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Thread: Crossfit Koolaid

  1. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by Svechin View Post
    There is nothing new here. Conditioning has been around since the stone age
    True, but it's drudgery for lots of people, who need to be led/motivated/part of a group in order to exercise vigorously. I think that's really the main thing that Crossfit and other group class programs offer: they get people to move around faster than they would on their own. And someone who didn't have the motivation to exercise before is usually going to be in better shape after doing any reasonable exercise program. The downside is that, beyond a certain point, it may be hard to progress in strength.

    That was the case with another group exercise program I did a few years ago, called Club KO. Lots of bag work, calisthenics, medicine balls, etc., but after a while there was no sense of forward progress.

    But Rip reminds me of something else with his comparison of Crossfit to Scientology. I don't know if it's made it out of the NYC/LA metro areas yet, but Soul Cycle is a newish group exercise class for women - basically, a spin class held by candle light, with some upper body resistance work thrown in. I wouldn't call Soul Cycle a cult, but I think it has something else in common with Scientology: I think it fills a void for secular folks with some inchoate spiritual longings: it's got "soul", candles, suffering, absolution for the sin of gluttony...

  2. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by FullAuto View Post
    From the reference to Jim Jones' cult in Guyana, to a reference to Scientology, and finally to Nazi's I am only left to wonder to what or to whom will it be compared next- progressives?
    I think Hoffer did that pretty well too. Although The True Believer talked a lot about Stalin and Hitler, it takes just the slightest softening of focus to see in it the rise of their only slightly less ruthless counterparts that used to be proud of the appellation "liberal" who have now morphed their name into a the new and improved focus group tested "progressive." Kind of like The Necromancer in The Hobbit becoming known as Sauron in LOTR.

    But then again, once upon a time in the 1950's there arose the followers of the The One True Way called Circuit Training. And Lo' it came to pass that these begat the daily Sacrament of WOD's.

  3. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by barbellbrad View Post
    In comparing two athletes, both who have a 500 lb squat, but one has a lack of capacity in running a mile. The athlete who can run and squat is the 'fitter' athlete. The goal of CrossFit is GPP or having work capacity across a broad range of loads, times, and exercises.
    If you can squat 500 lbs but can't manage a 1-mile run, you're almost certainly too fat for Fran or Cindy or whatever the WOD is. There's probably a better way for that person to alter their body composition without wiping out their strength through cardio punishment.

  4. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by tertius View Post
    The things about it that I think is really interesting and terrible is what things like Xfit and Scientology say about our society. It's fucked up that people feel so disconnected from their own bodies, from each other, from the world generally, that they will glom onto something that makes them feel connected to those things. No matter how irrational it might be, no matter if it ends up hurting them.

    ...Some folks it takes a little longer to wake up, maybe not until they're meth-head skinny and getting hurt.

    ...Crossfit isn't as predatory as Scientology, and hasn't ruined nearly as many lives, but they're definitely cousins.

    ...I marvel at the terrible internal condition of the people who end up joining cults, and the popularity of Xfit points at deep flaws in our society, if you ask me.
    I think you're going way too far there. CrossFit ruins lives? It's like that Family Guy episode:

    "Cigarettes killed my mother and raped my father."

  5. #25
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    Is CrossFit actually that crazy?

    Around here it's just another exercise system. Then again, half the people I work with do it because they're told to do it and not because they're seeking some kind of acceptance, so it probably changes the mentality of the group.

  6. #26
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    I don't think the problem with CrossFit is really about cultishness. Let's be honest, even when Rip discourages that kind of thing (cf. last paragraph), he's still got plenty of cultish followers. Yet their behavior is quite different from that of CrossFitters.

    In my opinion, it's just a lot of narcissism and silly oneupmanship. A lot of CrossFitters seem less concerned about making quantifiable progress than about being perceived as tough-minded people who do the most challenging workouts/exercises and impress everyone. The thought process is more like "does this exercise make me look badass?" instead of "does this exercise improve my performance?". To top it off, their marketing seems to exploit and arouse the feeling that, unlike the curling proles and the treadmill bunnies, you'll be the one doing the real, hard, "functional" training.

    What's funny is that for all the fun they poke at people who do curls or "train for aesthetics" they seem overly concerned with having visible abs. That doesn't sound very "functional" to me.

  7. #27
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    Like many, I got introduced to SS through Crossfit. I did it for a while, stopped to do a genuine SS linear progression, and didn't ever really go back. My older son still works out through Crossfit - at a gym which priorizes strength work, limits conditioning to fairly short and heavy workouts, and as a result turns out some nationally competitive athletes in a few disciplines, including powerlifters.

    They don't follow the mainpage WOD.

    Bottom line is that it very much depends on the specific gym, and the qualities of the owners and trainers there. My son finds that working out in a group atmosphere helps with "compliance;" he goes more regularly, because he feels the peer pressure. He does all his lifts on essentially a 5-3-1 model, because that's how the gym programs it. Would he get stronger faster in other ways? Sure, if he did it. But this works for him, has contributed significantly to his capacity to do his primary sport (martial arts these days ... once was rowing).

    Different strokes. So long as the strength part of the strength & conditioning is aptly addressed, fine.

  8. #28
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    CrossFit's brilliance is in its exploitation of our instinctual human need to "earn your place in the tribe" through shared suffering. The formula: Take cool-looking, "serious athlete" exercises like Snatches and Muscle ups and turn them into a competition performed by everyone on the same day. Then infuse these daily initiation rites with a swaggering, scientific-sounding jargon which further reinforces the participant's sense of belonging to an exclusive tribe of elite athletes. Then, the marketing master-stroke: Assert that even your grandma should be doing Navy SEAL workouts; all anybody has to do is "scale and flail". Everyone is special. This administratively convenient, one-size-fits-all mindset - asserted with maximum conviction and pedantry - serves to lure otherwise hesitant newbies by their thousands away from their hour-long treadmill jogs and into lucrative CF classes.
    The problems arise when participants start to realize that after 18 months of ripped callouses sweat angels, they still can't do a muscle-up or a non-bouncy heavy deadlift. Meanwhile their buddies who eschewed scale-n-flail in favor of, say, Starting Strength, or even a Couch-to-5K program, were showing serious results after only a few months.

    So the puzzled CFer starts questioning the received CF wisdom, asking how they too can get strong, why they keep getting injured, why CF Games champs don't do MP WODs etc. Oftentimes, they'll get genuinely helpful advice from some great rank-and-file Cfers on the CF message board, usually telling them to abandon the MP WODs and basically do the opposite of the CF philosophy ("constantly varied" or focused on "broad time and modal domains"); ie just lift heavy barbells in repetitive, ever-heavier workouts.

  9. #29
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    Best part of Crossfit was that I could show my wife the Crossfit women and point out that you don't have to look bulky to be a strong female, which got her into SS (which she now proselytizes just as much as the crossfitters do, lol).

    Other than that, it's like every other gym/trainer/whatever. 90% of the trainers are a joke that will teach bad form, just like everywhere else, and they have a well-marketed cult of personality, just like everyone else wishes they had. If they weren't sending people to Snap City, I couldn't care less.

  10. #30
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dirichlet View Post
    In my opinion, it's just a lot of narcissism and silly oneupmanship. A lot of CrossFitters seem less concerned about making quantifiable progress than about being perceived as tough-minded people who do the most challenging workouts/exercises and impress everyone. The thought process is more like "does this exercise make me look badass?" instead of "does this exercise improve my performance?". To top it off, their marketing seems to exploit and arouse the feeling that, unlike the curling proles and the treadmill bunnies, you'll be the one doing the real, hard, "functional" training.
    Which reiterates my primary assertion: CF is about what happens TODAY in the WOD. It is not about the process of improving the parameters of performance, because this is assumed to happen when approached with random exposure to hundreds of different stimula. And it does -- for a few weeks -- so the programming is assumed to work well for people without a longer perspective on the process. This is Glassman's specifically-stated position.

    What's funny is that for all the fun they poke at people who do curls or "train for aesthetics" they seem overly concerned with having visible abs. That doesn't sound very "functional" to me.
    If there is an actual goal outside of today's WOD, it's always been about abs, really. As soon as the CFer outgrows this, he outgrows WOD-CrossFit.

    Quote Originally Posted by TomF View Post
    They don't follow the mainpage WOD.
    We have found that most affiliates actually don't do the "mainsite WOD," as it is called. There are many hundreds of excellent gyms that have a CrossFit sign on the door.

    Quote Originally Posted by Robert Beckett View Post
    CrossFit's brilliance is in its exploitation of our instinctual human need to "earn your place in the tribe" through shared suffering. The formula: Take cool-looking, "serious athlete" exercises like Snatches and Muscle ups and turn them into a competition performed by everyone on the same day. Then infuse these daily initiation rites with a swaggering, scientific-sounding jargon which further reinforces the participant's sense of belonging to an exclusive tribe of elite athletes. Then, the marketing master-stroke: Assert that even your grandma should be doing Navy SEAL workouts; all anybody has to do is "scale and flail". Everyone is special. This administratively convenient, one-size-fits-all mindset - asserted with maximum conviction and pedantry - serves to lure otherwise hesitant newbies by their thousands away from their hour-long treadmill jogs and into lucrative CF classes.
    This is very good. Did you actually write this yourself?

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