditioning program for what I would call the "over-the-top" athlete.
On the CrossFit website, they summarize their program in 100 words:
"Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat. Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean squat, presses, C&J, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast. Five or six days per week. Mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense. Regularly learn and play new sports."
Okay, I agree with a lot of that. But after looking at some YouTube videos of some of the main CrossFit workouts, I'll bet that in ten years, they will have bad knees, torn rotator cuffs and more artificial joints than me. And the sad thing is that they won't be able to keep doing what they love to do, which is continue to move with ease and speed. CrossFit is a fitness craze.
Virginia Heffernan wrote about it in The New York Times Magazine. She called it a "grueling online exercise regime that requires near-devotional commitment" and in my (sort of) humble fitness opinion, she is politely understating it.
Of course, nothing's wrong with have a Goliath-style work(out) ethic and a lofty Olympic-like fitness threshold, but this workout is a joint-buster. It puts the "man" back in "maniac." Although I did find myself lusting after their handstand pushups and their rope climbs, their hurling, snatching and dead-lifting with near impossible speed. After all, I'm still working on mastering one pull up, but I also imagined their knees exploding on the next ever-deeper squat or their shoulder dislocating as they balanced in a dangerously unnatural angle on the gymnastic rings.
My reaction could just be the mom in me. Or the CPR certified aerobics instructor. Or the non-idiot part of me. Then I had a horrifying thought. What if some of my readers who read my articles about working out look upon my fitness suggestions with an equal sense of disbelief or a similar feeling that I had while reading about CrossFit -- that the exercises prescribed are equally impossible?
So the point I want to make is that nothing you have to do to be healthy is super-human --although on some rainy Mondays mornings, it may feel like it. All I believe you need to do in order to live just about as long as the CrossFit cult members is 25-30 minutes of cardio exercise (meaning that you are sweating and you could talk but not sing) four times per week, fifty crunches and twenty push-ups, modified to your knees if needed. Do these most every day. And you will live just as long. Unless there's a natural disaster and it's survival of the fittest, then the CrossFit peeps will survive beyond most of the rest of us. But that's okay with me. I'm not into sleeping on the ground and I'm not much of a survivalist anyway.
Follow Penny Love Hoff on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pennylovehoff
Michael Feigin, M.S., C.S.C.S.: How to Calculate Your Healthy Weight
You're losing clients, you're voice is being drowned out in the fitness community, basically you're a dinosaur and crossfit is the comet about to send you and your "lifestyle" coaching into extinction. The paradigm has shifted. You are irrelevant.
Cheers!
Jake
I can now complete open standard WODs and altho these can be exhausting i have not suffered any injury. I will add that i do WODs with people who are younger than i am and do not finish last. CfFis a wonderful community as well as a great fitness resource and above all it is satisfying, always challenging and heaps of fun.
"Anyone who says that full squats are "bad for the knees" has, with that statement, demonstrated conclusively that they are not entitled to an opinion about the matter. People who know nothing about a topic, especially a very technical one that requires specific training, knowledge, and experience, are not due an opinion about that topic and are better served by being quiet when it is asked about or discussed. For example, when brain surgery, or string theory, or the NFL draft, or women's dress sizes, or white wine is being discussed, I remain quiet, odd though that may seem. But seldom is this the case when orthopedic surgeons, athletic trainers, physical therapists, or nurses are asked about full squats."
"Eat your damn yolks"
I dont do crossfit (I should, but....list any number of excuses here). I play rugby with
some guys who do, and they are very fit.
They range in age from 20's through mid 40's I would say this has greatly decreased their chances and occurrences of injury playing the sport
If you place a beginner, into a top level program in any sport, they will get hurt
If you have someone do olympic lifts without training and good technique they will get hurt
just as if you are used to running 5k and you go out and try a marathon.
This article seems a little short sighted.
They may still be healthy, but at a different level.