Only original lifts contribute to physical conditioning. Reps are worthless and to suggest doing them is an insult to all professionals in the fitness world.
I agree with the OP, but there is a real problem given the explosion of crossfit and its loose licensing requirements of marginally competent trainers teaching "Crossfit" and leading to people with injury (or, less seriously, just not getting as much benefit as they should). It's a legacy of the way the sport evolved and the business model of the company, but I think it really is a problem.
Another big crossfit problem is that sometimes "constantly varied movement" is taken to mean "no training is necessary, just do random exercises." No. If you want to master say double unders or consistently improve your back squat, you have to practice and train them like anything else. Doesn't mean you still don't get huge benefit from the variation, just that it's not a total substitute for training.
Anyhow, Crossfit is still the best, just be snobbish about which Crossfit gym you go to.
To my mind, I am getting what I am paying for, which is a relatively expensive, highly technical trainer who works with only me for the hour (and sometimes a friend or two). In her history, a 16% injury rate would be outrageous. She doesn't injure her clients and she rehabs quite a few of them. Adults do not have to get injured exercising. That said, she's expensive.
Besides that, I lucked into her. I have a rule of thumb that I like someone who is teaching me to have 7-10 years experience, but I didn't have that rule when I found her. How I could have picked her out of the general flood of trainers, I don't know.
So, cheap trainer = dangerous in my mind. Barely skilled leader of group class also = dangerous. Group class over a certain size, skilled trainer or no? Also dangerous. I suspect Crossfit trainers sometimes meet all three of those criteria.
That said, I recommend Crossfit when people don't have access to the way I am trained. (Sometimes it gets too expensive for me and then *I* don't have access.) If it doesn't injure them, they might enjoy the cultit'll get them in shape.
I think that reporting injury rates from usual practice is the relevant statistics. Good form is great, but when you are talking about many different exercises, it's going to be a bit difficult to get a definition you can commit science with.
Last time I was in CA, I went with my aunt to her senior CrossFit class. It was fun, and if I could afford it, I'd probably join a gym and become insufferable. However, I dramatically underestimated how sore I was going to be and ended up hobbling around for the next few days. I could barely get in and out of the car. I don't usually move like I'm 80 with bad hips. It seemed like it would be pretty hard to legitimately hurt yourself (like tearing something or needing a new joint) unless you were way overdoing some exercise, but I could see injuries resulting from not being careful about days off or keeping weights low, which I'd imagine isn't helped by intense instructors. Then again, I'm already conversant at exercise in general, so maybe I'm wrong about how it works for folks who are newbies.
Oh, and whenever I think of sports science, I remember stories about how Lance Armstrong couldn't be doping because he was being studied by an elite team of researchers at UT, and they'd decided that his postcancer body was just superhuman in a way no one else had ever seen before. Oops! Good science, y'all.
"slow reps, good form" is the one thing they all agree on
Good form, yes. But absolutely not on the slowness front. Lifts to build explosive strength are specifically done at lower weights with a goal of bar speed rather than max weight.
I have apparently injured myself singing Sacred Harp, the Cross Fit of a capella choral American folk music. Some kind of vocal cord thing, or straining the muscles that control the vocal cords. I never managed to do this when I was younger and sang in choirs, despite having (then and now) essentially zero in the way of proper singing technique. It is annoying, because I'll have to take a week or two off and then figure out which internet voice coaching site to trust about diaphragms and what not.
10: You're doing it too authentically. Warm up easy by pretending you're in an English chapel choir.
8: I totally heard that from my advisor in grad school! I completely bought into it at the time - oops.
Further to 10, you should then work up to a Welsh miners' choir and on to Sacred Harp. Once you've made it into a Finnish yelling choir, you should be able to sing while eating animals that you've killed with your bare hands.
Adults do not have to get injured exercising.
Yes but let's not start policing basketball, soccer, joggers, and so on. Risking injury isn't the end of the world.
Not a Crossfitter, but friends are, and there really is a difference between the way a friend who is a serious weightlifter approaches (e.g.) deadlifts and the Crossfitters do. She focuses on form and technique (at all weights and speeds); they seem to be focused on busting it out as intensely and quickly as possible with little regard to form. This varies a bit by person and personality, but a beginning lifter would be completely safe with her, and might be more prone to injury were she trained instead by a Crossfit meathead. (There are non meathead Crossfitters, but it's not always clear who is running the gym.)
The reason she's not criticizing adult soccer is that they're not claiming to be doing the same exercise, if that makes sense.
I always give myself minor injuries. The latest was swimming. I hurt myself jumping into the pool.
Bave and I will be communicating exclusively by unfogged comment* while he is on complete vocal rest. Hey could you hand me the, uh, thing?** No, the other thing.***
*not a euphemism
**still not
***possibly not
Risking injury isn't the end of the world.
I lived happily with injury in my tkd and Ultimate days. But the fact that people get hurt in most forms of exercise doesn't mean it is inevitable. It doesn't excuse it, either, because getting injured is substantially avoidable by expensive means (money, skill, attention).
As much as I basically like crossfit, the medical community might be a tad horrified by the zero advice and guidance I'm getting, looking very pregnant at this point. I've read tons of stuff online, and I'm good at self-monitoring, so I'm not really worried. Some of the other trainers might have been more proactive and involved, but not douchebro owner, who's been teaching/ignoring the 6 am class over the summer
get injured...Then you heal
Tell me more, youngster.
Did you finally snap your hips?
When I was doing Crossfit, we certainly lifted heavy for speed. Or rather, did a certain weight that was heavy (to me) for speed (I didn't go that fast). I'd love to go back, but the expense and embarrassment around not being in shape enough to keep up on the cardio side keep me away.
I just ordered bifocals today, so I'm good on the aging.
I find that exercising and injuring myself hurts less than not exercising. Not exercising means near constant gastritis and lots of insomnia and even more butt-chair hurt.
When you've been officially 35 as long as I have, aches, pains and mishaps seem pretty much inevitable barring miraculous freak genetics. So might as well do the things you love. I mean with reasonable attention to safety sure, but at some point the knees are going to complain no matter what, folks.
At least this is what I tell myself as the child continues to train his way towards various knee destroying activities such on display here http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IIj-TQP5zQc.
It costs a whole bunch of money to get the kind that don't look like bifocals. But the optician's people are very good at coming up with reasons for needing no-line bifocals that aren't vanity.
That's Angel Corella's package you lunkhead.
Kidding, kidding.
I think I was blogging when they suggested bifocals to me. I'm just ignoring that advice for now.
When I lift I follow the Mark Rippletoe* method ("Starting Strength," etc.), which is not about speed but about form and boosting the weight you can do. Works for me.
Proper form greatly reduces the risk of injury. The number of "coaches" who have no clue about how to do a safe squat is shocking.
* Yeah, Instapundit is a fan, but no politics in fitness, please.
I couldn't read the footnotes in journal articles or the menu in a dimly-lit restaurant.
Yet kines/sports science types never concern-trolled about the dangers of adult soccer.
Well yeah, because nobody plays adult soccer under the supervision of someone who's supposedly certified to instruct. Part of the job of a trainer is supposed to be to look out for their clients and make sure they don't injure themselves.
There's also a practice vs. game thing going on. With the exception of the idiots at the CrossFit Games, nobody goes to CrossFit to get better at CrossFit; you go so you can accomplish other things in your life. Soccer's not really like that.
I needed to read small print because I was looking up rhabdomyolysis and trying to find the part where they say how good form will protect you from it.
20 -- there's a woman in my gym (a very good athlete; 2:45 Fran) whose due date is in two weeks and was doing a WOD with heavy snatches and very serious pull-ups yesterday. I was very impressed but also scared.
Should point out the coaches were also like uh .. X are you sure you want to be doing this? But she seemed to have knowledge or comfort on doing so and it's not like she was varying a normal routine.
I think I have good form - weight on heels, knees out, elbows up, etc - but I really have no idea.
There's always a risk of injury in any sport, but some Crossfitters seem to make relatively safe activities more dangerous by inattention to form/broness. It would be like if the soccer coach taught you an incorrect way to head the ball because pain is weakness leaving the head.
20: Just please pay attention to form! I lifted weights through week 24 of pregnancy with no problems, fwiw. (After that I didn't fit in my workout clothes and so I went swimming instead.) Most OBs err on the side of being overcautious about exercise, but while your uterus won't fall out, it's not a time to push it.
40.1 is IMO much more a stereotype by traditional coaches driven by competitiveness, than the reality. Not that there aren't crappy Crossfit coaches out there, as I said above, but there are tons of crappy non Crossfit coaches out there too, and the good Crossfit coaches aren't "bros" and pay a ton of attention to form.
I've talked with the other trainers about the shittiness of the owner - he's an aberration and no one can do much about it. In other words, based on the two gyms I've gone to, 42 is my experience too.
In other words, based on the two gyms I've gone to, 42 is my experience too.
39 would seem to say otherwise.
Those aren't the basic tenets of good form?
The only time I really hate crossfit is during "find your one rep max" week. The straining tendons freak me out.
45: Sort of? There's more to it than that. More importantly, if your trainers were really sticklers for form I wouldn't expect you to say "I really have no idea".
I mean for truly craptastic and expensive training there's always globogym.
Well, I know there's more to it than that, but I have no idea what Megan's trainer would say about my form. My guess is "basically safe but could use a lot of fine-tuning" or something.
Or maybe "beep! Beep! Beep! Kaw!"
I mean, good form is like being a safe driver. Everyone lives in Lake Wobegon; I'm just trying to be realistic.
I hurt myself moving furniture almost two weeks ago now. Not even good furniture, just a stupid bedside table got dropped gently on my foot and burst blood vessels have been pooling into the joint there and making me miserable and unpleasant, I think this is even less hardcore than Sacred Harp injuries.
You really need to stretch before you drop something on your foot.
My mother in law likely broke a little toe a few weeks ago, hampering her stately progress thru various national trust gardens when we were visiting her, but darn the woman has stamina. Slow, but she just goes and goes for like 12 hour days outings. Also admire her continued rock solid commitment to style, always with the coordinated handbag, etc.
14: Risking injury isn't the end of the world.
Ugh. At the risk of being Eeyore here -- well, no, it's not the end of the world, but I can tell you that anyone with incipient degenerative disc disease (say) who might otherwise have gone for decades sans chronic pain is going to insist that safer methods (better form, slow and gradual) of exercise are a really good idea. Else you may wind up with a chronic condition. I know, I know, it would never happen to you, but it happens to people, and they're really surprised when it does.
54: Her handbag doesn't stub a toe because it's coordinated.
Back problems are generally apocryphal.
39: That's sort of the thing I mean. They're not careful about form, but are straining for one-rep maxes?
I think it's overall less injury-causing than distance running (I'm training for a half), so, not a big deal, really, but there's a certain indifference to caution that bothers me a little bit.
I don't really get your criticism. Of course you strain when trying to find a one-rep max. We have one coach who I consider negligent, but everyone is exposed to all the trainers, in general. Trainers are extra attentive when people are doing one rep maxes. I just find bulging tendons creepy and gross.
Eh, whatever fucked with my sciatica nerve 13.5 years ago during labor is still majorly fucking with it pretty much 24/7, so whether apocryphal or otherwise it hurts like hell.
59: The coach I've been working with is an Olympic-style weightlifter, and working up to a max requires lots of attention to form, that's all.
What's the value in finding your one rep max? It seems risky.
Vanity? Sense of progress. In practice, a lot of the drills are based off it - ie, do these reps at 60% of your one rep max, and then go up to 70 for these, or whatever.
I'm pretty sure 57 was a joke. But just to check on matters, I did look it up to check whether the (very professional) physical therapist was correct. He was.
Degenerative disc disease is fairly common, and it is estimated that at least 30% of people aged 30-50 years old will have some degree of disc space degeneration, although not all will have pain or ever receive a formal diagnosis.
That is what I was talking about: a third of us from age 30 on are at risk for this. You don't want to fool around with it: if you don't act stupid(ly) with your exercise, you're more likely to be okay.
64: What heebie said. It helps you know how strong you are, and it helps you guide your training (3 x 5 at 60%). When you do it, you work up to it in a practice. So when I tested my deadlift recently, I did 8 at weight that was easy, then added weight, did six, then more for four, then more for two, and then three attempts at one rep. The idea is that your first one rep is one you can get, and the next two are reaches (we're talking small increments at this point.)
67 -- No one would ever do that radically cautious program at any Crossfit gym -- totally unheard of. Instead, some bros yell at every new gym member to pick up 300 pounds right away no matter what, rounding the back be damned, and then high five each other while checking out their guns.
On the non-Crossfit injury front, I used to go to a fairly aggressive workout class at a big mainstream gym and managed to injure myself (doing high-knee running in place). A ~40-year-old woman in the class somehow managed to crack their hip and was hobbling around in crutches and/or a walker for most of a year. I can't say for sure that the aggressive style of the class caused the problems, but it's hard to discount it entirely.
68: While eating organ meats, presumably.
Vanity I get, but surely there are safer ways of tracking progress and planning workouts. Or is my intuition that maxing out makes bad injuries much more likely wrong?
68: I hear you have to beat up a homeless person as an initiation ritual*.
*Neighbor appalled at my mother for letting all 3 kids go to 1972 Stones' concert: "The Hell's Angels are going to be there and they have to kill a black person to join the gang." Weird morphing of the Altamont story.
Trust me, go double overhand on those big deadlifts.
Neighbor appalled at my mother for letting all 3 kids go to 1972 Stones' concert: "The Hell's Angels are going to be there and they have to kill a black person to join the gang." Weird morphing of the Altamont story.
Around that same time my mom lived in an apartment in Santa Fe where her downstairs neighbors were Hell's Angels. Santa Fe has changed a lot since then.
71: There's something to that for sure. You're pushing it to the max? Sometimes bad things happen.
71: It depends. Maxing out in my case means carefully moving up 5 pounds at a time at the end and if I can't get it to move, I drop it. So less injury risk than running, IME.
IME attempting a max deadlift was putting a strain on my body conducive to a catastrophic injury in ways running wasn't.
Arm's great one year later. Pull ups, grappling, deadlifts, etc feel fine.
Although to clarify 78, I was lifting 425-450 on those for years. Peoples mileage on the one rep max thing will vary along with the injury risk.
Was it actually a one rep max attempt when you got injured?
He probably didn't want to do any more reps for a while afterward.
81: No, 405. Which was totally routine for me and it really pissed me off that I snapped a tendon at that weight. Fucking middle age.
And the warning is more for the guys. Biceps tendon rupture is not common at all in women.
Women live longer and have better bicep tendons. That's not fair.
A 450 lb deadlift is pretty serious stuff. To put that in runner's terms, it's something like averaging a 7:30/mile marathon time. I don't know how much GSwift weighs but if he's light it may be more impressive than that.
That's faster than Paul Ryan could make up running a marathon. Also, a faster pace than I can do for a single mile.
To put it in biomedical terms, a 450 lb deadlift produces sufficient for to break gswift's tendon.
86: 5'9, 165-175 lbs depending on how strictly I adhere to my diet. Deadlift was my forte relative to bench for sure.
+ force. I should be more careful with a mock the pain of others.
Fuck spelling. It's late. Goodnight.
I guess I'm spelling things pretty well. Fuck grammer.
450 is a big fucking deadlift. Unless gswift has hit the roids since the last photo I saw of him, that's very impressive. I mean, Obama can do that on leg, but for a mere mortal, it's good.
In light of 86, let me say that gswift is a very strong dude.
Yeah, at that bodyweight that's an elite or near-elite (ie top 1% of people who lift a lot everywhere) weight.
The moral here is: don't break any laws in Salt Lake.
strength standards: http://www.crossfit.com/cf-journal/WLSTANDARDS.pdf (crossfit site but not xfit specific)
Genetics don't hurt here for sure. Dad was 5'6 and his brother was 5'5, both pretty heavily muscled. Dad back on the day, I've linked before.
http://farm1.staticflickr.com/107/312681636_ab8085f17f.jpg
I don't think it counts unless he ate whatever that is while it was still alive.
I don't think it counts unless he ate whatever that is while it was still alive.
Eating live fish is now the litmus test for impressive strength?
Anyway, that looks like a rockfish to me, but (unlike gswift's dad) I'm no ichthyologist.
As I recall dad said it was a Cabezon so Teo is on his game.
When you live in Alaska you learn a lot about fish.
Teach a man to fish and he can go fishing. Teach a man to identify fish and he can judge strength based on what type of fish he can kill by eating.
The strongest people in the world are those who eat live whale sharks.
I knew one of the guys in my Crossfit class is 7th day adventist, and worked at the local hospital, and wasn't a doctor. I just saw in the paper that he's actually the CEO and President of the hospital. Also I knew the hospital was "Christ-centered" but it just dawned on me that it's a 7th Day Adventist hospital, and yep, the website confirms that.
It doesn't act particularly different than, say, a Catholic hospital. I'm more just sharing my realization.
They don't eat meat, right? I think that's the group that owned the land next to the ancestral Hick lands.
Yeah, and they also celebrate the Sabbath like Jews do. But on the hospital's FAQ page they clarify that the hospitals believe in a vegetarian lifestyle but do serve meat.
The Third Day Adventists go to church on Wednesday.
Anyway, they have a college in Lincoln.
Yeah, Lorna Doone or something? That was also on the FAQs. The Adventist hospital system is not affiliated, except by common heritage.
Oh, that's different. It looks like Loma Linda University and medical center is in California.
||
Dale Yeager of Seraph -- a Department of Justice Criminal Behavior Analyst -- as quoted in a major national law enforcement magazine:
As various extreme environmental, animal rights and anti-globalization groups become emboldened by increased funding from NGOs and leftist political action committees, the use of youth movements such as Juggalos for recruitment of members will increase. Just as the White Supremacy movement of the 1980's found these movements ripe with emotionally troubled youth, the radical leftists groups are using them for the same purpose of filling their ranks with eager 'solders for their causes.' Soldiers who are willing to commit illegal and violent acts for a cause; even killing law enforcement officers.
In case you didn't know where to recruit your radical leftist soldiers for a cause. Juggalos!
|>
The Juggalaroucheites are the worst.
This is why we can't have nice things.
Apropos of something above, I should note that these days, in America at least, "Christ-centered" is what people say to restrict their duties, obligations and worldviews, which is, not to belabor the point, an erroneous interpretation.
Total badass, gswift. You should go to WVC and bust some heads.
Good old WVC, taking all the heat in press, except for everyone losing their minds over a dog getting shot.
I don't do 1RM stuff these days. I still lift but it's geared more towards strength endurance and some explosive strength work. Still fun but dials back the risk of middle aged body parts doing nasty unexpected things.
116: What an idiot. I have to wonder if the people pushing for gang designation for Juggalos have ever actually dealt with them. They are just about the least organized fucking people around and god are they dumb.
Are there ironic hipster Juggalos? Because if there aren't, there should be. They deserve one another.
I don't think I've ever seen a Juggalo in the wild. Though I'm not sure how I'd know,
125 If you ever do, definitely kill it before you eat it.
I assume it's all the lower middle class white people under 25 in Michigan.
My Jamaican co-worker is Seventh-Day Adventist. From what he says and does, my impression is that vegetarianism is considered the ideal but that in practice a lot of them do eat meat, but not pork. So pretty much like keeping kosher among Jews.
They are just about the least organized fucking people around and god are they dumb.
Like a lot of criminal gangs, then.
Are there ironic hipster Juggalos?
Both the AVClub and The Awl have published pieces in the Sympathy-for-the-Juggalo genre that accomplished, with bile to spare, rare feats of making writer, venue and subject matter the less sympathetic.
There is a Seventh Day Adventist church near where I live and one bunch of congregants (appear to be ethnic Chinese) usually park on our avenue and walk through a little park to the main road. They seem to have a sort of get together and picnic afterwards - the sounds of their children playing waft up to my window if I am having a lie in. They come across as pretty happy.
Since the world didn't end in 1844, they've decided to enjoy themselves a bit.
132. Interesting. The Adventist church near us is 95% black British, and there's no shortage of Chinese people in the catchment area. I suspect their cunning plan is to nobble a few people in any fairly close-knit community and let it spread from there.
