I just came back from the Perform Better Summit last night and I can’t say how much of a great experience and incredible event they put on again. Chris Poirier and the crew do it every time!
I’m going to be posting my favorite lectures and have a more thorough review of the Summit later on…..but in the meantime I would like to leave you with a question (and answers) that came up in the Q & A part of the Summit that was related to what the lecturers thought about Crossfit.
Needless to say I had to pull the flipcam out! You are going ot have to turn up the volume but it will be well worth it. Dos has the funniest answer of all time, that s@*t still cracks me up!
Mike Boyle and Chuck Wolf on Crossfit
Rober Dos Remedios and Alwyn Cosgrove, enough said….
Would love to hear everyone’s thoughts on Crossfit, what do you think about it?
Tags: crossfit, fitness seminars, gray cook, mike boyle, perform better summit, personal trainer, personal training, robert dos remedios, seattle, training
I have never been to a Crossfit facility, but they certainly caught my eye a couple of years ago, when I was casting about on the internet looking for training ideas for myself.
It’s a “package”, marketed at folks who think they need that sort of bootcamp-circuit-formula training. Does it help some people? You bet. So does the “trainer” at the local shiny-weight-machine gym who’s walking you through the seated row & press machines while he’s checking out that babe on the treadmill in the short-shorts. But they also have the potential to do some damage, especially when there’s no real knowledge from which to assess a client’s needs & limitations (and what to do to target/correct them).
[...] admin wrote an interesting post today onWhat Do <b>Fitness</b> Experts Think About Crossfit?Here’s a quick excerpt [...]
[...] 1. What do fitness experts think of Crossfit? by Luka Hocevar [...]
There are two problems with Crossfit that I was thinking about recently.
First, the Crossfit Games thing was held recently and the winner was named “fittest person in the world”, garbage. For almost 100 years, the winner of the Olympic decathlon has been rightly considered the “World’s Greatest Athlete”. Inventing your own contest does nothing to equal or surpass this established standard.
Second, having watched a fair amount of videos from Crossfit there is a rather sinister trend present. When being interviewed, a Crossfit athlete will often say something like “well when I was a Division I athlete…” or “after burning out on my sport I gave up my athletic scholarship and joined Crossfit”. It’s fine to pimp people like this for promotional reasons. However, most people will never be good enough to play college sports (much less get a scholarship to play Division I). The use of information by Crossfit is extremely misleading.
links are down
Links for vids are down…
Hello all,
So unfortunately I didn’t get to hear what the “experts” had to say about CrossFit, but let me give you some ideas and things to think about to put a spin on CrossFit in a positive light.
First, the idea of CrossFit being “Boot Camp Circuit Style” workouts all the time is a falicy. The whole intent of the CrossFit programming and yes I agree, A very well put together fitness package is to create the patterns of fitness from the brand new fitness enthusiast to the elite athlete. There are strength days, cardio days, gymnastics days, met-con days, combinations and variations there within. The beautiful thing about CrossFit is the emphasis on whole body motion rather than isolated movements, which for most endeavors in life is what we seem to use.
If you look at the fitness industry as a continuum (please realize I have been on BOTH sides of this spectrum and TAUGHT both sides of the Spectrum) on one side you have your Olympic lifters, body builders and weightlifters. On the other side you have your ultra-runners, ironman triathletes (Which is the category I fall in now) and the extreme endurance atheltes. CrossFit targets NEITHER group, but focusses on ALL of the training in the middle. What is so cool about it, is that you have a varying program that is fun and excited and packaged well with coaches who are passioante about spreading the word about health and fitness. I recently wrote a blurb about why CrossFit is for everyone and gave my opinion on how it can enhance the lives of others.
Is CrossFit the end-all be-all of fitness, and is it the “Fittest person” workout, Well.. Let’s take a look at a CrossFitter versus an endurance athlete (I was a prime example seven years ago) If you asked a CrossFitter to pick up a heavy object off the ground in life… (let’s use 300# as an example) there’s a GOOD chance they would be able to do it. The endurance athlete… probably not so much. And on the other side of the coin, a CrossFitter versus an Olympic lifter. Ask them both to run away from a very fast dog for as long as they can, there is a good cance the CrossFitter will last longer than the Oly Lifter in that situation. Now, as I speak, I am an ironman triathlete with a 395# Deadlift… not too often you hear that combination…. and it’s due to the art of the programming of CrossFit
So anytime you have a good package remember that people want to pick it apart and try to break it down as something bad. There is no good or bad, or right or wrong in this instance. Simply that the videos some people CHOOSE to watch are the elite videos. I agree with Luke that not everyone is going to get an athletic scholarship, nor does everyone WANT one, but most people, at least that I am around, want to be able to walk up a flight of stairs better, be able to carry their groceries from the car to the house with ease, etc. There is story after story of how CrossFit as a package has helped people to realize they can do more than they thought they could.
On other note… John mentioned something about no different than the trainer looking at the babes…. I beg to differ my friend. One thing I have found about CrossFit Coaches throughout the country is their absolute dedication to energizing people about their life. The difference is the passion, the drive and the zest for life. People’s mentalities change with CrossFit. Things in life that seemed daunting before become tasks easily completed because they just ripped through “Fran” and survived. Is that trainer still helping… sure, but which of those two scenarios would YOU choose to pay for.
Here’s my testimonial with my OWN kids. I had them for the summer out from NC, and they were in the kids program at the local CF facility. They LOVED it AND they wanted to do it more and more… they were sad when the kids program ended…. because it was teaching them they could do more than they thought…. and I loved it.
Just food for thought. Is it the end-all be-all of fitness, not at all, nor does it Claim to be.. it just happens to be in my opinion the best packaged fitness program that gets solid results and gets away from the “physique” driven fitness world and solely basis your results and progress on performance in the workouts. How cool is that.. to work on performance and have results come along with that!!!
Darn, how come the videos have been removed?
Susan
He was probably afraid of getting sued….
Boyle and others like him are bashing Crossfit becuase it’s taking over the fitness industry and is expanding 1% EVERY SINGLE DAY.
I’ve gotten the best RESULTS from Crossfit after twenty year of trying everything (including the Marine Corps). Don’t listen to people who are ignorantly talking about injuries, rhabdo, scaling etc but who have never actually read what Crossfit says and does about stuff. Perception is NOT reality.