Exposing the Crossfit Myth

I have a lot of respect for Crossfit athletes. They work harder in many ways than just about anyone you know. However, I have issues with Crossfit as a general conditioning program. Crossfit should not be seen as a way to stay fit, but as a competitive sport.

When you’re a baseball pitcher, you practice your long ball to increase your pitch. In Crossfit they practice their movements with repetitions and series, to decrease their training time. Crossfit is a sport, not a way of life, and not a way to strengthen and condition your body for the long term. No athlete will have improved explosive power, core strength and stability through these workouts that he could not achieve elsewhere with even better results. I’ve heard people say it’s great exercise. And guess what? That’s it. Just a good workout. It doesn’t focus on explosive power. It doesn’t focus on increasing the release of growth hormone in your body; actually, it does the opposite. It doesn’t focus on safety and it doesn’t focus on core strength and stability.

I will probably annoy a lot of people with this article, so I will provide as much scientific data as possible. The first Crossfit myth I’m going to address is that you can optimally work all three energy systems at the same time. Each power system is activated by the progressive shutdown of the previous power system. Athletes who wish to develop explosive strength need to train primarily on the phosphocreatine system. While in the phospho-creatine system, the body’s Type 2 A and B muscle fibers can contract maximally. As the number of repetitions increases, the body switches from the phosphocreatine system primarily to the glycolytic system and the athlete’s ability to produce power degenerates. I recently did a Crossfit workout where I was told to jump on a box 40 times in a row. Unless you are a professional Double Dutch player or a professional Crossfitter, there is absolutely no reason for this exercise. By 40threp, I’ve not only outgrown my phosphorus-creatine system and my glycolytic system, I’ve gotten into my oxidative system. While using the oxidative system, my body converts my contractile components from Type 2 to Type 1. Type 1 muscle fibers are primarily used for endurance activities. By doing what should be considered explosive training and exercising my type 1 muscle fibers, I am retarding my body’s ability to generate power and speed of movement. If you are performing these explosive movements on a system other than the phosphocreatine system, YOU ARE TRAINING YOUR BODY TO GET WEAK! I will repeat! If you’re training your type 1 muscle fiber to do type 2 muscle movements, you’re training to be weak. Your body remembers the last rep of each set, so make them explosive.

Let’s go back to the box jump or the snatch, or any explosive movement. Most explosive movements involve a large number of muscles and put enormous pressure on bones and joints. Bones are very similar to muscles in that they get stronger through progressive overload: the more weight you apply over a long period of time, the stronger and denser they become. Everyone knows a runner who has problems with their knees, hips, or ankles. Constant compression on a runner’s bones and joints without weight gain (progressive overload) will cause a runner’s skeleton to degenerate. At the opposite end of the spectrum, most properly trained Olympic lifters have very strong bones because they have been forced to adapt to heavier weight over time. For whatever reason, Crossfitters have a habit of doing high-rep Olympic lifts for long periods. The fact that the small muscles you use in these full-body movements get exhausted only in the first few repetitions is just one of the concerns I have with this practice. If Crossfitters continue to do high-rep Olympic lifts and explosive exercises, their bones and joints will weaken. Weak joints and bones cause pain and instability. Bread is not healthy. If you constantly have to see a chiropractor to readjust your body, there is likely a flaw in your fitness prescription.

If you’ve ever been in a fight, you know the feeling of throbbing in your temples, tingling in your neck, flushed skin, your heart pounding out of your chest, body temperature that seems to rise. This is his body’s stress response telling him that he is in danger. Something is wrong. Your body is now shutting down certain functions to regulate your ability to run or fight. This is a safe way for your body to release glucocorticoids and other stress hormones that slow protein synthesis and your body’s ability to produce growth hormones like IGF-1 and HGH. For those of you who are thinking this is too much scientific gibberish… it means your body can’t grow and will become catabolic if you continue with these workouts. If you go to the beginning of the paragraph and read the description of how your body feels in a fight, you will know how your body feels after a Crossfit workout. Do yourself a favor and give your body enough time to rest and complete each set with maximum power output. Otherwise, you’ll set your fitness level back again by degrading your endocrine system.

Another issue I have with Crossfit workouts is that they don’t focus enough on core and stability. The first time I discussed this point, I was hit with the argument that doing 30 push-ups in a row was a very hard abdominal exercise. I don’t disagree, but 99% of the world does them wrong. Soon we are going to see many Crossfitters in physical therapy for hypertrophied iliopsoas muscles. 99% of the athletes I have worked with do not know how to use their transversus abdominis and properly separate the contractions of each muscle in the abdominal musculature. I had never been to a Crossfit workout where the instructor talked about the importance of activating the transversus abdominis or loading the diaphragm. If he can’t isolate each of the abdominal muscles properly and effectively, I guarantee he won’t be able to integrate them properly. The abdominal muscles have many more nerve innervations than the other muscles of the body. The nerves are basically an extension of the brain and are responsible for giving commands to the muscles. Maybe now you see how much activity your core is responsible for.

The last point I will mention is that each person is different. You have a different body with different responses to different stimuli than the person next to you. The body with which each of us walks every day is like a canvas. We paint that canvas every day of our lives through our actions and the paths we walk. If you sit in a car every day for two hours, your pelvis will be at a different angle than a yoga instructor, who is constantly leaning back. He will have different tight muscles, different weak muscles, and different trigger points than the mechanic who lies on his back under cars all day.

The point is that two untrained people should not exercise in the same way. Especially in the explosive/endurance form that Crossfit is so well known for. If you are part of this program and are following the same workouts and protocols as everyone else in the group without any individual attention or training recipe for your unique muscular and skeletal differences and imbalances, you might as well ask your instructor to hurt you.