Rhabdo... 4 days after Rhabdo. URGENT

[Rene Forestier]

Originally Posted by Christie Lawson

Why don't people get this? It is really a simple concept.


Anyway, GHD situps are no more risky than olympic lifting or putting any weighted bar overhead for an exercise. The people who get injured doing GHD situps either do not have adequate coaches teaching them how to properly involve the exercise in their programming or they are too cocky to take it slow and easy for the first tries at it. I'm not going to get into a debate about CF main page programming and what not, but I will say that people need to learn how to modify programs individually. No one should do handstand pushups because "main page says so" if they cannot even hold themselves in the hand stand position for 30 seconds at least. I don't think main page expects everyone to either. I think they expect people to use common sense....WHO would have thought.

Common sense AND personal responsibility...who would have thought.

[Katherine Derbyshire]

Originally Posted by Rene Forestier

Common sense AND personal responsibility...who would have thought.

It's difficult to use common sense when you've never encountered a situation before and have no point of reference.

Like when your trainer tells you to do 100 GHD situps. You've never done them before, but he says you'll be fine, and you don't feel particularly badly -- or at least not worse than any other CF workout -- while you're doing them.

At what point will common sense save a person in this situation? Exactly *how* are they supposed to know that what they're doing is likely to put them in the hospital?

Yes, I agree that the trainer is an idiot. But how is a person without a lot of other experience supposed to figure that out? He's fit, he owns a gym, he's certified by Crossfit, so clearly he knows what he's doing, right?

Remember, affiliate clients are paying the affiliate precisely because they *don't* have the expertise to do their own programming. Blaming those people for not exercising "common sense" or "personal responsibility" when they get injured due to poor programming is pretty lame, IMO.

Katherine

[Rene Forestier]

Originally Posted by Katherine Derbyshire

It's difficult to use common sense when you've never encountered a situation before and have no point of reference.

Like when your trainer tells you to do 100 GHD situps. You've never done them before, but he says you'll be fine, and you don't feel particularly badly -- or at least not worse than any other CF workout -- while you're doing them.

At what point will common sense save a person in this situation? Exactly *how* are they supposed to know that what they're doing is likely to put them in the hospital?

Yes, I agree that the trainer is an idiot. But how is a person without a lot of other experience supposed to figure that out? He's fit, he owns a gym, he's certified by Crossfit, so clearly he knows what he's doing, right?

Remember, affiliate clients are paying the affiliate precisely because they *don't* have the expertise to do their own programming. Blaming those people for not exercising "common sense" or "personal responsibility" when they get injured due to poor programming is pretty lame, IMO.

Katherine

That's where philosophies differ.

...and you are still talking very hypothetically here...we still have not established any epidemiology in regards to how often it happens, under what circumstances/prior medical conditions, under a trainer's guidance, making up their own workouts, etc.

I do agree that if a trainer had someone do an inappropriate amount of ghd sit-ups he is at least partially to blame...but that philosophy is a slippery slope ie. is the trainer to blame if he prescribes 10 ghd sit-ups and the client is dehydrated/has a pre-existing medical condition that predisposes them to rhabdo...or if he prescribes a 5 K and the client uses his new VFF and gets rhabdo in his calves?

The information is there. CF has IMO made a reasonable effort to bring attention to rhabdo. Before doing GHD sit-ups, watch the video (wfs), for example.

[Allen Tluczek]

Originally Posted by Rene Forestier

I do agree that if a trainer had someone do an inappropriate amount of ghd sit-ups he is at least partially to blame...but that philosophy is a slippery slope ie. is the trainer to blame if he prescribes 10 ghd sit-ups and the client is dehydrated absolutely/has a pre-existing medical condition not if the client dosen't know about itthat predisposes them to rhabdo...or if he prescribes a 5 K and the client uses his new VFF and gets rhabdo in his calves?absolutely

Any trainer who puts a trainee in the hospital with a potentially deadly condition is a bad trainer. I guess I feel like NOT killing clients is a good way to run a business. Putting a persons body into a state generally seen in traumatic crushing injuries is a sign that you do not know what you are doing. Like Katherine said, you go to a trainer because you want programming or coaching you can't get on your own. They should know who has the ability to push themselves too hard, who needs to back off, who needs to slow down.
In the cases above, unless the client themselves don't know about a genetic pre-disposition, it is all the trainers responsibility.

As far as MP, I haven't opened the MP for about 6 months. But if you are going it alone, pulling workouts off the internet, then yeah, it's your own fault.

[Katherine Derbyshire]

Originally Posted by Rene Forestier

That's where philosophies differ.

...and you are still talking very hypothetically here...we still have not established any epidemiology in regards to how often it happens, under what circumstances/prior medical conditions, under a trainer's guidance, making up their own workouts, etc.

Has CFHQ shown any interest whatsoever in developing that kind of information? I certainly agree that it would be helpful, but it's not going to happen without CFHQ's involvement.

As for hypotheticals, the OP seems to be about someone in exactly the situation I described: new Crossfitter victimized by poor programming.

Katherine

[Thomas Green]

On paper, 100 "GHD situps" doesn't look all that intimidating. On top of that, it is not common knowledge than they are more dangerous than most crossfit exercises to the average trainee. If a workout consisted of 1,000 pushups and 1,000 pullups, then yes, you'd be an idiot to attempt the entire workout if you haven't trained in years.

Common sense can't be applied with the GHD workouts the same way it can with the above examples. HQ needs to do more, plain and simple. A few lines in a video explaining how too many GHDs can cause rhabdo when the video is burrrowed in thousands of other instructional videos is NOT sufficient. Like Eric said, the consequences of overdoing it with exercises like the GHD situp need to be made perfectly clear to everyone who reads the mainpage whenever a workout like this comes up.

[Emily Mattes]

I think it is totally, absolutely reasonable to for a fresh-off-the-street gym-goer with little prior workout or S&C experience to expect their $200/month coaches to not know what they're talking about. I have made it my policy that before going to a mechanic I take a few automotive classes and I am currently in the process of studying for my MCATs and catching up on a few pre-req classes as I refuse to go to a doctor without my own medical degree. This is because it is my responsibility as a consumer to know all of this information before I pay someone else to give it to me. Besides, there is so much accurate information floating around in our media and general society that anybody who doesn't know about rhabdo and its risks is probably stupid.

As for revealing conditions, I am pretty sure if a client does not mention in their waiver the phrase "High-rep GHDs make me predisposed to rhabdo" as a medical condition they're legally responsible for any damage that comes to them as a result.

[Thomas Green]

On top of that, lets just say that I own a CF gym. And I have a library of books on thousands of exercises that all of my clients are free to read. One of these books explains GHD situps and the dangers of them.

Now, say I have my clients do a workout involving 100 GHDs. I don't explain the importance of scaling this workout to them. I just assume that all of my clients were smart enough to read the 1 book on GHD situps and figure it out on their own. So 20 clients complete the WOD. After the WOD, 1 client gets rhabdo and ends up in the ER the next day.

I know I would feel horrible and be utterly furious at myself for allowing something like that to happen at my gym. And you can be damned sure that I'd do whatever was necessary to make sure it never happened again. Why can't HQ show this kind of accountability?

It has nothing to do with CF is the devil. Crossfit is great when people are in the hands of smart trainers who actually take the time to explain to their clients these things and prevent situations like this from happening. It's about accountability and responsibility, plain and simple.

[Robert D Taylor Jr]

Originally Posted by Thomas Green

On top of that, lets just say that I own a CF gym. And I have a library of books on thousands of exercises that all of my clients are free to read. One of these books explains GHD situps and the dangers of them.

Now, say I have my clients do a workout involving 100 GHDs. I don't explain the importance of scaling this workout to them. I just assume that all of my clients were smart enough to read the 1 book on GHD situps and figure it out on their own. So 20 clients complete the WOD. After the WOD, 1 client gets rhabdo and ends up in the ER the next day.

I know I would feel horrible and be utterly furious at myself for allowing something like that to happen at my gym. And you can be damned sure that I'd do whatever was necessary to make sure it never happened again. Why can't HQ show this kind of accountability?

It has nothing to do with CF is the devil. Crossfit is great when people are in the hands of smart trainers who actually take the time to explain to their clients these things and prevent situations like this from happening. It's about accountability and responsibility, plain and simple.

This line of thought is more reasonable to me, actually. CF isn't some huge new creator of destroyed kidneys, but there is a risk. If a trainer or affiliate (or me since I'm solo) isn't responsible enough to be aware of the risk and how to mitigate it, then they're wrong. My principal argument isn't opposed to that. I don't believe CF causes an exceptionally large number of rhabdo cases, and I think they have advertised the risk adequately, if one does their due diligence.

I think if the numbers were as large as some of you believe or imply, there would be a marked increase in the numbers of exercise induced rhabdo. I've seen no evidence of it. I think CFHQ did inform people of the risk, maybe to the level of sensationalizing it, perhaps to their detriment, as the seemingly infinite numbers of current internet critics can now wring their hands and say "CF is the devil, why didn't they tell us?" I first heard about exercise induced rhabdo 5 years ago, on this site, while researching whether CF was something I wanted to try.

[Rene Forestier]

Originally Posted by Thomas Green

On top of that, lets just say that I own a CF gym. And I have a library of books on thousands of exercises that all of my clients are free to read. One of these books explains GHD situps and the dangers of them.

Now, say I have my clients do a workout involving 100 GHDs. I don't explain the importance of scaling this workout to them. I just assume that all of my clients were smart enough to read the 1 book on GHD situps and figure it out on their own. So 20 clients complete the WOD. After the WOD, 1 client gets rhabdo and ends up in the ER the next day.

I know I would feel horrible and be utterly furious at myself for allowing something like that to happen at my gym. And you can be damned sure that I'd do whatever was necessary to make sure it never happened again. Why can't HQ show this kind of accountability?

It has nothing to do with CF is the devil. Crossfit is great when people are in the hands of smart trainers who actually take the time to explain to their clients these things and prevent situations like this from happening. It's about accountability and responsibility, plain and simple.

Yes, and it works both ways...trainer and client.