In defense of CrossFit

A quick recap:

1. Despite its questionable training programs, CrossFit has significantly improved the field of fitness.
2. CrossFit has caused every area of the fitness industry to grow - from workout equipment and gyms to workout clothes and books. This is good for all of us who love working out.
3. Women who were once put off by images of bodybuilders pumped full of steroids are now performing free weight workouts in droves, and much of this can be attributed to CrossFit.
4. It's fun to watch the CrossFit Games and that's why, despite its flaws, CrossFit isn't going away anytime soon.

I invented CrossFit

In 1995, I had the idea for CrossFit. I just forgot to give the idea a name and make a brand out of it.

Every Sunday I met my training partners at Chuck's house. We had Farmers Walk equipment, tractor tires to throw around, sandbags, medicine balls, kettlebells - before they became a big thing - gymnastic rings and a bunch of old Olympic weightlifting equipment. The idea was this: we'd more or less randomly come up with a workout session of the day with a primary focus on improving conditioning, and we'd use all these unusual exercises that we couldn't do on weekdays at our commercial gyms.

Sometimes we made a sort of competition out of this, performing combinations of exercises in as short a time span as possible. I even published a few articles about this stuff in the late eighties. CrossFit was only founded in 2000. So Mr. Glassman, where is my Reebok money? Where is my 50% of all the money you make from printing stacks of certifications?

The real "inventor"

No, I'm just kidding. Greg Glassman deserves all the credit. He took a bunch of workout ideas that had been around for decades, combined them, introduced the defining principles, ran a few processes when necessary, and worked hard until CrossFit became a success.

Good for him. He capitalized on his tuner past, gave circuit training a new name and made it his thing. That takes a lot of intelligence, some luck and a single-mindedness that only the very determined or the certifiably insane exhibit. But as the "co-inventor" of CrossFit (along with Dan John, Herschel Walker, my 7th grade football coach, the Muscle Beach crowd from the 1930's, and dozens of others), I was in a position to follow its development better than most people. I've even talked to Glassman on the phone once or twice, and I work with several coaches who have been active in CrossFit.

So what's the verdict on CrossFit? Well, as painful as it is to say it - CrossFit is pretty great.

Thank God for CrossFit

It's easy to pick on CrossFit. The dubious training programs and exercise sequencing of the WODs, the questionable butterfly pull-ups, the sometimes undertrained trainers, the sloppy form of exercise execution, the fact that Glassman has very specific ideas about how certain exercises should be performed even if he doesn't perform them himself....all of it is easy pickings.

And previous articles have covered these drawbacks in detail. But the fact is that CrossFit has been really good for all of us.

Those who keep the market alive

CrossFit has introduced fitness and hardcore weight training to people who otherwise would never have done anything in that direction. Some people never found bodybuilding attractive and weren't attracted to performance training because they weren't competitive athletes. CrossFit has filled a gap: lose fat, build some muscle and feel more athletic... it's not necessary to shave your butt and stand on a stage. You don't have to spend hours upon hours a week preparing for a marathon - one of the few challenging sports open to recreational athletes. When one area of fitness does well, other areas of the fitness industry benefit. CrossFit has created new consumers who spend money on workout clothes, sports supplements and training equipment. New jobs have been created - and not because the government has spent money on stimulus programs, but because demand has come about naturally.

Trainers in specialized fields like barbell strength training, Olympic weightlifting, gymnastics and flexibility training were suddenly able to fill their seminar slots and sell more books.

Physiotherapists, chiropractors, orthopaedists and soft tissue specialists got new customers. This is partly due to the fact that thousands of people started to train hard. And yes, it's also partly due to the fact that more people are getting injured with questionable WODs and in competitions. Clever equipment manufacturers created new products to sell to the 10,000+ new CrossFit boxes popping up around the world. T-shirt manufacturers wrote "WOD" or "snatch" on their shirts, which quickly sold out. The market for weightlifting shoes, which was once anything but profitable, suddenly had to ramp up production.

Barbell manufacturers profited. Manufacturers of kinesiology tapes flourished. Warehouse owners were able to sign new leases. The market for gym equipment boomed as virtually overnight every fitness enthusiast wanted a pair of gym rings in their garage. Thousands of people started pushing their bodies to the limit and realized they needed better nutrition and supplements to boost their performance and recovery.

CrossFit has brought growth to every sector of the fitness industry. And if you like working out, this is a good thing - even if you don't do CrossFit. You now have more choice, better products competing for your money and maybe even your commercial gym has invested money in heavier kettlebells, racks, pull-up bars, good rowing machines and better medicine balls for fear of losing members to cross fit boxes.

Gyms got better because they had to get better. Competition, customer friendliness and capitalism...a great combination.

Hardcore for the masses

CrossFit boxes are not gyms. They don't have ridiculous fitness classes crammed with bad Colombian dance moves and fake martial arts moves. Compared to that nonsense, CrossFit is really hardcore. CrossFit draws housewives away from Zumba and yoga for the simple reason that it doesn't look so housewife-y. It puts barbells in the soft hands of people who have never touched a barbell before.

It's brutally hard, but it looks fun and still embraces the best elements of group fitness by creating a sense of community and consensus. In addition, CrossFit has brought many former high school and college athletes back to the sport of fitness. It's competitive, and even though aiming for more reps or more load in a given amount of time in each workout has its drawbacks, CrossFit appeals to many people - especially former athletes.

CrossFit gave them a new "sport" where they can compare themselves to others and set personal bests. Humans naturally tend to make a competition out of everything (as seen in such absurdities as lawnmower races) and CrossFit awakens that natural instinct in a way that appeals to athletes, couch potatoes and recreational athletes alike.

North America is less fat thanks to CrossFit.

CrossFit works

Let's put it another way. Training with weights works. Metabolic conditioning works. Olympic weightlifting works. Training hard works. Cleaning up your humble diet works.

These things have always worked and CrossFit uses them all and provides an atmosphere that encourages you to push yourself hard. And a lot of people need that. In the early years it was joked that CrossFit makes women hot and men lean. The first part of that statement is definitely true - not because CrossFit is magically particularly effective for female physiology, but because it gives women "permission" to train hard and heavy - something that bodybuilding has failed to do.

Sure, bodybuilding for women has actually always existed, but the use of steroids and images of women with men's faces have done a lot of damage. This is the origin of the myth that training with weights makes women bulky and masculine. It didn't matter how hard we tried (on the hypertrophy side of fitness) to debunk these myths. A picture of Kim Chizevsky from the nineties turned more women away from training with weights than we had hoped to convince otherwise. Where bodybuilding, Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting have failed to recruit women, CrossFit has succeeded.

CrossFit's presence on social media has done what traditional resistance training has failed to do. At the very least, CrossFit has helped change things (figure and bikini class competitions have played a role in this, of course.

Female CrossFitters

CrossFit Girls - women who train with weights, perform metabolic

conditioning and train aggressively without using steroids or other performance-enhancing substances - are sexy. They don't pose, they perform - and generally look damn good doing it, at least at a higher level. Women who would never describe themselves as bodybuilders or figure athletes wanted to look like the typical CrossFit girl: lean, tough, super fit, athletic and with enough muscle to look very "toned" without looking masculine. For many women, it wasn't okay to be a bodybuilder, but it was more than okay to be an athlete. Annie Thorisdottir, the two-time CrossFit Games winner, even appeared on the cover of Vogue.

A strong woman in an anorexic fashion magazine? Game, set and match.

Women are training in droves with weights, doing squats, deadlifts and rope climbs, sweating and building amazing bodies. In an increasingly unfit world full of pre-diabetics, lifesavers and insulin resistance, CrossFit has helped redefine the term "sexy" and given women the green light to do what they should have been doing all along in order to look their best. Women who were once content to run on the treadmill took one look at Camille LeBlanc-Bazinet and magically developed an interest in personal bests, building muscular legs, and learning to deadlift and push. Thank you, CrossFit.

The sport of fitness

We've all heard the jokes and we've all heard the criticism. Who's competing to be the world's best exerciser? And why is some fat old fuck defining what parameters define the "fittest person on earth"? All well and good, but I love how the CrossFit Games have evolved. And you secretly feel the same way.

It's a bunch of really good athletes competing against each other at the things most of us probably do: weightlifting, sprinting, climbing, running and even cycling and swimming. It's exciting to watch. It's easy to get sucked into a competition that encompasses all the elements that most of us do on a daily basis. And the joke of it all is that CrossFit would be pretty cool if it weren't for all the CrossFitters. The top male CrossFitters are slowly disproving the earlier criticism: they are muscular, strong and powerful and many of them could easily step onto a bodybuilding competition stage and do well. Make fun of CrossFit all you want, but you'd be lying if you said you didn't admire Jason Khalipa's body. Do the guys at the CrossFit Games really reflect the results of standard CrossFit programs? Not really, but do they inspire people to train hard and add variety to their workouts? Are they amazing athletes that you want to watch compete? You bet they are.

CrossFit is here to stay

The growth of CrossFit hasn't slowed down yet. Champions are becoming stars, getting high-dollar endorsement deals from well-known companies, selling books and appearing on magazine covers. Will it all die down at some point? Certainly. CrossFit won't always be the attention magnet it is today, but just like World's Strongest Man, Ironman Triathlons and the Olympics, it will always be there.

In 2014, 210,000 people signed up for the CrossFit Games Open - a sporting event that debuted in 2011 - nearly six times more people than the Boston Marathon.

On March 26, people paid $20 for one of the 4,000 seats at Kezar Pavilion in San Francisco to watch other people work out. It was training session 14.5 of the Opens and included 5 CrossFit Games champions competing against each other. CrossFit has its flaws. Many of these issues I believe will be worked out over time - just like the UFC had to do before it became a multi-billion dollar business and a powerful influence for sports and fitness. Do I want to sign up for a CrossFit box and compete in the next Open? No, but do I respect what CrossFit has done for an area I feel very passionately about? You bet I do.

All in all, it's great to see the rise of CrossFit.

By Chris Shugart
Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/in-defense-of-crossfit