Crossfit is the workout I’m asked about most often. For those of you unfamiliar with the trend, here’s the definition used by the company’s founders:
CrossFit is the principal strength and conditioning program for many police academies and tactical operations teams, military special operations units, champion martial artists, and hundreds of other elite and professional athletes worldwide.
I see my friends Cassidy and Hunter three times a week at the gym. The two of them together look like they might be the offspring of Ivan and Ludmilla Vobet Drago from Rocky 4.
On any given morning, you’ll find them pressing up from a headstand, doing full clean and jerks or performing some crazy muscle ups on the rings. Then they teach fitness classes, eat and train some more. As you’d expect from this description, they’re both exceptionally well conditioned.
Cassidy and Hunter race competitively in events like Spartan Race, Warrior Dash and Tough Mudder, and both generally kick ass. They’re basically professional obstacle racers. To train for these events, they both work consistently with heavy weights, but they muse most enthusiastically about their Crossfit training and daily competition with themselves. From Hunter:
They say that a crossfitter is the jack of all trades, having no real weak spot. I believe that an athlete’s greatest weakness will become exposed during their events, then slowly unravel them as time goes on. So when I go into the gym I use Crossfit to strengthen my weakness and build myself to become the athlete I hope to be.
So what is it exactly? Crossfit is a set of exercises, weights and rep schemes determined by the company and athletes across the country compete with the same set of circumstances.
Here’s a sample Crossfit workout:
- 20 Pull-ups
- 30 Push-ups
- 40 Sit-ups
- 50 Squats
Completed as 5 rounds for time
Essentially, your goal in performing this workout is to see how fast you can complete each round. You’re competing against yourself and other athletes worldwide, everyone exerting themselves for the same endgame.
Years ago, I toyed with some similar workouts. I enjoyed them, but I wasn’t building the strength I personally desire. I was certainly in great shape and had notable endurance, but I prefer feeling exceptionally powerful. Crossfit training is designed to break you down and retest strength and conditioning, rather than aiming for muscle growth and ultimately a one rep max.
Cassidy and I have chatted about swapping workouts. I tell her she needs to build in more rest and recovery, and she knows I’m right. She tells me I’d love Crossfit, and I know she’s right. From Cassidy:
Crossfit helps me become a better athlete every day because it’s so measurable. There are weights, reps and time. I’m addicted to using more weight, getting more reps and achieving a faster time than the day before and the person next to me.
Eventually, she and I will swap (or at least alter) our stubborn styles, probably resulting in an eye opening experience. When it happens, I promise to document and share my experience.
How has your Crossfit experience treated you?
Fill me in below,
Kap
Impressive pull with Drago’s wife’s name. I hope you didn’t have to google it
Hey Kap, I love the blog. I was wondering your thoughts on an “Occam’s Protocol”-type workout, as promoted by Tim Ferriss in his book “The Four Hour Body”. Probably not the best for explosive strength, but it has been working for me to maintain my strength and stay in good shape. Thanks.
http://www.occamsprotocol.com/
As a formerly ACSM licensed trainer, I’m not a huge fan of Crossfit. Everyone I know who has done Crossfit for more than 3 years has blown out a major joint or otherwise required surgery. By design, Crossfit pushes the individual to exhaustion, with invariably another round tacked on to “redline.” When you are at that point of exhaustion, good decision-making fails and safety is compromised. The “group support” many people refer to, can also be described as “group pressure.” Not every Crossfit location is like that, I understand, but _many_ are. There is one in the area where I live that posts WOD videos at least every week. I look at them as a library for future lawsuits as I can see safety compromised in every video and I have friends in LA who link to videos at their Crossfit gyms that show similarly flawed behavior.
Come on Kap you know Crossfit is crap just admit it! I am sure there are lot of good crossfit coaches out there like Cassidy and Hunter but show me one SSC coach who approves of this popular work out called Grace where you clean and Jerk 135 lbs 30 times for time. The funny thing about crossfit is the good ones like Crossfit Mayem (rich Fronings gym and Crossfit Balboa (John Welborn Former NFL Player) Are huge proponents of 5×5 and squatting 2-3 times a week. followed by some sprints and shuttle runs. Sound familiar? The Paleo diet that they hype is pretty much what Kap recommends. The bottom line is crossfit is great for those who are out of shape and want to lose a few lbs but if you want a body like Kap, Froning, or a NFL RB crossfit is not the program for you. If you do want to follow a crossfit program check out http://www.crossfitfootball.com
Kap,
I’ve been waiting for this post since you started this bad boy. I am surprised, though, you didn’t mention a critical aspect (deficiency, in my view) of CrossFit: safety and commonsense. I used to toy around with CrossFit and while the competitive aspects of CF are great for the reasons your friend mentions, CF is enormously dangerous, especially to folks new to fitness. As you know better than I do, Olympic and compound lifts are incredibly effective, but can also be enormously dangerous without proper training and form. CrossFit’s metamorphosis from an activity to boost functional fitness to a complete ‘sport’ (cult?) has brought major risks. I’ve seen so many knuckleheads in the gym doing their own CF-style workouts: DL’ing way to much with virtually no form; trying C+Js that will one day dislocate a shoulder, etc. Falling off an aborted muscle up. There are tons of stories out there of newbies getting Rhabdo. Not good.
An aspect I respect most about this blog, and you, is your sober doses of adult supervision, no BS, and commitment to safety and responsibility in the gym and at the dinner table. CrossFit, in my opinion, has lost its commitment to fitness in its effort to become a cultural phenomenon. Fitness is something that makes life better; CrossFit is tending toward the belied that fitness is life itself.
And as a parting shot, I’ll add that as an ethos it is internally inconsistent. They preach functional movements, spartan workout conditions, a commitment to basic building blocks but want people to shell out a grand for a six month membership? For what? To jump up and down and jam out max reps pushups? Don’t need to burn cash to do any of that.
Please keep up the blog,
Josh.
@Josh I have a feeling Kap didn’t want to have the Haters attack him on the crossfit topic. although it would of been great for his pageviews I feel he did not write this blog with his true feelings
I went to 2 Crossfit classes and disliked my experience both times. I didn’t enjoy the feeling that you were competing against others in the class (despite the notion from the coaches that you should only worry about yourself and your time), and I also didn’t enjoy the yelling and overall chaos that consumed the Crossfit facility.
Needless to say, I didn’t return after my 2 classes. As a former baseball player, I’ve always enjoyed the workouts that target specific muscle areas designed to help increase performance on the field.
I’ve now transitioned into someone who follows the routing of a physique athlete, working out 5-6 days a week and focusing on 1 or 2 specific muscle groups each day.
Mon- back, abs
Tues- arms
Wed- legs, cardio
You get the idea….
This works for me. And there is something about putting on your headphones, cranking up your fav tunes and completely zoning out for 1-1.5 hours and forgetting all of your other daily struggles. I realize my routing doesn’t satisfy everyone’s needs, but it works for me.
Love ya Kap, keep up the great work, my friend.
Ryan
I have been CrossFitting for almost 3 years and I love it. I enjoy it for a variety of reasons, but the competitive nature of the workouts is a large part of my enjoyment. I always dreamed of playing professional sports, but at a very young age, I realized that was unlikely. With CrossFit, I get to push myself to be better and stronger every day. I compete against myself, but also against people with equal levels of fitness.
I have moved around a lot in the last few years and attended a few different CrossFit gyms. Some gyms have more emphasis on general fitness, where some gyms have a -strong- emphasis on strength. I am currently a member at a CrossFit gym in NYC that has a large emphasis on overall strength. We will squat and deadlift at least once a week, as well as work on the Olympic lifts. For instance, today’s work out is 5 sets of 5 power cleans, building weight to a heavy 5 with 2-3 mins of rest per set. After that, we will do our met con portion of the work out, which consists of power cleans and ring dips. Once a week, we will do some sort of barbell complex building to a heavy weight over a 30-40 minute period. Other days, we will do a 20-30 minute met con.
However, there are negatives about CrossFit. There are so many gyms sprouting up because of the growing popularity of CrossFit, so it is important that you find a gym with coaches that really know what they are doing. In my travels, I have dropped in at CrossFit boxes where I have felt more experienced than the coach leading the class. This is obviously problematic.
If crossfit is so great how come NFL, NHL, and MMA fighters don’t train that way? I will give Joe Glassman credit though he turned silly garage workouts into a 100 million dollar business. U know what works lift heavy shit and eat fruits, vegetables and a protein that has a face turkey, fish, chicken, cows,
Now wheres my 100m
The New Orleans Saints coach Sean Peyton implemented a whole Crossfit program last year.
2012 record: 7-9
2013 record: 11-5
I personally love the different exercises Crossfit brings to the table but don’t particularly like the competitiveness/timed events with heavy weights.
http://www.wwltv.com/sports/black-and-gold/Paytons-return-brings-changes-to-Saints-inseason-conditioning-lifting-program-222552071.html
It’s grade school gym class with some weights. A WOD is simply a met con. Only problem with WODS are when it includes weight lifting & are being time, You cannot maintain proper form when competing against others as well as the clock. In addition there’s no specific goal to be reached. Each person who works out has or should have a specific goal they would like to reach. An entire crossfit gym doing the same workout cannot reach those goals. And let’s not forget their mentality keep going no matter what will simply get you injured. If that’s the mentality you are looking for, join the armed services….at least you will get paid instead of dropping $100+ a month on membership. I did crossfit for a while…loved it but soon realized the big picture…too many injuries & didn’t help me reach my goals. There is always something good to take out of experience…and that is crossfit has brought Olympic weight training to the forefront in the United States. They have managed to get more men, women & kids to start moving and pushing weights.
Kap,
I am a college baseball player who has always trained for power like you. Always doing 1-5 reps for the big compound lifts. I love this type of work out and has helped me get bigger and stronger. One thing I always struggled with was endurance through my games, something I really need as a catcher). I recently started putting a crossfit/ bootcamp workout into my routine once a week. I feel that this had helped my edurance through out my games as I am essentially doing 150+ body weight squats a game, sometimes double if a catch double headers. I feel my body is operating the best when I am doing 3 strength workouts and 1 crossfit workout a week.
–Matt
I am CrossFitter.
I am 6’4″ tall and weigh 225lbs.
When I started CrossFit, I weighed 175lbs and could deadlift 225lbs, back squat 155lbs, and do 3 pull-ups. I have 0 background in sports or fitness of any kind, other than little league baseball for two years.
Three years in, I can now deadlift 520lbs, back squat 455lbs with my hamstring completely against my calf, front squat 380lbs, bench press 335 lbs, and can do 10 muscle-ups on gymnastics rings in a row and over 20 pull-ups. I can row 2000m on an erg in well under 6 minutes, and row 500m in 1:24.
I haven’t broken any bones, torn any joints or muscles, or really gotten anything worse than a boo boo here and there. I strive to achieve safe and efficient technique during conditioning workouts, and if my form breaks down, it’s nobody’s fault but my own. Also, if my form breaks down,I realize that this will make me finish the workout slower because I am becoming less efficient in my movement. Typically, the “proper” technique is also the one that allows you to complete the most work.
Oh, also, I am not an anomaly, or anywhere close to the only person with a similar story. Cool, thanks guys. Have a good day.
I’d also like to make the assertion that maximal strength (one-rep max) is a definite goal of CrossFit. In fact, if you read CrossFit’s 10 domains of fitness, strength is one of them. Your one-rep max of any given lift is most definitely a priority.
The problem here is we’re assuming every gym runs crossfit.com programming exclusively. I don’t think you guys realize that CrossFit is a theory, or maybe more a collection of ideas, and is open source. It isn’t crossfit.com’s workout of the day.
I do have a problem though, why is Crossfit soooo expensive???
It really isnt very, all things considered. The coaches are providing a service that you are paying for. (Hopefully) years of expertise and hard-earned knowledge.
The “coaches” don’t know as much as they’d like you to think they do. Most of them have only recently become certified and are opening gyms as fast as they can thanks to this fad across the nation.
You can do a crossfit workout at any $35/month gym…..you might annoy others, but technically you could do it if you wanted to. I don’t see any value in $100+ per month.
I have to chime in on this one. Before starting Crossfit, I was in my mid 30’s, out of shape and had every excuse in the book on why not to exercise and eat healthy (too busy with work, 3 young kids, too expensive, etc…). I had tried a number or “Global Gym” memberships and even worked out with a personal trainer, but I hated going. It was boring and repetitive. After doing a lot of research, my wife started going to Crossfit gym close by, loved it and suggested I give it a try. I finally gave in and now I’ve been doing Crossfit for 2 1/2 years. It was a life changing experience for me and the many members of our box. I loved how it the movements were all basic and functional. I loved the fact that every class was different. I think in that first year we maybe did the same WOD twice 5-10 times. It was never repetitive. But the thing that really hooked me and what hooks most of us Crossfitters is the community. That is something I never got in any other gym setting or fitness class that I tried. No matter your athletic ability, your age, your weight, everyone is welcome and accepted. I’ve seen body transformations first hand in the matter of 9 months that will drop your jaw.
I think a lot of people who have these negative reactions to Crossfit have never even tried it and if they have, either didn’t go to a “box” that had the right trainers or just never gave it a fair shot. Yes, there are some bad boxes and some terrible trainers. I travel a lot for work so I’ve been to a few and seen that first hand. Just like any gym, you need to do some background work to find the best ones. If you go to the right box with the right trainers, you will learn the fundamental movements those first few weeks and not just be thrown into workouts that you are not able to do correctly where you can get hurt. Even after 2 1/2 years, I scale workouts all the time. My trainers and I set up a plan for each WOD that they put on the board. Some of the movements I can do RX (prescribed) and others I have to do with much less weight or even a different modification. Yes, it’s a competition. We all want to finish the WOD in the fastest time or the most reps. But in the end, the people that get the loudest cheers are the people that finish last. That’s where the community is so important.
Crossfit has now become the “sport of fitness”. I’m in the middle of competing in the Crossfit Games Open. Over 200,000 people from around the world signed up for this competition. Only the top 1-2% will make it to regionals and only 2-3 from each region to the Crossfit Games on ESPN, but all 200,000 of us competing in this sport. It’s one of the greatest Open competitions I’ve ever seen because anyone can sign up and compete. Last year, I finished in the top 65% of men under 40 in the world. This year, I’m in the top 45%. It’s measurable not just against others, but against yourself. You can see the improvement not just in your body, but in the numbers. I know I’m not anywhere near the class of an athlete as Rich Froning or Jason Khalipa, but I can compete in a competition with them and do all the same workouts and most of the same weights as them…just a lot slower 🙂
I know people complain about the prices, but at $100/month, if I go 5-6 days a week, it’s less than $5/class. A class with 5-10 people and a knowledgeable trainer who is showing me proper mechanics for my lifts and pushing me to do more than I think is possible safe and efficiently.
Look, for some of you maybe Crossfit isn’t what you are looking for in fitness. I get that. That said, Crossfit must be doing something right because the growth rate is so high and the people who try it, stay with it.
For what its worth, Gabe, I think you would be a an exceptional Crossfit athlete because you basically do most of the movements and lifts in your workouts and like someone else said, you have the diet covered too. If you want to get serious, I would find a box and trainers close by (Valley Crossfit is exceptional btw) and workout with them. They will be doing it a little differently than the majority of us doing the 1 hour classes. If you are ever down in San Diego, let me know, and I can introduce you to a great box down here called Crossfit Barracks.
Sorry for all the rambling…
I play real sports! I’m not trying to be the best at exercising!