There are good, even great things, about Crossfit but I don’t think it’s useful as a training system for rugby.

What is Crossfit

According to the Crossfit Journal, Crossfit is:

“… a strength and conditioning system built on constantly varied, if not randomized, functional movements executed at high intensity.”

“Functional” is defined as effective and efficient natural movement patterns. Functional movements involve a wave of contraction from the core to the extremities and usually involve more than one joint. Examples include squats, deadlifts, pullups, thrusters, kettle-bell swings and the power lifts: the clean and snatch variations.

Crossfit Workouts of the Day (WODs) are posted on Crossfit Affiliate websites on a daily basis. I started following the WODs posted by Crossfit Newcastle Rugby in July, 2010, and used them around 4 days per week, along with additional training of my own.

The main component of a WOD is usually 10 – 20 minutes long, with some precursor strength work and some core work added to round out the day’s session. I’ve never spent more than an hour on a Crossfit workout, so they are quite efficient and address most components of fitness.

I won’t dwell too much on what Crossfit is because there are plenty of good sources of information. Crossfit themselves put out plenty of literature.

Crossfit’s Strong Suits

There are a number of points to commend the Crossfit method of training: the workouts are new each day, which keeps things interesting, and they are always challenging but scalable to each individual’s current capacity although you might have to do some Googling to find how to scale a particular WOD.

Crossfit WODs introduce skills from various disciplines, especially from gymnastics and weightlifting, but there are occasionally sprint components to WODs. It’s great to learn these new skills, it gives a sense of achievement once you master a complex movement such as the snatch or the muscle up.

The proposition of a constantly varied workout may also be sound, although I haven’t looked at research on the matter. Crossfit’s argument is that the variation forces continual adaptation and avoids the problem of training results being tied primarily to a specific workout. This may be difficult to test. At the very least, variation will prevent staleness and that’s a good thing and is perfect for a general fitness program.

Crossfit is efficient and effective in producing results for regular people. When followed, people will learn new skills, and will improve most elements of their fitness, including aerobic and anaerobic endurance, speed, flexibility, strength and balance. If they eat well, they may improve their body composition, too. Adherents will look and feel better.

My Reflections on Crossfit

The Crossfit culture seems to be quite strong. This is integral to the brand’s success. The community is tightly knit and is very supportive of participants. Crossfit is strongly self-perpetuating, loudly claiming its superiority and disparaging not only the “globo-gyms” but also endurance sports and essentially anything that is not Crossfit.

In my opinion, the system is very clever. For the non-specialised athlete, the average punter off the street, Crossfit is perfect. They become part of a community, which gives them an identity. They improve their fitness and learn new skills, which boosts self-esteem. They look better. They are encouraged to eat well. They get the satisfaction one feels after completing a short but intense workout. They read the Crossfit literature, which is well-written and argued and this makes them feel clever for choosing Crossfit. It makes people feel good.

And so it’s not surprising that Crossfit is often described as cult-like. I’m pretty sure this is intended as part of the business model. I don’t disparage anyone for following Crossfit. As I say, it will produce good results for people who aren’t tied to a specific sport.

My biggest beef with Crossfit is their disrespect of other athletes (apart from power lifters, gymnasts and sprinters). Their complete disregard of the skill, sweat and endurance of athletes from other sports. It’s ridiculous and hypocritical and just so off the mark. But they say these things and their adherents feel good about themselves. “I am a true athlete. And I am smarter and more useful and I train harder than a marathon runner”. Like hell. You are a mindless fool if you buy that rubbish. And this is why I stopped following their WODs.

I’m not going to touch on the dangers of poor form or the accusation of “intensity over technique”. Crossfit literature is clear on the point that technique should be preferenced, but there are plenty of videos out there – even of the Crossfit Games – which show competitors using poor technique. But I am no expert and will keep my mouth shut.

Training for a Specific Sport

Training is specific. Even Crossfit knows this – they mix up their workouts to avoid specificity. They chase general conditioning, which is fine, if that’s what you are after. Yet in reality, they actually specialize in strength- and power-endurance and anaerobic endurance. This again is clever: it’s different and it allows adherents to combine strength (endurance) work with conditioning. But read on.

Crossfitters love to get athletes from another sport in to try one of their workouts. The unsuspecting guinea pig, who might be finely trained for their own sport, is flattened by a workout that has them pushing or pulling moderately heavy weights for any number of reps for up to 20 minutes. Such a workout emphasises muscular endurance – which the boxer or whatever has never trained for – and anaerobic endurance, with a requirement for aerobic endurance as well. The poor bloke is amazed and thinks “well, perhaps there’s something to this Crossfit thing. That’s the hardest workout I’ve ever done”. But is it really? Or is it just different?

The strength and power endurance Crossfit primarily focuses on is rarely used in the real world. Rarely used in sports (except for Crossfit). Well, you might have some immediate transfer to various aspects of farming or building, but I doubt these instances would be common! I can hardly imagine the average farmer thinking that training would produce for him any great benefit. No wonder an athlete from another sport would struggle when thrown into the deep end with a WOD – it’s totally foreign!

As a rugby player who trains 6 or 7 days a week specifically to improve my strength, power, agility, anaerobic endurance and aerobic endurance, I do pretty well at any Crossfit WOD you might challenge me with. But I know the movements and I know what to expect, even if I do a WOD perhaps only once a month or so. I am fit, my anaerobic and aerobic endurance is on par with international players, as is my strength, which means I can cope with moderate weights and high reps.

But how would a Crossfitter go if I asked them to do a Sufferfest, for example? I warrant you they’d struggle as much as the boxer doing a WOD for the first time. So is their fitness really superior? No! It’s just a fitness specific to the sport of Crossfit (I’m not saying that’s a bad thing in itself, it’s completely fine for what it is).

I have asked Crossfitters to do a Sufferfest. Not surprisingly, they haven’t taken up the challenge. Why would they bother?

It comes back to their lack of regard for other athletes.

To clarify, The Sufferfest is a series of serious indoor cycling training videos and the name is apt. I have gained more useful cardiovascular fitness from doing these videos once a week than I ever would from Crossfit. It should be noted that Crossfit includes only a minimal running component itself! My gains from the Sufferfest were noticeably transferred to the field after I used them during rehabilitation from a knee reconstruction. By contrast, when I switched from my regular rugby training schedule to Crossfit after last year’s Nationals, my fitness actually diminished a little.

About Intensity

A big element in the Crossfit “we’re better than the rest” mentality is their perception that they exercise at greater intensity than anyone else. Rubbish. The Sufferfest kills any Crossfit session you could name for intensity. And have you ever been to a state-level rugby training session? Or run tabatas with me in my backyard in training for Sevens?

Why is this so? If you are exercising for 8, 10, or 15 minutes continuously, there must be a considerable aerobic component to sustain the exercise. Otherwise exercise must stop. This is what happens with Crossfit WODs. Either the exercise stops until the lactic acid is sufficiently cleared or the exercise changes to focus on a different body part. This stopping doesn’t happen in running or cycling intervals unless you push yourself too hard: the strain is more on the energy production systems than on the muscles, so exercise can continue at the absolute highest sustainable intensity for the duration of the interval.

Don’t believe me? Try a Tabata set on a stationary bike. Now try it doing pushups. Now tell me which was harder. Which produced the greater metabolic demand. Which made you feel like vomiting.

Interval lengths are usually specifically designed by S&C coaches to replicate the demands of the particular sport in question, so training at your maximal sustainable intensity for the designed interval is most conducive to sport-specific fitness gains. And as illustrated above, this is far better achieved using movements specific to the sport, ie cycling for cycling, running for running and field sports, swimming for swimming. You may get some benefit from doing thrusters or kettlebell swings, but the gain will certainly be sub-optimal.

An interesting note is that most intervals you will encounter in sport-specific programs, even endurance running programs, are actually shorter than Crossfit WODs! although there will usually be multiple sets. Crossfit completely ignores this fact in their propaganda.

Summary

Crossfit is effective and efficient for producing results for people with a non-specific fitness requirement. For any other sport, using the scientifically tried training methods for each fitness component will be far more effective than using a general strength- and power-endurance focused Crossfit program.

If you want “metabolic conditioning” train your aerobic and anaerobic systems in a manner specific to your sport. The metabolic conditioning Crossfit gives you is fine up to a point, but it certainly is not the most efficient way to fitness. It’s killing two birds with one stone by combining strength work with conditioning work. Let’s get real about that.

Crossfit claims to produce the fittest athletes on earth, which is interesting to say the least. Fittest in terms of strength-endurance, perhaps? It doesn’t produce the fastest (over any distance) or the strongest athletes, nor the most skilled: those honours go to sports with more specific focuses. And I’d warrant that rugby, for example, produces athletes with stronger results in speed, anaerobic endurance, aerobic endurance and strength. Put the top Aussie Crossfitter through a Wallaby testing session, I say: will he come out ahead of Genia, Pocock or Ioane?

Crossfitters, please: start thinking for yourselves and respect athletes from all sports. It takes a lot to succeed at any given sport. And for goodness’ sake, stop misrepresenting what training programs for other sports actually look like. Basically no team sport relies on long, steady state runs, and even endurance running programs are heavily weighted to interval and speed work these days, with maybe one LSD session per week to get miles in the legs. Wake up to yourselves.

crossfit · opinion · Rugby

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2011 is looking good >>