Crossfit

Crossfit Corcaigh wrote: »

Thanks for the replies lads,

One more question. If you were considering joining what would you be looking for? i.e what are the priorities. Or if you have participated in crossfit like activities what would you change about it? Cheers

- Focus on strength. Program the compound lifts with the objective of getting progressively stronger at them;
- One size fits all programming is dumb. Yes, everyone can do the same movements on the same day, but a beginner to weight training doesn't need to be doing percentage work or 1 rep max tests. They should be doing linear progression for their first ~half year. Similarly, scale metcons and where scaling defeats the purpose of a metcon program more than one for an individual day;
- If you want to program Olympic lifting dedicate the required time to it. Have a day or two a week where people come in and focus on the two lifts and associated assistance for an hour. If your Snatch programming is 15 minutes one day a week + reps thrown into metcons where people are gassed and fatigued you may as well not program them at all imo;
- Rebounding box jumps; deadlift sumo high pulls; super high rep 'chipper' metcons are dumb, don't program them;

In general, think about risk versus reward in terms of your client's training. There's a fine line of course, some people are joining because they think Crossfit is cool and they genuinely want to a version of the competitive sport of Crossfit. Other people just want to get fitter / move better / look better. As such, maybe teaching and programming Power Cleans could make more sense than full cleans; Power Snatches rather than full snatches; strict pull ups rather than kipping, etc:

http://powerathletehq.com/2013/12/17/power-pulls-performance/

Finally, think about the type of training environment you want to create. In an ideal world, a beginner will understand that they need to start light and slow, learn the movements etc and feel comfortable being in the same facility as guys deadlifting 200+ who hit the hardest metcons with intensity. And EVERYONE should be mindful of good movement and form. If your programming and coaching is right, people in the former will consistently morph into the latter over a long time scale.

Now, that's just my opinion of course. Best of luck with your box whatever you do.

Crossfit Corcaigh wrote: »

-snip-

Just curious why you dont have mentioned anywhere on the facebook page where exactly the gym is located. This is surely a top factor for anyone joining the gym.

Stillweak wrote: »

....

The worst

- A lot of people who should be playing real sport are wasting their talent in crossfit and normal gyms

No no no...if anything it is the opposite. Those that couldnt make it in organised, competitive sport sometimes end up at Crossfit.

dylbert wrote: »

The funny thing is that the fitness, strength and mobility of the average GAA/soccer player is terrible when compared to a crossfit athlete.

Thats a fairly massive generalisation there and completely unsubstantiated.

Here's another one for you. The average crossfitter wouldnt get their name on the teamsheet ahead of the average Gaelic/soccer player.

The strength/mobility/fitness of a crossfitter is not a yardstick for measuring ability to play organised, competitive sports.

dylbert wrote: »

The funny thing is that the fitness, strength and mobility of the average GAA/soccer player is terrible when compared to a crossfit athlete.

Unfortunately it's comments like that which produce a lot of hate for crossfit and understandably so. There's no doubt that your average junior GAA / Soccer team could do away with touching the toes and running laps. A GAA player who is down the gym doing bicep curls and three variations of dumbell bench is also on the wrong track.

But even with the confines of a great Crossfit box you can't practice cutting at high speed, sprinting, establishing body position to fend off an opponent etc, etc. And the most important and vital skill of a field sport is the skill of doing that field sport. A guy training in a good crossfit facility (or any good S & C facility) who has applied himself well over a long period will probably move better than the average bear and have good strength and anerobic endurance. But will that translate to moving fluidly on the field of play? Maybe, maybe not.

Don't forget the mental challenges of playing sport. Crossfit likes to talk a lot of bollocks about 'wod strategy' but all it really comes down to is establishing a consistent workpace and minimising transition times. The mental demands don't come close to the demands placed upon a GAA Half Back.

Stillweak wrote: »

Thats a bit unfair. The sports player has the small inconvience of actually having to be good at his sport. Its a lot easier to get strong and mobile when thats all youre doing and you dont have to worry about a match on the weekend.

You cant max squat and deadlift so much in season. Crossfit has no season.

And this too of course. You would need intelligent and flexible programming to work around your typical amateur football season that gets going sometime in July, ends sometime in May and has no consistency in fixture scheduling (multi week stretches without a game from November through mid February) and multiple weeks in April and May where there might be four games scheduled. That isn't to say there is a lack of knowledge and effort going into how training feeds into all of that, but it's a hell of a lot easier to provide for a steady and predicatble five training sessions a week and program around that.

The only quibble with the above is the fact that there is infact a competitive crossfit session starting next week in the form of the open and, even in the case of guys with no shot at regional qualification, ever more competitions popping up in Ireland and the UK. As such, someone doing crossfit as a sport does have to organise their training cycles to peak at certain times of the year. They can't have a pure strength focus all year round in that scenario, etc.

Any of us doing Crossfit should drop any sense of elitism we hold.

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

Unfortunately it's comments like that which produce a lot of hate for crossfit and understandably so. There's no doubt that your average junior GAA / Soccer team could do away with touching the toes and running laps. A GAA player who is down the gym doing bicep curls and three variations of dumbell bench is also on the wrong track.

But even with the confines of a great Crossfit box you can't practice cutting at high speed, sprinting, establishing body position to fend off an opponent etc, etc. And the most important and vital skill of a field sport is the skill of doing that field sport. A guy training in a good crossfit facility (or any good S & C facility) who has applied himself well over a long period will probably move better than the average bear and have good strength and anerobic endurance. But will that translate to moving fluidly on the field of play? Maybe, maybe not.

Don't forget the mental challenges of playing sport. Crossfit likes to talk a lot of bollocks about 'wod strategy' but all it really comes down to is establishing a consistent workpace and minimising transition times. The mental demands don't come close to the demands placed upon a GAA Half Back.



And this too of course. You would need intelligent and flexible programming to work around your typical amateur football season that gets going sometime in July, ends sometime in May and has no consistency in fixture scheduling (multi week stretches without a game from November through mid February) and multiple weeks in April and May where there might be four games scheduled. That isn't to say there is a lack of knowledge and effort going into how training feeds into all of that, but it's a hell of a lot easier to provide for a steady and predicatble five training sessions a week and program around that.

The only quibble with the above is the fact that there is infact a competitive crossfit session starting next week in the form of the open and, even in the case of guys with no shot at regional qualification, ever more competitions popping up in Ireland and the UK. As such, someone doing crossfit as a sport does have to organise their training cycles to peak at certain times of the year. They can't have a pure strength focus all year round in that scenario, etc.

Any of us doing Crossfit should drop any sense of elitism we hold.

I wasn't trying to imply that a crossfiter would be better at football than a footballer, I was just commenting on the general fitness levels of the two. Fair enough it wasn't the best thought out comment from me but reading all the crossfit bashing here got my back up.

The problem is that most peoples knowledge of crossfit starts and ends with a crossfit fail video on YouTube or a bro story they heard about someone's arm falling.off during a wod, but I don't think anything I say on boards will change their mind either way.

Crossfit's getting bigger and is developing into a sport in its own right. As you say the open starts next week and allot of people have been training hard in preparation, to suggest these people are not real athletes performing in a real sport is a bit small minded.

Sometimes when I'm walking along the street by myself I can't stop myself from laughing and people from looking at me because I remember one time during a WOD involving some of the world's premier Crossfit athletes someone got run over by a Nascar.

shneakynaggin wrote: »

Really?

Sorry it was a cop car not a Nascar.

When you think about it, that girl never really moved fast enough to pull the car, there was always slack in the rope. So essentially what she did was go for a run then, as punishment for falling behind, got run over.

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

And there is a perception that most crossfit boxes / coaches value intensity and speed over form and safety.

That's because that's what's pushed by HQ. The point of Crossfit is that it's "brutal" and that no one understands what they do because no one else pushes this hard.

The respectable Crossfit gyms that don't do this are actually going against the gospel according to Glassman, that's why I have consistently criticized Crossfit, because it's madness. It's an inspirational 1980s action hero training montage turned into a sport.

When this is your cornerstone the physical amount of morons who are going to do stupid crap in your name will be immense. The offences against form and safety range from this



to pressed out snatches. Pressing out a Snatch was a MAJOR contributing factor to that Ogar guy never walking again. If he was in a competition where press-outs were verboten he would have bailed, instead he struggled under it because he's allowed to and now his life is in tatters.

That's no slight to the good people who are affiliated because, lets face it, it's the lowest risk route to take if you want to set up your own gym or training business.

I've tried to explain why the examples people give of good practice in Crossfit gyms are meaningless, it's because they're not Crossfitting the right way.

Yep but without the brutality they have no product. I wouldn't have as big a problem with it if they didn't include snatches and cleans etc.

Someone made a point once that when you see pressed out snatches, pregnant women snatching, middle aged women doing fat bar continental cleans it demonstrates that the trainers have been completely desensitized to the dangers of these high risk movements. They see them alongside burpees and pushups as something you can just throw yourself into with terrible form, crippled with exhaustion.

kevpants wrote: »

Pressing out a Snatch was a MAJOR contributing factor to that Ogar guy never walking again. If he was in a competition where press-outs were verboten he would have bailed, instead he struggled under it because he's allowed to and now his life is in tatters.

But he's a top athlete pushing himself to the limit, there's going to be risk at that level in any sport, look at Brandon Lilly's injury.

kevpants wrote: »

I don't think the "injury's happen" argument holds water. That justifies just about anything. I don't think what he was doing is justifiable as a legitimate sport.

I don't know if you saw the video or if you want to, I don't blame you if you don't, but you may not have seen this version. I won't embed and you only have to see the first few seconds before the injury to see the guy next to Ogar fail to get the bar off the ground and fall on his ar5e. That's the type of fatigue these guys were being asked to lift a 3rm snatch, the most technically difficult way to lift the maximum weight to over your head. Ogar was clearly too tired to bail.

WARNING INJURY

I didn't see that version, pretty horrific.

Awful to watch , the guy beside him also creases himself..

GymBible wrote: »

When is the right time to transition between both

In what sense do you mean 'the right time'?

When would you be ready for it?

It depends on the trainer I think. I did it for a few years and it got me into exercising from zero so that was good but then i moved and joined a different crossfit gym which had dickish coaches and eventually i quit. I use what i learned at a normal gym now so it was worth it I reckon.