Some thoughts on CF and my fitness goals

[John Walsh]

Crossfit is a great fitness program, especially if you are a young competitive athlete. I did the WOD’s as Rxed for over a year and have been off the WOD for about 6 weeks or so. I went back through my training journal to assess how well this experiment went for me.

On the positive side of my ledger:

I lost fat. I went from a 38 waist to a 34 waist in about 6 months.
I got faster.
I was able to run farther.
My ability to do bodyweight exercises went up.
I learned dozens of new exercises and ways to incorporate them into a routine.
I thought about my diet for the first time ever.

On the negative side:

My strength decreased in all the powerlifts and Olympic lifts.
I was exhausted after just about every workout. Not coincidentally I was sick frequently with colds.
I compromised form for time frequently.
I was racked with soft tissue injuries by the end of the year.

Conclusion:

Well I guess from a cost/benefit analysis I would have to call the year a push. Being hurt and sick this often was not consistent with my goals either was losing strength. In spite of this I think I have gained a lot of knowledge about my own body and it’s capabilities. For example I never thought I could ever do 20 pushups but it was pretty simple to obtain although not easy.

On the other hand I have come to the conclusion that I don’t handle high rep multi joint lifts very well. I’ve lifted for years but most of my soft tissue injuries came from high rep multi-joint lifts like the clean and deadlift. It doesn’t matter that the weight was light. Form always breaks down after about 5 reps for me. This is where injury creeps in. I even noticed that the form got sloppy with the CF gods on the DVD. At 40 I can’t get way with that like I used to.

I have also come to the conclusion that exhaustion, puking and DOMS are signs that I am not training properly. Being old school I always concluded that more pain meant more gain. Not true. Over the years I have known several guys that played/play in the NBA and NFL. I trained with a few and have watched many others train. I never saw them on the ground gasping for air after training. They saved that for competition.

An old high school classmate of mine used to play BB for the Miami Heat. I showed him one of the “girls” once and his comment was that it looked great if your goal was to get tired. He asked me to name a few NBA/NFL/MLB guys that used CF. I couldn’t but I never really inquired either. His point was that if this was such a superior training protocol why wouldn’t the highest paid athletes in the world use it? Once again I was at a loss.

My gut still says this is a great protocol for competitive athletes. Maybe things need to be tailored a bit for specific athletic goals and I have heard many examples of this from posters on this site.


Presently

Currently I’m approaching the end of a 6 week cycle on Pavel’s PTP along with doing Bikram’s yoga (I know, I know), trigger point therapy and a bi-weekly sports massage. Most of my soft tissue injuries are gone or feeling much better. I sleep better and have more energy. My deadlift is solid and I have learned a lot more about technique and high tension lifting. I could never hit an unassisted muscle up while doing CF. I nailed five in a rest pause fashion on Tuesday even though I hadn’t tried one in months. I have lost several pounds even though I am not running or doing all the high rep stuff and my wife has commented that I look more vascular. Go figure.


Future

My plans are to stick with what I am doing until I fail to see results. I might try a CF cycle modified to meet my goals. I think I have learned enough to approach things differently and still think it can produce results without all the injuries.

1. I would not be looking to any basketball, football, or baseball players for advice on fitness.

2. It's great that you're learning what works for you, rather than deciding what will work for you and sticking with it regardless of the outcome. That's what crossfit's all about: what works.

3. Have you thought about using dumbbells instead of barbells for your high rep lifting? It's much easier to keep good technique with dumbbells with high reps. Plus one arm snatches, dumbbell thrusters, db hang squat cleans, and db long cycle clean and jerks are all beastly exercises.

(Message edited by sinai16 on November 04, 2005)

[Brendan Sonnichsen]

I have a very limited understanding of PTP. Would you compare and contrast the programs for us?

One beautiful thing about CrossFit is that it is a pursuit of elite fitness - not the prescription for it - and so it uses the best that it has and continually seeks for things better (with your 353 posts to my 11 you probably know more about this than I do). Perhaps there are things that our community can learn from Pavel's PTP.

[Robert Wolf]

John-
Really interesting stuff. I think within the context of constant variation you are shifting gears and that makes perfect sense. A few things come to mind:

1-Perhaps something like the ME-Black Box template would be helpful when/if you resume some of the metabolic conditioning. You will have a larger emphasis on basic strength/power elements and reduced volume of high repetition met-con.

I think you and Larry said something to the effect that CF was lacking in some basic strength development areas, like the back squat. I argued at the time that it was not lacking (due mainly to my own experience of 1rm increases) but I was wrong on that count. Work done by Michael Rutherford, Josh Everett, Mike Burgner and others has shown the need for more strength/power development and we have seen the WOD alter a bit in response to this.

After talking with Scotty Hagnas and Ido Portal I have shifted much more emphasis to the O-lifts and gymnastics skills for power development while using kickboxing and grappling for my met-con(I have not done much of either in some time so both activates are a potent stimulus for me). I also do 1-2 classic CF style met-cons per week in addition to this. I keep making progress in all areas so, hey why not!

2-If we buy into the idea of CF being the "Sport of Fitness" then it makes sense to really cycle the intensity and volume of activities, particularly if overtraining seems to be a constant factor. I think it has been said fairly frequently that one must ramp up intensity gradually and some vigilance must be had as to the effects of over training.

3- I wonder about (this may get me voted off the island) the volume of work done at times. In my mind I imagine Coach's ideal training regime which brings the work capacity of an individual up to the very limits of human abilities vs. what Art DeVany recommends which is as little work as possible to create/maintain impressive levels of strength/power and endurance. Which one is right? I don't know, I guess it depends upon your needs. I do not think the ultra abbreviated DeVany approach is going to be adequate to prepare soldiers for their duties but then I don’t know that soldering and its inherent risks/stressors are correlative with optimum health, so it is perhaps reasonable to assume that preparation for that work may be beyond what is favorably adaptive.

For example I have noticed that if I do a 1/2 tabata squat session or Karen (150 wallballs) per week I am pretty well immunized against severe leg soreness from most workouts (assuming I am generally active and doing some other strength and conditioning). If I drop below this level I can get a crushing level of soreness from relatively minor training. I am still looking for a balance in my training which will allow me to perform at a high level while avoiding DOMS and some of the other problems you mentioned.

Someone once asked Coach something to the effect "Don’t you think the candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long..." I am not sure if I am saying that but there are some facts of cellular turn over, oxidative stress and the Hayflack limit of cells( max number of cell divisions is ~50 then the telomeres are overly short and the cell dies). In "What is Fitness?" the 4 definitions of fitness are laid out, part of which is the Sickness-wellness-Fitness continuum. My thought is that simply increasing work capacity and amount of work done does not lead to increased "Fitness" if and undue amount of systemic and cellular stressors are enacted. I have no quantitative information on this, just theory.

4- Regarding the Professional athletes and CF: Many professional athletes smoke crack, drink, eat a terrible diet and still perform better than 99.99% of us. That does not validate or invalidate their S&C, it just means they are good. CF will make its way into professional circles it will just take time.

Sorry if this was a hijack of your thread...you just got me thinking!
Robb

"Crossfit is a great fitness program, especially if you are a young competitive athlete"

despite this positive statement, the rest seems rather negative john...

i must admit in the few months i've been experimenting with cf i have definitly gained muscle. both old friends and people i no longer train with on seeing me again have commented i look bigger- i attribute this to hspu and pullups which i am now doing in large reps thanks to cf.

on another note my previous program to cf was strictly body weight exercises in a semi randomized state and done to somewhat exhaustion and/or pukie... so it's no surprise on finding cf i was attracted to it.
with the emphasis on more difficult bodyweight exercises and olympic lifts it seemed the next logical step for me.

i should mention also- i do not follow the wod religiously. i have been training long enough that i know my body and when to push it and when not to. so unlike john i haven't suffered any sickness or tissue damage- only what was left over from fighting days that still flares up now and again.

i think this is important. if you are honest with yourself (strengths/weaknesses) and understand your body intuitivily then tailoring the program can lead to great benefits as well.

with cf, which can be extremely intense, a person really has to understand what they are doing or they can burn out fast. lack of form, stress of high reps on joints, bad nutrition can all lead to serious problems- which was also mentioned by john.

my two cents... an all in all a positive experience for me so far, backed by a great forum/information..

what are other peoples recent experiences with cf?

- t.

[Frank C Ollis]

John,
Of course a pro ball player would need to modify the workout. CrossFit is for general fitness, and is not sport specific for the same reason it is scalable.

I would just like to point out one thing:

Do you honestly think that your new program is what let you hit the 5 muscle ups. Perhaps the truer statement would be:

(when I finally paid attention to all of the warning signs of overtraining, and let my body enter the recovery/supercompensation phase, the results were amazing)

Sleep, nutrition, and active recovery.......

As a Marine, I have to concern myself with the overall picture. I don't have a "season", and there is no "peaking" allowed. I am at a computer today, and this time next week I could be carrying everything I own while fighting for my life.

We each choose our own path.

[Jason Steele]

Pro athletes don't have to train to the level that many of the CFers here do-- to survive and thrive in areas/situations that are, to say the least, hostile. To me what the athletes think and do comes second to the men and women of CF and their training/ thought processes.

[John Walsh]

Guys, thanks for the excellent feedback.

Robert thanks for the thoughtful statements as always. “1-Perhaps something like the ME-Black Box template would be helpful when/if you resume some of the metabolic conditioning. You will have a larger emphasis on basic strength/power elements and reduced volume of high repetition met-con.” Yes this is exactly what I have been thinking about.

Travis, so what if my statements appear negative? This isn’t about being nice. I’m simply making some observations that I have learned after over a year of religiously following the WOD. I know my body pretty well too and have been training and competing for the better part of 32 years so spare me the one upmanship and the accusations of not drinking the Kool-Aid properly.

Russ, yes I am considering trying some higher rep stuff with DBs to see if this reduces the wear and tear. Excellent suggestion.

Brendan, posting #s is not an indication of knowledge. At 40 years of age I’m feeling like I’m just starting to get this stuff. I’m a student just like you. As for PTP go to this link (http://www.dragondoor.com/index.html) and poke around.

Frank, “Do you honestly think that your new program is what let you hit the 5 muscle ups.” Yes I do. Of course I have been working on this for about a year and the recovery time helped but what really put me up were the tension techniques that I have been practicing for the last 6 weeks. I wasn’t fully grasping it before I started doing PTP. But thanks for insinuating that I'm a moron just the same.

As for pro athletes, yes some abuse drugs (exclude steroids and such for now) and don’t train but are they the exception or the rule? Personally I think they are the exception. It takes a great deal of dedication for people to reach the ranks of the NFL, NBA and MLB. The training program, diet and lifestyle of Jerry Rice never made the front of the sport’s page because it wasn’t going to sell papers. People would much rather read about juicers and thugs than about how certain ball players got to where they are at with hard work. Think about. To me all this disparaging of pro ball players is just sour grapes. When I played football in college we called it “rugby syndrome”. No offense to rugby but guys who got cut or couldn’t cut it in the football program would often re-emerge on the rugby team. They wouldn’t hesitate to disparage football and football players and how rugby was the superior sport. Of course we all knew that if they had what it took they’d prefer to be on the gridiron. I’d be willing to bet that an elite wide receiver or DB would run circles around an elite CF god in just about any physical endeavor.

For the record I drank the Kool Aid and will drink it again. I like the Kool Aid! I’m not leaving the “ranch” unless Coach tells me that’s what I should do.

[Steve Shafley]

Interesting John. I don't have much to add, but have to say that sometimes you need to find your own way through the dark. Hopefully all the CFing gave you the ideas, experiences, and tools to continue to pursue your chosen activities with every increasing prowess and vigor.

Robb: As always, you make a tremendous number of interesting and thought provoking observations. You are definitely one of the guys whose posts are always read by me.

"Rugby Syndrome"...that's good stuff. I wouldn't call football or rugby superior to one another, but I did enjoy a vastly longer and more satisfying career playing rugby than I did playing football.

"I’d be willing to bet that an elite wide receiver or DB would run circles around an elite CF god in just about any physical endeavor."

I am not sure about running circles around some of the top CF guys but I think it would definately be a pretty solid jaw dropping experience.

I think it's pretty simple. If I were training for size and pure strength Crossfit would not likely not be my number one source for athletic development(at least not my only method of training). I started doing CF workouts after a couple years of zero lifting and lots of running and climbing. As a result I quickly got stronger and faster soon after incorporating the wod. If I had been training hard and heavy for those same years and then switched to Crossfit for all of my conditioning then I would have been really surprised to have maintained my max strength and power levels by solely doing the wod. For me personally, Crossfit and the wod are providing exactly what I want from a fitness protocol. I have drank the Kool Aid and I like it. I have even tried passing it along to others.

John, I think you are making a smart move. The wod as written may not work for everyone at least not all the time. An overlapping program like you mentioned may be a better move for what you need or want.

However the real reason I got on this rant is due to what you said in your above quote:

What about overlapping an existing program that is currently working for a pro footballer with Crossfit, especially some of the more solid metabolic conditioning wods?} I think that would make for an interesting, "running circles around other people" event.

My .02 cents