Truth

I have quite a few friends in the Crossfit community. We get along really well, despite some pretty profound differences in world-view. They tend (tend!) to be right leaning, religious, and militaristic. I'm a liberal atheist who cries whenever Carl Sagan starts talking. I'm thankful for the opportunity to have met them and grateful for the environment/context that allowed it. I'm going to ask those friends to bear with me for a bit during the rest of this post... because this is going to be largely a bashing of Crossfit and, to some degree, the Crossfit community.

Crossfit marketing. HAH, it's hilarious that so many people get rhabdo doing Crossfit, right?

I hesitate to go down this road because, well, it just isn't sporting. Fish in the barrel. Trying to figure out where to begin can be daunting - kinda like when you first emerge into Skyrim (yes, still obsessed) and have to decide where to go first. Perhaps some crude mocking? Not really my style, and there are some true artists who have that side well covered. Perhaps some derision at people who justify spending $100 on a pair of exercise pants? (pro tip: these work too) Meh, I'm enough of an MBA to believe that if people are dumb enough to overpay for ridiculous crap, go ahead and give them the option. Good luck sleeping at night.

I think I'll stick with providing you all with a general guide to some of the more troubling aspects of Crossfit and we'll go on from there. Check this out - make sure you read some of the sources on the right... you can't make some of this stuff up. If you want more, check out this pretty good deconstruction of Crossfit's programming issues from Robb Wolf.

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Story time.

Most of you know that I was a Crossfitter for a couple years. I spent plenty of time defending it. My "big epiphany" happened over a period of a few months. I was feeling pretty run down and burnt out, so I dialed back on the Crossfit and began to make much more progress in my other athletic pursuits. But I was still doing it... until I hurt myself doing heavy deadlifts in a WOD. I'm a careful, non competitive guy. I know all about not adding intensity onto poor mechanics. I had scaled the deadlift down and was taking it slow. And I still got hurt. The programming that day was risky. I wasn't the only one to walk out of that WOD with an injury - mine happened to be pretty bad. During my recovery I was able to step back and look at the system from the outside. I didn't like what I saw. Injury upon injury, some minor, but persistent, some major - requiring surgery. And that was just local. Whenever I traveled I made it a point to seek out the local Crossfit box and poke my head in. I was not impressed with the results. Without going into too many details, a Crossfit Level 1 certification means absolutely nothing... I know because I have one.

Then the 2011 Crossfit Games happened. The whole thing was, in my opinion, a complete disaster. We can talk about specific things like all the achilles tears, the horror/hilarity of watching nominally "functional" athletes not being able to swim or throw a ball, and perhaps most interestingly, the drawbacks of the whole "sport of fitness" thing. All are rich subjects for other posts. For me, the 2011 Crossfit Games was the final nail in the coffin of my identity as a Crossfitter. I threw it all away, and am now stronger, faster, more mobile, and way more skilled than I ever was. I still think work capacity is an important component of fitness. I still do some high intensity intervals. But my training now looks very different and I'm much better off for it.

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I hope you all noticed something about that last bit - all the "My's" "Me's" and "I's." My experience is MY experience. Not yours, nor anyone else's. There are some legitimate meta problems with Crossfit, which are increasingly well documented. But, what the White Papers list up above, and most anti-Crossfit articles don't mention are the thousands upon thousands of people who have gotten themselves fit at their Crossfit box. If Crossfit was a complete and total disaster, perhaps it wouldn't be so popular.

At some point I might get tired of saying this, but the Truth about fitness, and life as a whole, is there is no Truth. There is no "one way." Anything - ANYTHING that claims to have all the answers is selling you on something. What works for me won't work for you. You need to find out your own truth for yourself. If you love Crossfit, get pumped to get in there and do the WOD, enjoy it, have fun with it, and benefit from it, then Crossfit is your thing. Go, do your WODs and be happy, healthy and strong. You are almost certainly putting yourself at a higher risk of injury, but I can't really criticize you for that, seeing as my chosen activity has me jumping straight at brick walls on a regular basis.*

*You have, of course, gone through proper progressions and spent years practicing core skills first, right? Right??

Never, ever, EVER define yourself through a reductionist world-view. There is no "best" fighting style, no "best" exercise modality, "one" religion, "only" way, etc. People ask me if Parkour is the "best" way to train all the time and seem surprised when I say "no." I happen to really like Parkour because it embraces this sense of openness rather than trying to insulate itself against it.

There are no sacred cows, even the ones you really really want to be sacred. Let's talk about one of my favorite things: MovNat. MovNat is incredible - fantastic coaches, great philosophy, a really really beneficial perspective on health. But it's not the Truth. It's not for everyone, because nothing is. Don't define your physical practice exclusively through it... I get frustrated when I hear people say they're "going to go out and MovNat" because I fear they have stopped thinking for themselves.

I encourage all my Crossfit friends to step back and take an honest look at Crossfit. Recognize that Crossfit HQ, Glassman in particular, are... um... not nice and helpful people. Recognize that their "science" is not actually science, but opinion. Recognize that there is no such thing as "general preparedness" and that your training needs to match your chosen activities. If your chosen activity is Crossfit exercising, may I suggest you try a different activity and see if you like it better. I'd suggest to you that routinely putting yourself in physical discomfort does not breed "mental toughness" - quite the opposite.  I strongly encourage all of you to take a month or two off from Crossfit and see how you feel. Or don't do any of these things - it's up to you.

There is no one Truth. There is no one Way. There are tools and context - the rest is up to you.

Some shouts out to Charlie Reid and Josh Leeger for being awesome.