10 Positives from CrossFit

CrossFit, love it or hate it there is plenty to learn from it.

1. Work hard

Say what you will but there is no doubt that the average CrossFit enthusiast is training more often and with higher intensity than 99% of gym goers, elite amateur athletes and even many professional athletes.

I believe in turning up and working hard and I get a lot of inspiration from Everyday Joe's who love CrossFit. I've worked closely with Ben Garard and other top Australian CrossFit athletes and there is no way you can not respect their work ethic.

A recent example was Raphael, my training partner at CrossFit Accion in Santiago Chile. Raphael was between jobs so he decided to train 2 classes per evening, first a general CrossFit class then weightlifting. He soon matched his lifetime PB of a 100kg snatch and power snatched 90kg for a double together with some other big lifts. The sessions were hard and heavy and he did them for the love of the process. I love this.

There are other systems of training that would do very well if they took a leaf from this book.

2. You can tolerate more volume than you think - Robb Wolf was partly wrong.

I think a big part of the reason why I initially rejected CrossFit was because I was listening to Robb Wolf a lot. He helped me start to get my health back on track after 5 years of backpacking and travelling, not caring enough about my body.

Robb has some valid thoughts about issues with CrossFit methodology but his idea that the top athletes won’t stay at the top because the training is unsustainable has been all but disproven with the same faces showing up and doing well each year.

3. You can be ELITE in multiple capacities - weightlifting / powerlifting + endurance (row / run?)

I didn’t say the best in the world. There can only be one of those in any given task and it will usually be someone with a single minded focus on that one task, but CrossFit Athletes with a single minded focus on physical development are elite across many areas to the point of being comparable to national level specialists in weightlifting, rowing and powerlifting. Gymnastics is a long way behind but in terms of body weight strength endurance CrossFit athletes are also world class or even in a class of their own!

4. Community - local and international

A Global Network of amazing training facilities with some common ideological ground. Could it be any better? Sharing tactics and standards on a global level in a way never before attempted in strength and conditioning. This has created an unstoppable wave towards Real MOVEMENT that doesn’t look likely to be headed off by another “machine age” that swept the world of fitness over previous decades.

5. Set standards

While all the levels are arbitrary the fact of working towards them has helped human endeavours to progress and self-perception to change consistently throughout time. What was once impossible or very rare has become normal. Movement standards can also positively contribute what is acceptable range of motion etc. Unfortunately there is no score for making something look great. Virtuosity was a key measure in gymnastics that still has it's place in performance development.

6. Celebrate success -success is progress and completing sessions is essential to that. At the end of a CrossFit session there is a sense of achievement and often of having done something that was previously impossible. On success more success grows.

7. Shortened rest periods

In the world of strength dogma the only way to get strong is to have 3-8 minutes rest between heavy sets. For people with a set amount of time to train per week e.g. 2-5 60 minute sessions the more work done during each of those sessions the greater the results will be. More sets = more results.

8. Time total period rather than rest periods

CrossFit training on 60-120 second cycles has been able to produce more 200kg back squats than any other training method. Long rests can work, so can short rests. If you’re looking for more evidence check out the inverted Juggernaut method from Chad Wesley Smith, he’s squatted 1000lb and believes in multiple sets of low reps. It works.

9. Complexity 1+1+1 = 10

There is a compounding and carry over effect from being able to do one movement. A squat is not a squat, it’s also a wall ball, thruster, clean, snatch etc. G gaining one movement capacity will feed towards multiple other capacities.

10. A new industry is born

Like it or not strength and conditioning is in demand for the most part due to CrossFit. No other system has been able to get people as excited about lifting heavy, getting fast, mobile and getting fit like Crossfit has.

Thank You CrossFit!

Will I ever train at a Box with the daily WOD?

Never say never, but no.

I’ve never liked being in closed system and there are many negatives to CrossFit and especially training at an average CrossFit box. This doesn’t mean I haven’t learned a lot from the atlhetes and coaches, I will always be thankful for the influence CrossFit has had on the world.