Are We Witnessing the End of CrossFit?

May 9, 2013 by Leave a Comment

If you talk to any Crossfitter who’s been in the game for any length of time you’ll often hear them talk about “back when I started Crossfitting…”  I guess that’s no different than any situation; I’m sure if you listened at any workplace around the world you’d hear the salty veterans telling the newcomers how tough work was “back in the day,” something about walking in the snow, uphill both ways.  We get it, life was tougher back then.  And I say all of this as a precursor to what I’m about to get into because I will in fact be telling you about “back in my day.”

You see, I’m worried that we may be witnessing the end of CrossFit as we speak.  I know that sounds odd seeing as CrossFit is booming considerably but I can’t help but think it may be going in the opposite direction.  Now don’t get me wrong, I love the strides that CrossFit has made and the opportunities that they have had the good fortune to recognize.  ESPN, Reebok, televised Open workouts, an update show,professionally sponsored athletes…I mean the list goes on and on containing the awesome things CrossFit is doing.  I’m worried though.  I’m worried we may be getting away from what CrossFit is all about.

crossfit games

(Here comes my back in the day story.)  I had the good fortune to be introduced to CrossFit in 2007 while I was in the Marines.  As most of you know, CrossFit has infiltrated just about every sector of the military and for good reason; this stuff works.  So when I was introduced to CrossFit, and for the first two years I implemented it, I lived in the world of Murph, Cindy, hundreds of tabatas, and anything with a pullup bar and running.  We did bare-bones CrossFit.  In fact I didn’t even perform my first clean until maybe a year and a half ago and just a week ago I attended my first Olympic lifting seminar with Mr. Glenn Pendlay and the awesome folks down at MuscleDriver USA.

My point with all of this is I’m starting to see people lose the spirit of what CrossFit is all about.  The CrossFit Games, while awesome, have turned CrossFit from training for the “unknown and unknowable” to training for two big competitions a year.  I can name five coaches off the top of my head who specialize in getting athletes to the Games.  Now again, that is awesome and I’m super happy for these coaches and the athletes that they are producing but is it helping CrossFit?  I’m talking CrossFit the strength and conditioning program not CrossFit the sport.

As I’ve said before, I make my living teaching CrossFit.  Coaching movements and teaching people how to move more effectively are what drives my life but it seems that lately my biggest challenge  is trying to get people to understand that butterfly pullups and rebounding box jumps are not for you.  I spend a significant amount of time talking people out of attempting movements that are way too complex and out of their skill/strength level.  In fact, I’m pretty sure most CrossFitters think this whole lifestyle is a “do really cool moves” program rather than the strength and conditioning program that it really is.  And that’s my concern.  Beyond the fact that I watch Games athletes who still do not seem to grasp the kip (we take our gymnastics from gymnasts right?  Find me a picture of a gymnast who throws their feet obnoxiously behind them, loses all tightness in the abdominal, and turns their body into a back-wrenching U just to perform a muscle up) and sacrifice any and all sound body mechanics to perform movements they shouldn’t even be attempting, I deal with people everyday who forgo any sound thinking to focus on movements miles out of their ability level.  How many people can’t front squat their own body weight yet feel the overhead squat is a necessary movement in their arsenal?  Go back and read the original articles on CrossFit and see what Mr. Glassman has to say about when and why we make movements progressively more difficult.

Five years from now what will CrossFit look like?  Will it still be the tight-knit community that has built it into what it is today or will it just be training centers for people going to the Games and the rest of the community takes a backseat?  Think about this.  More and more boxes are starting to franchise into other cities.  Hell, Reebok is now putting their name on CrossFit gyms in major cities across the world.  Wal-Mart started as a single store in a single location did it not?  What happened to local boxes making do with bare-bones gear and still producing awesome human beings?  How many people realize that more and more box owners are simply letting their affiliations run out and changing their name to ________ Strength and Conditioning?

In the end I don’t know and I don’t have all of the answers.  Maybe I’m just over thinking it and CrossFit hasn’t changed a bit.   To be honest, sometimes I just like to think about stuff.  I love CrossFit and I’m very grateful to be a part of the CrossFit community but I always wonder…is this what Greg Glassman wanted when he started this whole thing or are we forgetting who we really are?  You tell me.

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Stop Wasting Your Time

April 18, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Take a few minutes to scour the internet and you’ll find millions of articles on fitness.  From the best “fat-burning exercises” to the “ultimate killer workouts” and every diet fad and detox in between.  What you generally won’t find is someone telling you to stop wasting your time.  Well, here I go.

Stop wasting your time.  Stop going to the gym, stop running, stop hiking, just stop.  Yep, that’s right just stop right now because the hour or two spent training a day is most likely better spent doing something else.  Why?  Answer this.  What happens in the 21-23 hours you spend outside of training?  I can tell you what happens for most people and I’ll go ahead and tell you again to stop wasting your time.  The gym is the easy part.  Exercise is simple.  The problem with our “understanding” of exercise is that most people believe deep down they can simply out-exercise bad habits.  Poor posture, some ab work will fix that.  Horribly uneducated diet making me overweight and sluggish, nothing a treadmill can’t fix.  Sorry folks, not gonna happen.  What separates the people who become world-class athletes and those who plug away on the elliptical never to see results is the answer to the above question.  What are you doing outside of the gym to make yourself better?

You see, the reason people never progress is because of our society’s devaluation of the word dedication.  Dedication requires discipline and slowly but surely that word is being eroded from the Earth.  In the realm of fitness and health, dedication isn’t dutifully exercising for an hour a day 3-4 times a week.  We call that a habit.  Dedication isn’t hitting the gym once a day then going out to drink the night away.  Dedication is heading home early because you have training in the morning.  Dedication isn’t sitting for 8 hours a day in front of a computer then heading home to “relax” on a couch staring at the TV.  Dedication is spending your night mobilizing, stretching, hydrating, and preparing for the next day of training.  Dedication isn’t stuffing down calories of garbage because you’re “bulking.”  Dedication is eating chicken and vegetables while your buddies order pizza because you’re well aware of the grain intolerance that our species has had for thousands of years.  Dedication is knowing what your weaknesses are and working on those rather than your strengths.  Dedication isn’t a word to be used lightly.  Dedication is a lifestyle.

Stop wasting your time.  By all means, continue fool to yourself into thinking that one hour of exercising is going to magically eradicate the 23 hours you spend shortening, tightening, poisoning, and destroying your body.  Or better yet, how many years have you sat hunched over like that?  If you want to be a better athlete, better human, better anything, you need to fully grasp the concept of dedication.  Otherwise you’ll continue on the path you are currently on.

So ask yourself, am I getting better?  Am I being the best version of myself that I can be?  Am I spending the other 23 hours of my day making myself better or am I just wasting my time?

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Who Are You?

April 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment

“Listen to everyone; follow no one.”

Simple yet profound.  I heard this statement the other day when I was watching an interview with Dean Karnazes.  If you don’t know who Dean Karnazes is you should check him out; he’s the Ultra-Marathon Man.  He’s run 80 hours non-stop.  He runs 135-mile races.  He is the embodiment of what the human body is capable of.

Now this whole thing isn’t about Mr. Karnazes, although I could talk in length about what he means for fitness, but rather what he said that I find interesting.  ”Listen to everyone; follow no one.”  It’s easy to hear a statement like that, click Like, and then write it off never thinking about it again but I think this simple statement is what holds so many people back.  In all reality, the physical side of fitness is the easy part.  Talk to any good trainer and you’ll hear the same basic principles.  Uneducated trainers use fancy equipment, gimmicks, and “fat-burning” exercises.  Good trainers understand how the body works and go from there.  The real magic happens when you stop looking in magazines for guidance and start to figure  stuff out on your own.  Yeah there’s tons of good advice out there and it’s always good to have goals to strive for but who knows you better than you?  I can prescribe you a highly specific diet that is supposed to be perfect for 95% of people in the world but if it doesn’t work for you then why follow it?  I’m sure at some point in his career Mr. Karnazes was told that running for 80 hours at a clip isn’t good for his knees but as far as I can tell his knees are working just fine.

Take a look at Crossfit.  Two things strike me with the Crossfit example.  The first is one of my favorite things about Crossfit.  Women lifting heavy weights.  Finally, women are unafraid to lift heavy things and become strong.  And guess what?  They’re putting up huge numbers and it’s awesome!  Women who are in shape and strong are awesome, simple as that.  Men who are put off by that generally could use some more time under the bar themselves.  And the second?  Have you ever read about how Crossfit was founded?  It goes something like this.  Guy trains people.  Guy looks for what people say about fitness.  Guy finds no merit in their answers.  Guy creates own answers (Crossfit).  Guy spreads new answers.  Athletic beasts are made at alarming clip.

The great thing about fitness is there really is no right answer.  There are answers that are better than others and there are answers that are wrong, but there are no perfect answers.  Look at the top 100 Crossfitters on the Open Leaderboard and I bet you’ll find 100 different people training in 100 different ways.  Sure, they all follow the same general principles but after that they do what works best for them.  Some guys eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches all day while others weigh and measure everything that goes into their body.  Some train five times a day, some train three times a week.  You don’t do either nor should you.  You do what works best for you because you’re not them you’re you.  And you rock.

Oh, one more thing.  Look at what you’re wearing.  Do you wear those clothes because they make an honest difference in the way you perform or do you wear them because you saw someone cool wearing them?  I enjoy some awesome clothing too but your money is better off spent on things that actually make a difference like grass-fed meat or fresh vegetables not the entire line of spring apparel from Lululemon.  After all, give Dean Karnazes some rags and a pair of flip-flops and he’ll smoke me every time.

Even when I’m wearing my insulated, dry-fit, tailor-made, compression outfit that reduces wind resistance and makes me look awesome.

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