CrossFit
To all of you CrossFit lovers out there don’t worry I’m not here telling you that I don’t like your sport or that it’s rubbish, and to all you CrossFit haters out there, I’m not here to tell you CrossFit is the best, and how nothing compares. This will be an overview of CrossFit positives. To people who dislike CrossFit, stop your jabbering-there are definitely positives to this sport, and the negatives. To the CrossFit junkies out there, you too should quit your jabbering, because there are definitely negatives to CrossFit. CrossFit is said to be (by CrossFit) the ultimate all rounded sport, as far as fitness is concerned. The claim that they make is that weightlifters are strong and have good technique, sprinters are powerful, and team sports such as soccer (football) have athletes that are agile, with high endurance etc. They go as far as to give the winners of their tournament (The CrossFit Games) the title of ‘The fittest man or woman on earth.’ Judging by what all round fitness is said to be, that CrossFit themselves have their own definition for, they have a couple different ones, so if you want to take a look I’ll link it here- http://library.crossfit.com/free/pdf/CFJ-trial.pdf CrossFit combines lots of different sports together and anybody who has not watched some of the CrossFit games, I recommend that you do, because it is highly entertaining. The first question- is it fair to declare, the winner of the cross fit games is ‘The fittest on earth’? Like I said above, if you haven’t yet, I would highly recommend that you watch the CrossFit games, because the challenges are pretty incredible, the circuit based themes that they give to their sport are the definition of ‘high intensity’, it truly is. The weights that they lift for their strength competitions are impressive, with Olympic lifts to incorporate skill into their sport. A mix of gymnastics that incorporates flexibility, coordination and agility, long runs and swims incorporate cardiovascular endurance and they do everything to massive repetition, which incorporates muscular endurance. CrossFit always throws something new into their competitions too, which is brilliant as it makes the athlete think about what they should do next, instead of the same thing day in day out year after year. This also gets the crowed excited, which it always a positive. Although cross fitters love CrossFit so much they would enjoy whatever happened, but speaking from a neutral stand point, the new challenges set are usually very entertaining. Most sports favour some of these fitness principles: Olympic lifters favour: technique, coordination, power, speed and strength, they still use all of the other fitness principles but not to the same degree as the fitness principles listed. Soccer (football) favours: endurance (cardio vascular and muscular), skill, coordination, speed, tactical knowledge. The same as Olympic lifters they use all of the principles there are but they use some more than others. Football (American football): this game is massively tactical, it takes advantage of strength, speed power and agility as the plays they make are filled with short powerful bursts, whether that be jumping to receive the ball, throwing the ball, running for the touchdown or tackling . Again, they take advantage of all systems but American football is mainly about tactics. If you have ever seen any American football training sessions you know how impressive they are as athletes. Search it on YouTube, it’s incredible! Back to CrossFit Does CrossFit favour certain principles of fitness more than others? For me, yes they do. They favour a lot physically and although they have some skill based events i.e. new events that make the athletes think about what they have to do in that situation having not done it before, that is a brilliant way to keep things fresh and really take them out of their comfort zone; Olympic lifts require a great amount of skill, coordination, balance and flexibility. Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not saying that it doesn’t take any skill, because it definitely does and I am not saying these athletes aren’t skilled, a lot of them will have played other sports before finding CrossFit. What I am simply saying is sports like Soccer, American football, baseball, rugby, tennis- although maybe not as physically demanding as CrossFit, they definitely require more skill, either through their tactical knowledge, coordination, reaction time etc. So back to the question- is it fair to declare, the winner of the cross fit games is ‘The fittest on earth’? Judging by how physically demanding the sport is, how little rest the athletes have to recover from their events and personally believing that fitness is also a measurement of recovery I am going to say yes. In terms of physically, this sport I believe has to have a person extremely fit to accomplish the tasks. Although in terms of skill, other sports have taken far greater skill, in my opinion. Positives and Negatives of CrossFit Positives WOD CrossFit have a system called WOD (Workout Of the Day), this is brilliant! The workout of the day, is incredibly difficult and is usually some sort of high intensity circuit that are done by a time trial, reps or a measurement, which is a great idea- it allows people to see where they are and where they are going. It’s a brilliant way to get the most out of people because it gives them a target to work towards. This works brilliantly with athletes, as athletes are very competitive. Non- athletes are usually in the gym to better themselves in some way, doing WOD will probably just make them happy that they have managed to complete it as some of them are insane, but from there they have a great base to improve for next time. Conditioning CrossFit is brilliant for conditioning, most of their workouts are burst conditioning. There is some steady state conditioning but mostly CrossFit is done to high intensity for a shorter duration. This allows things to remain exciting rather than just endlessly running or doing the same thing over and over. There is so much choice to go with when it comes to workouts and it’s easy to see why people enjoy this sport so much. Furthermore, just look at a professional Cross fitter man or woman- they have some of the most aesthetically pleasing bodies in sports, from this you can see how incredible their conditioning is. Nutrition Cross fitters usually go by a Paleo diet plan, this is basically you don’t eat anything that isn’t grown in the ground or can’t be found and slaughtered. This is a very healthy option as this is more primal and it is what our bodies would have been used to back when we were hunters- there is a lot of science behind it that believe this is the best way to eat and judging by the results in performance and the ripped physiques it works. Community The community within CrossFit is one of a kind! The sportsmanship within CrossFit is second to none. Everybody there goes there to win, of course they do- winning is the point! Seeing the pros clap one another across the line is very refreshing in a sport nowadays- it’s not even just a clap, they cheer for them until they finish and then all walk up and congratulate one another and it is a very sincere thing. Unlike a lot of sports where it seems as though they shake hands for the sake of it. The fans of the sport are also like nothing I have ever seen, they scream and shout till their heads blow up and they defend the sport to the death! TO THE DEATH! Negatives Trainers CrossFit trainers can become CrossFit certified after a weekend course. This isn’t ideal as there are some massive Olympic lifts in CrossFit, a lot of which take years of practice to perform competently. Furthermore, anybody can go and open up a gym and call it a CrossFit gym. Scenario John is a construction worker that has recently got into CrossFit, has savings and sees how big the sport is, wants to open his own CrossFit gym. He gets a certificate after a weekend of work and moves on to open his own gym. Now this scenario may sound a little unrealistic or probably a bit stupid to some people but, this could happen, somebody who doesn’t completely know what they’re talking about could open a gym and teach. Poor technique in exercise leads to muscular imbalances and injuries, which is why this is bad. I’m not saying it is like this in every gym because CrossFit certification do run longer courses and there are strength and conditioning coaches that train people to CrossFit too. What I am trying to get at is the potential to open your own CrossFit centre and train people with very little knowledge. Injuries There are A LOT of injuries in CrossFit. Yes, there are a lot of injuries in every sport, it’s an occupational hazard, there is no getting away from it, in fact if you go through a professional or amateur career without an injury as an athlete you are very lucky indeed. The main difference being that if an athlete from a professional football club injured themselves they wouldn’t be able to continue through the rules of the game. During the CrossFit games 2013 zigzag sprint- in the quarterfinals a competitor called Michael Mogard pulled his left hamstring, he is an individual athlete so naturally he wants to continue and go all the way, admirable but, not safe in the slightest! He decided to continue and opted to add some compression to the pulled muscle by strapping it up. This is dangerous because he could have torn the hamstring further meaning after competition he would be out for an extended amount of time or he could have completely ruptured the hamstring, which again isn’t ideal to a professional athlete’s situation. At this time, there was nobody from a medical profession to advise against the matter, of course if somebody had advised against him continuing, he could have continued. In other sports if an injury occurs the participant is unable to continue. I.e. boxing, if a boxer if knocked out there is a period of time that they cannot compete or train for because it is deemed unsafe. CrossFit should regulate the heath of their athletes better, as a lot of athletes perform a lot of activity each year at the CrossFit games suffer from heat exhaustion and the side effects of heat exhaustion can be dire, yet they are allowed to procced. Olympic lifts These are incredibly technically demanding (overhead snatch, clean and jerk etc.) and they should remain technical at all times, this is where a lot of the skill that CrossFit has to offer comes from because of the high technique it has to perform these lifts. CrossFit like to include these lifts and do them for incredibly high reps, it doesn’t matter that CrossFit take the weight down of those lifts and increase the amount of reps. During these lifts the kinetic chain has to work in unison, you can see watching ANY! Video where high reps are done with these lifts, how form suffers overtime, and of course it is going to suffer. These are difficult lifts, but when your stabilising muscles give out through fatigue you open yourself to injury, through continued poor form. These types of workouts have the highest potential to cause injuries in sport due to the physical and technical demand they have on the body. We have all seen horror videos about people lifting in heals or not squatting properly and the amount of problems it can cause. Summary CrossFit is definitely a great sport and in my opinion the winners are rightly called “fittest on earth”, although they may not be the most skilful. They are definitely benefits that CrossFit bring to sport and there are also definite negatives that they bring. The thing is a lot of the negatives can be easily fixed through some different rules and regulations they could put it in place. For example, they could put in rules about coaching in order to make the coaching standard better. They could have doctors and Physical Therapists at events to help athletes and deem them fit or unfit to continue quite easily. They could make rules that if somebody becomes injured and fails an assessment they may not continue. They could change the shear amount of Olympic lifts that they do, this one isn’t going to happen because this is such a large part of what CrossFit is. The other changes mentioned are easy to implement and they don’t take away from the sport- they make it much safer for athletes in the long run.
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