I have to admit I borrowed the title for this article from a piece Mark Rippetoe wrote for T-Nation a few months back “CrossFit: The Good, Bad and the Ugly”. In this article Rippetoe broke down his opinion on what is right and wrong about CrossFit. In essence that is exactly what I am going to do. With the recent influx of CrossFit training videos on my YouTube channel HuntFitnessTV I have been getting asked to give my opinion on CrossFit quite a bit so I figured its time to write this article.
The Good
Can there really be anything seriously bad about something that gets people motivated to workout? CrossFit has done an amazing job getting people off the couch and into a gym. At the end of the day I feel that is pretty important.
- Exercise: The argument can be made that CrossFit is more like exercise then “training” and we will get into that later in the article. The fact is most people just need exercise. Anything is better than nothing. CrossFit has created a way to make exercise both fun and interesting to someone outside of the fitness community. Constantly varied exercise modalities, time domains, and overall training structure make the workout experience unique from what most people have ever been exposed to. Lets be honest here, most people who go into a gym with limited experience are going to have two options. One, hire a trainer to develop a program for them to follow or option two, go into the gym without a clue of what to do and end up spending their time as a cardio bunny trying to stay in the infamous “fat burning zone”. Option two doesn’t work very well. For these people CrossFit presents a third option. Sign up at a CrossFit gym and have one of the coaches scale the workouts for you.
- Community: People love to feel apart of a team. There is a reason why people tend to be more successful when they work out with a training partner. At a CrossFit gym you will most likely end up with a whole group of training partners. Working out will become something you do with your friends. This creates more of a sports team experience rather then just a trip to the gym.
- Weightlifting: I’m talking about the sport of Olympic Weightlifting (Snatch / Clean and Jerk). Before CrossFit most people in the US barely even knew the sport existed let alone were practicing the lifts. CrossFit has definitely brought the sport of weight lifting into the mainstream. Before I started incorporating more CrossFit training into my routine I had NO interest in becoming better at the olympic lifts. As a strength and conditioning coach that was not acceptable.
- Sport: The “Sport” of fitness. It gives people another avenue to compete and give meaning to their training. Lets face it, bodybuilding does not appeal to everyone. I feel like a lot of fitness enthusiasts end up competing in physique sports because they want to compete in something and they workout so it seems like a great fit. Don’t get me wrong, not much compares to being aesthetic as f*ck but its hard to sell people on the whole bodybuilding process.
The Bad
Like most things, CrossFit does come with a few downfalls.
- Form: Everyone has watched “CrossFit Fail” videos on YouTube pointed fingers and laughed. Bad form is a problem but its a problem not limited to CrossFit. You walk into any gym in America and you are going to see bad form. This does not make it right but it happens. A lot of people including Rippetoe blame the process of becoming CrossFit Level 1 Certified. I am not certified in CrossFit but I do have multiple personal training certifications and the level 1 cert which involves a weekend seminar seems better then the rest of the industry. In fact, the personal training certification process is so bad I actually think it should be mandatory to have a Bachelors degree in an exercise related field to even be allowed to personal train anyone. There will be good and bad CrossFit coaches just like there will be good and bad trainers. Also in regards to form, remember CrossFit is about getting more work done in a given time period not necessarily just to work the muscle. So for example, a kipping pull-up looks like terrible form to a bodybuilder but it allows more work to be done in less time.
- Programming: This is something I talked about in 5 Things CrossFit Can Learn From Bodybuilding and Rippetoe talked about in his article. CrossFit’s main site programming (daily workouts posted on crossfit.com) are random workouts that serve as exercise more then training. Like I said previously, for most people this is fine. Just following crossfit.com workouts will get people fit and happy. However, if you fall into the category of people that want to take their fitness to the next level it requires a different approach. In order to make progress a training program must have means for progression. This is why periodization is so important. The best CrossFit athletes in the world don’t follow main site programming as its written. With training it’s not always about today, it’s more about adaptations that are going to occur over time. I put this in the bad category but its not necessarily bad. Even the best CrossFit athletes still do CrossFit, just more volume and different programming.
- Jack of All Trades, Master of None: Crossfit philosophy is to try and be good at everything which we all know is a daunting task. The best way to do anything is by specializing and devoting all your time and energy into one area. CrossFit does do a good job at making people fit across the board but its not going to make someone better than an elite powerlifter, gymnast, or marathon runner. To quote Rippetoe, “Different physical tasks require different physical adaptations; running 26.2 miles is obviously a different task than squatting 700 pounds, and the two efforts require completely different physical adaptations”. Its true CrossFit is NOT going to make someone as strong as possible. Thats just a fact, but if you want to be a powerlifter you should train like a powerlifter. With that being said, its hard to argue against the fact that CrossFit training can develop some amazing athletes in its own right.
Why I do It
The pure athleticism is what drew me to CrossFit. There really is nothing else like it in the fitness industry. No other “fitness sport” takes as much athletic ability as CrossFit does. I have been involved with athletics most of my life and pretty much any sport I tried to play I eventually became good at it. Recently I have been looking for something to focus my training on for a while and found it in CrossFit. I love incorporating a lot of different training modalities into my programs but at the end of the day my training still revolves around the barbell, its just not the only thing I am doing.
Any Questions Contact Kyle at:
KyleHuntFitness@Gmail.com
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