"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
Castro missed on the pegboard. ZERO reps on pegboard got your 13th. 2 reps got you 4th. That’s a programming fail.
These other claims of heatstroke and rhabdo have no names next to them. Who are we talking about? What did CFHQ do wrong here? I’m willing to accept something went wrong, but there is zero substance to this article
I’m reminded of a great article on Breaking Muscle that suggested that this would be a fantastic test of fitness that would be completely boring for the competitors and spectators:
Workout #1: “Fran”
Workout #2: 10 minutes to build to a max back squat
Workout #3: Row 3,000m
Suck it up.
Honestly, I was curious if I was the only one thinking this way. I look at CrossFit like I do any sport. I marvel at how well the pros do it compared to myself. How easily they string together double Unders and pull-ups. How quick they spring back up for box jumps. How quickly and how long they can move the bar. I didn’t get this feeling watching the 2015 games. In fact, I thought it was shameful watching all the girls stand around during the 2nd to last event. I would love to see Dave Castro come out and say I messed up. He won’t and if he does he will drop an f bomb that isn’t needed. It really started with the open when he started one of the events with muscle ups. How any people had to score a zero. I am curious to see what this does for next years participation.
As a strength and conditioning coach (university: BS, MS, EPC) who has gone secular in a NON-CROSSFIT way (there are very few of us now a days) this has been one of the negative thoughts I’ve always had towards crossfit. 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. The “pull it from a hat” method has never sat well with me. The crossfit games is just a much larger and more expansive version of what I feel a lot of competitive athletes (JR high, HS, and college +) deal with when they start crossfit. They’re unfamiliar with movements and they have to rush to figure it out and fail in the process while becoming exhausted and overreaching in the process. Sure, coming 3 times a week is not the same as doing 15 or whatever competitions in 3 days with random hat drawn exercises but the same principle applies. Randomization + unfamiliarization + Under Recovery = Poor adaptation, damage and overtraining
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