"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
See I thought about this too, even the commentators mentioned it. I don’t think it was the programming. Back in 2011 or 2012 there were devastating events programmed as event 1. However, both events were entirely outside. I really think the stadium messed them up the most. There was no air flow down there once so ever. If that had bad back at the beach or even some place where there was a breeze I don’t think it would have been as big of an issue. Nothing of that duration should ever be programmed in the stadium again…
This was the toughest Games programming to date.
But, the biggest ‘programming’ issue I saw was doing Murph in SoCal during the hottest part of the day. Outside of that, it was just a long, tough competition.
But, that’s what the CrossFit Game are supposed to be about.
Complaining that there is a lot of work and a lot of volume at the finals is mostly sour grapes to me.
The peg board being unveiled late and not giving the athletes time to practice was very tough on the women, obviously. But, that is part of the unknown and unknowable.
Rich Froning was right when he said that mental toughness isn’t one of the 10 physical skills, but it should be.
Maddy Myers got Rhabdo, Annie not as bad but had severe heat stroke enough she lost her confid nice in being in the event. The programming wasn’t bad the heat and scheduling in it
Drew you keep harping on this random “pull it from the hat” programing. I Know that the first year (or one year) this was done. But if you are saying that this is what is happening at the Games now, or that this is happening at Crossfit Boxes then you are exposing the fact that you are probably very biased re Crossfit, not to mention grossly in error. No matter how many three letter acronyms you list on your post, the one that would be most beneficial to you is CFL1. Because then you might more intelligently speak to Crossfit programing, and Crossfit as an exercise methodology. As a side not. In the CFL1 coaching course they speak of the Hopper (correct name for it) and they use it as representation of how not to program. The Crossfit box I attend has a very detailed Cycles for the entire year. You are confusing random with varied. Crossfit if extremely Varied.
But this is akin to the Games of old, minus the fact you don’t die if you lose. What part of current Western civilization does not worship pain and suffering (or blood and gore)? These type of competitions are built into our DNA. Criticize it or “like” it, either way, society craves competition like this. However, the Games is not the style of CrossFit that 99.9% of the CrossFit community experience day-to-day. The CrossFit Games is a spectacle, whereas your daily WOD at your local box is real life function training. It seems as if people confuse the two variations.
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