"These are athletes, not soldiers" - CrossFit Games 2015
I saw the following anonymous post below on reddit and grabbed the text to save it for posterity (controversial reddit posts often get deleted).
Regardless of what you think about the 2015 CrossFit Games, discussion and dissent make our community stronger.
I'm very curious how the 2015 CrossFit Games will be remembered. The below text is not the FringeSport view on the Games, but it reflects a lot of the chatter I heard in the crowd at the Games.
Read on, and let us know what you think in the comments. Please remember that this is not the opinion of FringeSport.
As someone "on the inside" inside the athletes village I can say that the general complaints about the workouts you see here were shared by the athletes as well.
This was a lot more than "having to do Murph when it was hot." This was athletes genuinely concerned about permanent kidney damage.
This wasn't "trouble with pegboards" it was athletes with who literally couldn't put their arms over their heads and asked to perform an event they didn't even have a chance to try before they had to do it live on ESPN.
I coach a multiple year Games athlete who had serious money on the line and straight up had to be convinced to go out for the last day because they were scared for their health. Everyone accepts that they are participating in a sport where injuries are a reality. Chad Mackay injures a rib, and Neal Maddox pulls a hamstring; fine. Those are injuries that you accept as an athlete. But heat stroke and rhabdo (which were genuine and WIDESPREAD fears among the athletes) are unacceptable and worst of all avoidable if the workouts were better programmed.
At the end of the day these are ATHLETES not soldiers. This isn't BUD/S it's a showcase of athletic potential.
The athletes don't want the one who "sucked the least" to win and I HOPE the viewers don't want to see what is tantamount to a modern roman coliseum either. Anyone who says "well so and so #1 completed EVENT 12 just fine and so and so #13 completed EVENT 15 without complaint" needs to look up the definition of confirmation bias.
If a drug trial caused 10% of people to pull out because of adverse side effects it would be considered a failure. If 10% of the "fittest athletes on the planet" pull out voluntarily than this should be considered a failure as well.
IMO: The Games shouldn't be a test of survival it should a showcase of well rounded fitness. If CrossFit and the general public don't learn a lesson from 2015 I'm genuinely scared at what 2016 has in store.
What do you think?
Photo credit to Michael Brian, CrossFit Games
Agreed, this year was an utter crossfit fail. The goal of programming should not be more volume longer workouts. If trying to get some legitimacy as an actual sport the workouts and volume should stay relatively the same so athletes can actually get better and strategize, like any other sport. It just seems like a circus and athletes were treated like dancing monkeys. Dave Castro needs to step back cause his idea of programming is just longer and harder and this year was this culmination of that failed approach. It seems like when he puts out these workouts it’s just for shock value. Hopefully they can take this as a learning lesson and move forward constructively and quit the circus act.
After several years studying and trying different training methods I embraced CrossFit because of its philosophy and the challenging spirit that it arises between athletes. But I have to say that money and show are becoming more important. I don’t know of any other sport where the public decides what the athletes must perform. Except in the arena of Romanian Circus and that was quite some time. Well, at the end, as others have said, there is always the option to say “no”. For my part, I’ll encourage my athletes to become fitter and not the more injured.
Totally agree! I understand the purpose of the Games is to challenge the limits of human fitness, both physically and mentally. I also understand that the Games are a sport, whereas the WODs we do in our Boxes are fitness programs. But, there were far too many injuries of a wide variety at these Games. Are we challenging human fitness at the expense of the potential to create a society filled with functionally fit citizens who won’t rely on dialysis clinics, gastric bypass surgery and all number of meds to get through each day? Are we truly creating a “broad, general and inclusive fitness” community-minded program, or are we only out to “forge elite fitness?” It’s beginning to seem like the latter to me, and THAT is being done at the expense of the short and long-term health and well-being of our elite CrossFit athletes. As my coach tells me every so often, “It’s okay to rein it in a bit.”
Rachel B- loved your view.. email me.. we have lots to discuss.(kevin@crossfitftf.com) Frank, it unfortunately already has turned off some people, but it has also turned on some others, Peter- yes.. perfect test of fitness.. and there are a few other things but it would be interesting to watch that..
Soon, they’ll have ions running around the arena while the athletes are working out… (you have to learn to drive with the fear.. Talladega nights) and I’ve been around CF since early 2001… so I am an OG saying this… watching the change has been super hard for someone who (used to) loved CF from the old days
Watching the 2009 Games videos shows a primitive display of athletic challenges… It was awesome! The 2015 games was not so much. It’s morphed into a “made for TV” extravaganza… and looks NOTHING like what a week at a local box would look like. “Challenging” has given way to “Bizarre.” I hope some lessons were learned and we get back to becoming more centered. We want to be more inclusive, right? We don’t want people to shake their heads and walk away from our sport…
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