COMMUNITY: The good, bad and ugly about CrossFit

Editor's note: Adam Rees is Founder of GRIT GYM, a gym based on results, creating a culture and lifestyle of performance, strength, health and freedom. Adam attended Wartburg College as a multisport athlete, worked under nationally recognized strength coach Matt McGettigan, has multiple published articles by international leaders in the fields of performance and corrective exercise, and is a glutton to information and improvement in all forms.

By Adam Rees, community contributor

I remember the original CrossFit competition, which was a bunch of people lifting and running around some rural shack in the middle of nowhere.

Now look at it.

I remember reading its marketing and laughing at what it called 'new” and 'innovative,” even though its stuff that's been used for decades. But its marketing plan obviously worked. If there's one thing you have to give CrossFit props for, it's they are ridiculously good at branding, marketing and business.

This is the good, the bad and the absolutely ugly about CrossFit.

From a biased and unbiased standpoint, CrossFit has some great points and some absolutely awful points. There's usually always a hole or two, and it's usually not as bad as it seems or as good as it seems.

The good

l Timed intervals

l Resistance training

l Shorter and Faster runs

CrossFit has done a great job of making these concepts more popular as well as more socially acceptable, which is great. These means of training are far superior to long steady state cardio from a fat loss, performance and health standpoint.

THE BAD

l I'm not much on creating 'need” to a community. I'd rather encourage people to think for themselves, as an individual, to be skeptical instead of naive, cynical or pessimistic.

Chanting together and forming a community that people become almost addicted to is great for business, but not great for life, at least not for the attendees.

What happens when you take away their community? They'll fail or find a new group to need. People at Grit Gym can walk into any gym in the world, perform and own their workout regardless of those around them. I'm not against synergism or the affect of positive influence, but creating drones to pad the bank account ... that's a different story.

In my opinion the absolute worst act of life is to not think. The absence of thought in today's world is sad. Start asking why. Why would I need to do 100 pullups that aren't actually pullups? Why should I perform a power clean? What is different about a power clean and a weighted jump? Ask questions, be skeptical, think for yourself and challenge those thoughts.

l The CrossFit certification process. It costs $1,000 (for Level 1) to go for a weekend certification that allows an instructor who may or may not have a clue what they are doing, to put the CrossFit logo on a wall. For me, this instructor either knows what they are doing and is too lazy to teach and program correctly and responsibly or they don't know what they are doing and blindly applying the same program to every person that walks through the door. Either way, this instructor has absolutely no place instructing anyone on anything and he/she should be ashamed of his/her self.

l Lack of assessment. Five people walk in the door with five different bodies. There should be five different programs. Yes, their can be expectation of similarity between each program but it's five different people with who knows how many different implications that need to be accommodated for, corrected, and/or scaled to fit them. To my knowledge CrossFit has no assessment process, and if they do I doubt it looks at movement patterns, mobility/stability patterns at each joint, neural readiness, etc.

It's interesting the males and females at the CrossFit Games on TV do not do the 'workouts of the day.” They're smart enough to know training for the games this way would be like only playing football to try to get stronger. Eventually you use other means to enhance the skills already established.

UGLY

l Program design. CrossFit repetitions you to death. Loads of volume upon loads of volume are a slow march to injury, not a means of getting in shape. Eventually a tissue is just getting beat up, it's not improving anymore. More is not always or even usually the answer.

There also is no rhyme or reason to the order of the exercises. Why would you ever do cleans after dead lifts? Makes no sense. It's simply asking for trouble.

Why would you ever do highly technical and advanced lifts with a beginner, or even worse why would you do those lifts in a conditioning circuit, why would you do them for more than a hand full of repetitions at a time? It's a recipe for problems. It's asking for the body to compensate, asking for poor movement patterns, and asking for injury.

l Exercise selection. There are certain lifts that fit into a conditioning circuit very well and there are others that do not. Lifts that are highly technical and advanced should only be done under full recovery. Cleans, jerks, snatch, many kettlebell exercises and many body weight exercises are very, very technical. Form will fail and injury will, at some point, ensue. Its bad news.

l Specificity. There's two angles on this one.

First, if you try to be the best at everything you'll end up being OK at a bunch of things. This is what CrossFit is trying to do. It's very much on point with the Kenny Powers quote 'I play real sports, I'm not trying to be the best at exercising.” If you want to be a great athlete in any sport, CrossFit is not for you, and is going to drastically hurt your success.

The other part is there is nothing tailored to the individual. For the most part we all have two arms, two legs and a torso so most of us should be able to train similarly. However, there is now way we should all train the same. Our lack of knowledge and use of Olympic lifts is absurd. Advanced athletes and couch potatoes are put side by side. Doesn't anyone else see something wrong with this picture?

These are all large points of contention with me.

Conclusion

Is CrossFit all bad. No, some of it is absolutely great and a nice shift in the exercise world.

Is it for everyone or even most people? No.

Is it for someone who wants to compete? Sure, but not by training with their methods.

Is it for someone who wants to get into shape? No.