Gillian Mounsey Article

[Jim Denofa]

Originally Posted by Tamara Cohen

How is that amusing?

Did my lifter break her wrist riding a bike? Yes. Did my coach break his arm skimboarding? Yes. Are either of those activities that they were doing under the supervision of a certified coach in a location affiliated with a larger organization? No. Big difference.

In the process of doing CrossFit, I ended up with a probable SLAP tear and two bulging discs in my neck. Could both of those things have happened doing other activities? Yes. But, they happened due to activities that I did for CrossFit. As a result, I reevaluated what I find to be an acceptable risk versus reward situation for my own gym. This is why I don't allow kipping at my gym and why I don't allow high rep barbell exercises for time. I looked at my own experience and the experience of others and made an informed decision.

I don't think that's amusing. I think it's intelligent.

When Rip was at my gym two weeks ago, we talked a lot about coaching, about gym set up, and about learning from mistakes. He said, "You're going to make a lot of mistakes along the way." Of course I am. But, the important part is that I will do my very best to learn from my mistakes and to not make the same mistakes again.

I Think it is amusing that people refer to CrossFit as if it were anything other than an activity. That is my point. CrossFit is an activity, meaning it is a thing you could do. I don't expect the activity of playing monopoly to do anything but be a game I can play. I hope this makes sense. I don't think you guys have been getting what I have been saying.

You can do CrossFit and not do everything on the main website. I previously stated I don't do any of the new hero workouts. Frankly I think they are kind of ridiculous. But I still do CrossFit. I don't do medicine ball cleans, I don't tech the medicine ball clean, I don't do virtual shoveling , I don't zone or eat paleo, But I still do CrossFit.

[Tom Seryak]

maybe a better question is if you were going to devise an exercise program that called for a prescription that was inherently and unnecessarily dangerous, something that couldn't justify the rewards were worth the risks, what would that program look like?

[Aushion Chatman]

I personally believe the NFL wants to protect its product not necessarily reduce injuries...there's a slight difference there, but I also agree that comparing the NFL to Crossfit is a stretch...now if you want to compare the NFL to the CF Games then you have something...e.g. lack of crash padding under the rope climbs from last year...

But still I don't think the NFL is changing rules to be benevolent...they are protecting the billions of $$ they generate annually. Which in America, makes sense.

[Emily Mattes]

Originally Posted by Aushion Chatman

But still I don't think the NFL is changing rules to be benevolent...they are protecting the billions of $$ they generate annually. Which in America, makes sense.

Which you'd think Crossfit would do, especially after the Mimms lawsuit . . . But I suppose that's the advantage of not being a franchise or keeping track of patterns of injuries. Plausible deniability, if someone gets injured at an affiliate and they sue CF HQ, HQ can just throw that affiliate under a bus and keep on collecting affiliate fees from everyone else. You start tracking injuries and people getting hurt, you get accusations that you know what's going on, you open yourself up to legal attack.

[Tamara Cohen]

Originally Posted by Jim Denofa

I Think it is amusing that people refer to CrossFit as if it were anything other than an activity. That is my point. CrossFit is an activity, meaning it is a thing you could do. I don't expect the activity of playing monopoly to do anything but be a game I can play. I hope this makes sense. I don't think you guys have been getting what I have been saying.

CrossFit is more than an activity. It is an organization that certifies people to instruct an activity. That is why you have a Level 1 cert and pay an affiliation fee, isn't it?

[Paulo Santos]

I'll take the risk that goes with CrossFit for the rewards that I get out of it. In the 1.5 years that I have been doing CrossFit, I've slightly injured myself due to my stupidity. Nothing serious. None of my co-workers that do CrossFit with me have gotten hurt. However, there have been several of my co-workers that have been injured chasing guys down/affecting an arrest. And guess what? They were all out of shape. There is no doubt that if they were in any decent shape that they would have not injured themselves. I haven't gotten injured chasing anyone down or from anything else work related. So I'll take the chance and I'll continue to CrossFit.

[Tom Reyes]

Reality check here....The vast majority of people who do CrossFit are not athletes. The powers that be will call us that, we wear shirts that remind us that, and it is a heck of an ego boost to think of myself as an athlete. But alas, I am not. Neither are the majority of people who partake in this here CrossFit. I think I am probably in the majority here by honestly stating the obvious. I am a middle aged working person who really enjoyed and at times excelled in sports while in school years ago. I did not receive a scholarship and the resulting 4 years of training, nutrition and recovery work a collegiate athlete gets prior to making it into professional sports where I can spend every day focused on keeping my body in the best shape possible. I had to get a (several) job(s) and make ends meet. While doing that, I gained a bit of weight and didn't go outside and play as much as I used to. Now, to expect me to get into a CrossFit gym and push myself to complete exhaustion 3-5 days a week will screw a body up. My muscles, tendons and ligaments are not as conditioned (and young) as they once were. They will break down. Going balls to the wall for simply the sake of it can be fun. It makes me feel like I'm back in school, playing sports, crushing the competition. It changes every day, so I don't get bored. I can use a timer or rounds/reps/what have you to see how I "stack up." However, even after 6 months, a year, or more, I'm still not in the shape I used to be. Every day of 100% all out, meet pukie effort will break me. It will break you too. What are you training for? Training not to suck at life is a horrible goal. Those who to excel in both the fitness and the sport of CrossFit have specific, concrete goals they gravitate towards. They don't include "crushing today's WOD." They are "10 blue band pullups before Thanksgiving," or "make a 1000 lb CFT." Then they train towards that goal, do extra work to help attain it and move on. Random is good, to an extent, but constant unfocused work for work's sake is not, IMHO, the yellow brick road to fitness. Training hard today and still being able to train again tomorrow makes me fitter, smarter, and happier.

[Mark Ritchie]

I've been following this and other threads that mention the rates of rhabdo based on mentions in the forum or elsewhere, and am usually content to just read, but I do think something needs to be pointed out regarding the inputed rate of rhabdo in CrossFit from mentions on the forum, facebook, etc.

Shane is correct -- the number of mentions on the forums do not hold up to the rigors of statistical data collection. In fact, they tell us NOTHING AT ALL about the rate of rhabdo in CrossFit or in the world at large. NOTHING.

200 may seem like a large number, but it really isn't. Even if people haven't heard of rhabdo themselves, it is actually pretty common. My niece just was hospitalized with rhabdo from a spinning class. A really serious case. And you know what the hospital said? They see it ALL THE TIME from spinning.

Just because something seems to be reported often doesn't necessarily mean it is happening often. We cannot know from that information alone.

Rhabdo is taught about in the CrossFit certification course and written about in the journal, so we would expect that more people recognize it and report it than they do in other activities (like spinning) where people don't recognize it. That doesn't necessarily mean it is happening more. It could, but we cannot know that from the information we have.

CrossFit also has a single central place (crossfit.com) to report and discuss injuries. Since it does we would expect there to be lots of reported cases of rhabdo on the forums just from those two factors alone (awareness and centralization).

Looking at an online forum is USELESS and tells us NOTHING about the rate of rhabdo in CrossFit, the rate in CrossFit versus the population at large, or the rate in CrossFit versus any other activity -- spinning, football, or anything.

So please, for the statistically literate among us, can everyone stop arguing about the rates based on the number of mentions in the forums here and elsewhere?

That said, any competent social scientist* or epidemiologist could design a study to figure it out. And, CrossFit HQ probably should. But they wouldn't be using the forums to collect data.

I now return you to the ongoing argument about how stupid/not stupid CF HQ is.

(*For background, I happen to do this sort of research professionally, and have experience with large scale data collection and analysis, including epidemiological data, international and national sized data sets, and teach research methods. I've done some pretty challenging data collection on HIV/AIDS in Southeast Asia with the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and the World Bank, among others. My Ph.D. is in the social sciences (Berkeley), and I teach at the university level, so have a bit of experience with statistics. Every time someone makes or implies a statistical claim based on online anecdotes I want to grind my teeth.)

[Bryan Kemper]

Originally Posted by Emily Mattes

Jim, perhaps you would like some evidence. Have yourself a look-see through this thread. You can start near the back if you want the most recent results. A poster on there has gleaned many cases of SLAP tears, back injuries, Achilles tears, and about 220 cases of rhabdo. He's also assessed the causes of these injuries, and the causes end up being the same thing over and over--such as use of high-rep GHD sit-ups. This is just from what people have reported on the Internet so it excludes any injuries NOT reported in public arenas.

I think you are confusing your anecdote with data.

I would highly hesitant to put forth the body of work collected by AW in the thread as any sort of "evidence". If the guy put forth 1% the effort to train that he does scouring the Internet for anything related to potential injuries due to Crossfit, I would be amazed. His "evidence" is purely self reported posts, comments on message boards or "Dude, I can't move my arms" as proof positive of rhabdo. Based on prior comments in that thread, he has admitted to self over-exaggeration of performance and capability that this "evidence" is also subject to exaggeration as well. Granted, he has scores of screen shots from a vast variety of sources but anecdotal reports does equate to clinical data.

[Emily Mattes]

Originally Posted by Mark Ritchie

Shane is correct -- the number of mentions on the forums do not hold up to the rigors of statistical data collection. In fact, they tell us NOTHING AT ALL about the rate of rhabdo in CrossFit or in the world at large. NOTHING.

Mark, of course data collected on forums is not going to give us a good scientific analysis of rates of rhabdo across a population as a whole. However, they do tell us that rhabdo happens more frequently than one or two cases mentioned in the Crossfit Journal, that rhabdo happens to people who do not fall into the category of "former athletes who haven't been training for a while," that rhabdo happens to people who are well-hydrated, and it begins to show a pattern of the types of exercises that lead to rhabdo and other injuries.

Would you be able to publish that in a peer-reviewed journal? Of course not. Does that mean there isn't something to noting that if a particularly high percentage of one type of injury are preceded by a certain type of exercise, then perhaps a coach should keep that information in mind when programming? Well, if I owned a business and people paid me $$$ to get them fit and not injured, I would err on the safe side.

Bryan, I directed Jim to that forum to refute his claim that Crossfit doesn't lead to injury. Furthermore, you've been a participant in that thread and know that while AW can grandstand he also offers legitimate physiological analysis on why certain types of exercises (such as ones that emphasize the eccentric portion of movements) are more likely to cause muscle breakdown and why things like kipping pull-ups and overhead KB swings are more likely to lead to SLAP tears. Though with the latter I think any layman can figure that one out just by looking at the bottom position of the kipping pull-up and the top of the KB swing . . .