"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
Hello Dave Castro,
I had no idea that you were going as Bill G. (I got the jokes). The original manuscript for crossfit called the exercise selection “pick from the hat” method. I’m literally referring to the original model of crossfit. There is a difference between scaling a workout and progression. The assumption that I haven’t looked into crossfit is a presumptuous allegation on your part. I’m not suggesting that crossfit does a bad job at programming for crossfit, I’m suggesting that crossfit does a bad job at programming for sports. Feel free to hate on that suggestion as well.
Neuromuscular adaptation will occur no matter what (as long as high intensity via %1RM or movement speed intensity). What I suggested is that the programming is not optimal at developing nuromuscular strength/speed that could come from more simple and more direct programming. Rather than do the randomish group style training that crossfit classes do.
But hey, that’s just my professional 2 cents. I guess you’re unbiased opinion towards crossfit has shown me the light. Live and learn
Lame analogy, but you’re right. Unlike soldiers, they actually have the CHOICE as to whether they want to participate and do “battle” at the Games. Soldiers do not, they have to put their life on the line and do what they’re told.
Drew, I’m not sure how hard you’ve looked into the programming for a CrossFit gym, but it’s safe to say you didn’t do a whole lot of searching based on the fact that you said this, “The general programming of Crossfit classes is so random that neurological and muscular adaptation are so much slower than simple exercises structured with direct sports performance benefits.”
Each gym programs for themselves and their athletes. Just like each personal trainer, coach, etc would train differently from one another. They don’t all program the exact same. A GOOD, quality CrossFit gym doesn’t randomly program workouts. They use the same idea of mesocycles and macrocycles to build a solid foundation of fitness. In fact, many gyms even have two different kinds of classes. Those for more advanced athletes that already know a majority of the movements and have the ability to do them fairly well and an introduction class that builds up body awareness, the neuromuscular memory of what each movements should look like, etc.
But don’t fret. Most people that write off CrossFit as a whole generally don’t do much digging into it.
It’s always a good idea to recommend and be aware of things that make something safer.
Until then we have still have sports where you hit another human being as hard as you can at full speed, another where you punch the other guy in the face until he’s unconscious, and others where you run bike and swim till you collapse (ever seen the finish line of a triathlon?)
This article certainly has relevance but it casts a light on several sports, not just the Crossfit games.
Having been a spectator at the 2105 games and having read this article…
If you will entertain me for a minute and welcome my chiming in. The top two things I noticed were lack of flexibility and cardio in all of the athletes. A bunch of those athletes looked stiff (lack of stretching/yoga) and lack of cardio. I would like to know how much time is spent stretching out the muscles and doing cardio. There would be different results if each and everyone of those athletes dedicated a few days a week solely to cardio- I mean body weight cardio- nothing weighted. Such as swimming, running (without the weighted vest) cycling, ering (rower machine), etc. I also can’t fathom the drastic change each and every athlete would experience if they spend a minimal of 20-30 minutes of stretching/yoga or some form of stretching 3-4 times a week. Cardio and flexibility is free speed. If there is a coach out there that can harp on cardio, it will make their athlete/s much, much stronger – allowing the muscles to breath with more exhaustion and faster recovery times.
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