Discuss - Do CrossFit and P90X stack up?

[Quistfitness]

http://nsca.com/Education/E-learning...Make-the-Cut-/

And Go.

[TexasSiegfried]

I have no personal experience participating in either of those programs, or any other ECP, but I can tell you that of my colleagues, acquaintances and friends who have participated in them, each person has sustained an injury serious enough to curtail training for at least one week.

Perhaps these programs need better screening, OR alternately, a more comprehensive "beginner" program.

[Ruddigore]

But don't you know that Crossfit is the future of training?! If you get injured in Crossfit it's only because you're not hardcore enough.

[WoofieNugget]

Both of the programs appeal to the typical "I want to get jacked in no time" Type A person. Not a bad article, especially when it pointed out that both studies involving the modalities were flawed because of various factors.

To me they are both attempted quick fixes that carry a big risk of injury. However, people who do a CrossFit style workout and have a decent coach are typically better off than people just jumping into P90x with no guidance at all. Most of the time when I have someone who calls me about an injury and they are fairly young, it is due to trying a CrossFit style workout nowadays.

[Ruddigore]

Have you seen how much those crossfit certifications cost!? Crossfit level 1 coach certification cost one thousand dollars! Holy Christ! This certification must be better than the CSCS and ACSM since it costs so much more.

[johnshade]

Have you seen how much those crossfit certifications cost!? Crossfit level 1 coach certification cost one thousand dollars! Holy Christ! This certification must be better than the CSCS and ACSM since it costs so much more.

I have the level 1 cert, don't ask, and i completely agree thats its way too expesive. As stated earlier, its all about the quality of the coaching. There some fantastic S&C folks who do crossfit and GPP stuff. If your training for a specific sport its far from optimal.

There is certainly a proponderence of overuse injuries. Esp shoulders. The volume of reps is simply outrageous. For exaple, there is workout called Angie: 100 pullups, 100 pushups, 100 situps, 100 airsquats for time. Asking a newbie or even intermediate trainee to do 100 kipping pullups, torqueing their shoulder then followimg with high volume junk reps of push ups is a recipe for rotator cuff injuries.

Business wise, there is fortune to be made in crossfit and personally I dont think its a fad. There is gym near my house, that in two years has over 550 members. 10 full time coaches. Each memebe paying a minimum of 175 bucks. Most over 200 a month....do the math.

Wrt p90x...what is comparable other than the interval and vaiance???? Crossfit is about 60% barbell related movements...are there barbells in p90x? Ive never done it so I dont know but i thought it was mostly bodyweight.

[Tommylsantos]

For everyone talking about the insane amount of reps included in a single work out, they have every workout scaled to fit your needs in the BrandX forum.

[KyleAaron]

Novice effect. Beyond that, useless and sometimes harmful.

[Ruddigore]

Problem with crossfit is they have beginners doing exercises that require complex motor skill like deadlifts, cleans, and snatches.

Second problem is they go way overboard on the volume.

How are you supposed to train for strength if you're doing 30 reps of any exercise? This defies the very basic rules of bio-energenics, the olympic lifts are not oxidative sports.

Crossfit is bad whether you're a novice or experienced.

[johnshade]

Completely agree on the volume and especially as it pertains to things like olympic lifts.

Disagree that it's entirely useless. If nothing else it has turned the gym into a true community rather than a sterile marketplace. Even high profile critics acknowledge this fact. Im by no means a crossfit apologist but ive noticed that almost none of the trainers I know who critique it have ever actually been to a crossfit gym. Like everything in life its neither as horrible or as great as its detractors and supporters make it out to be.

Interestingly none of the elite crossfitters train by actually doing crossfit...its mostly periodized strength with metabolic conditioning and skill work sprinkled in.

[KyleAaron]

Community is both good and bad. It means people are welcomed and supported and pushed to do well. It also means that weak newbies will try to keep up with their fitter friends, and in the process injure themselves. Community promotes excellence and injuries both.

Yes, I have been to a Crossfit gym. Negged for suggesting that I'd ever speak about things I know nothing about.

[Ruddigore]

I think in the end despite the fact that Crossfit is kinda fun and has gotten a lot of people into exercising I still don't think there is any science behind it.

[KyleAaron]

There's no science behind anything much in the field, mate. Rip lays out why.

"And now that we have formally established a training paradigm that is inherently incapable of producing enough systemic stress to drive a significant adaptation, we have two or three generations of exercise professionals who are unaware that a different outcome is possible, and who have therefore done no effective research on these other, more-effective methods and their possible mechanisms of action. And since the vast majority of the exercise profession and the exercising population have grown up in an environment where nobody makes any significant progress, odd things ensue."

[rdferguson]

Assuming some sensibility is applied, xfit and p90x would both be (for the most part) better than nothing, and probably better than a lot of things. For xfit at least, the major criticisms spawn from an absence of applied sensibility, so...

[johnshade]

great rip quote

When I was studying for my CSCS last year, I was amazed at how often in my textbook that phrases like "evidence seems to suggest" or "more research is needed" came up around most of the science. Mike Boyle has a quote similar to rips and basically what coaches at that level are arguing is that the research is being done in the gym, with clients. Making note of measurable results.

I utilize elements of crossfit with my clients in my practice. I know what to avoid. The concept of "gaming" circuits with task or time relevant cues gets a tremendous response from clients. They love the challenges and under my watch we can keep a close eye on form and not having them doing ridiculous things like deadlifts for time or high rep O-lifts etc.

When I say that most trainers who critique have not been, I'm speaking not of people on this board, whom I don't know from adam. I'm talking about the "resistance band police" at my gym who think that people can get truly fit with just corrective exercise and see any minor breach of form as proof that complex movements should be avoided.

As with anything, take what you need and leave the rest.

[BC02]

Novice effect. Beyond that, useless and sometimes harmful.

id maybe agree with p90x but not crossfit

[BC02]

great rip quote

When I was studying for my CSCS last year, I was amazed at how often in my textbook that phrases like "evidence seems to suggest" or "more research is needed" came up around most of the science. Mike Boyle has a quote similar to rips and basically what coaches at that level are arguing is that the research is being done in the gym, with clients. Making note of measurable results.

I utilize elements of crossfit with my clients in my practice. I know what to avoid. The concept of "gaming" circuits with task or time relevant cues gets a tremendous response from clients. They love the challenges and under my watch we can keep a close eye on form and not having them doing ridiculous things like deadlifts for time or high rep O-lifts etc.

When I say that most trainers who critique have not been, I'm speaking not of people on this board, whom I don't know from adam. I'm talking about the "resistance band police" at my gym who think that people can get truly fit with just corrective exercise and see any minor breach of form as proof that complex movements should be avoided.

As with anything, take what you need and leave the rest.

agreed

[eight-pack]

y'know.. I've tried getting a grasp and understanding what this whole CrossFit thing is but I'm still confused as to what it is.. Are the coaches/trainers certified to be teaching? Because whenever I see these people doing deadlifts, cleans, or snatches, their form is absolutely horrible and I fear for their bodies!! What is the general model of CF beyond the olympic type lifts? Someone, please enlighten me!

[NorwichGrad]

One of the biggest mistake I’ve recently made was joining ********. Every time one of my “friends” catches the common cold, or picks his nose, or sleep with a fat chick, or watches reruns of The Three Stooges, or has diarrhea, he has to freakin’ let the whole world know. Why? Because some people are just attention whores. Plain and simple. “Look at me!!”

So what does this have to do with CF and P90X? Someone already mentioned the type of people CF attracts. They are the “Look at me! I just did 30 snatches with a PVC pipe and now I’m on the floor panting like a gassed out cockroach with a puddle of Paleo vomit next to me. Look at me!!” crowd.. CF to the fitness community is what ******** is to the social community. Glassman is a marketing genius.

Here’s an eye-opening fact: High level CF athletes (and yes, I do consider them ‘athletes’) who compete at the CF Games DO NOT, I say again, DO NOT follow the HQ WODs. These athletes do everything that is ANTI-CF. They actually follow intelligent training principles (anti cf); they cycle their training (anti cf); they specialize (anti cf).

Regardless, I really do give mad props and respect to CFers and P90Xers. At least they’re doing something other than get fat and unhealthy and become burden to their families and society.

[popupwindow]

Greg Glassman in the 21st century is what Bob Hoffman was in the first half of the 20th century, and what Arthur Jones was in the second half of the 20th century, both in terms of personality and influence.

In fact there are heaps of parallels between Nautilus and Crossfit, both good and bad. They both allowed regular people to be exposed to something they probably never would have been (N - lifting weights, C - high intensity conditioning, strength and conditioning principles), they both focus on short circuit style workouts at a key selling point, they both focus on hard work and a high amount of exertion, they both produce results in the short term and in novices or very detrained folks, they both have heaps of marketing, they both paved the way for a new style of gym, and they both diluted the sensible training that existed before them, but brought a lot of people towards better strength and health acting as a gateway drug for other style of training, while also injuring others.

There's nothing wrong with circuit training, and if you want to do short workouts and get a good effect, either the frequency (ala PTTP etc) or intensity (ala CF/p90x/Insanity) needs to be high, to make up for the low volume. So it's not circuit training that is the problem, often it's the incorrect application (high intensity without an adequate background/base), poor choice of movements or weekly programming, lack of systematic progression, culture, poor technique and a lack of differentiation between training and testing.

Heaps of threads in the forum have already hashed out the pros and cons of crossfit, but a whole book could be written about it. In the end every system has pros and cons, both in theory and application, so people should do what they enjoy, while being aware of the risks and benefits.

[adoniscomplex]

Interestingly none of the elite crossfitters train by actually doing crossfit...its mostly periodized strength with metabolic conditioning and skill work sprinkled in.

proof of statement ?

[johnshade]

proof of statement ?

None the main competitors or even general elite crossfitters, say the the top 200 men and women in each region do just crossfit wods. So if you were to follow the crossfit mainsite, for example, you may see something like a clean and jerk or a ring muscle up only once per momth. This is far too random for real improvement in these skills past the novice effect.

Most of the top games competitors have private coaches. Their training is far from random or varied. If you want to see the latest in high end crossfit programming check out Rudy Nielsen's Outlaw way blog. I am not allowed to provide links. Basically Nielsen blends some of Westsides conjugate stuff with tons of o-lifting...they still do crossfit wods, they just dont do crossfit as originally laid out by glassman. Its not a knock on crossfit its just evolved within the affiliates into something more.

If your interested in this adonis do a search for "days in the life of rich froning jr" he won the last two crossfit games and it follows him a round and gets into how he trains. You'll get a sense of it from that.

[tovlakas]

proof of statement ?

proof would be the fact that olympic lifters and well-conditioned strength athletes who don't do crossfit at all come in and clean house in xfit game competitions.

Crossfit is a fad, nothing more. It's set up very similar to a pyramid scheme (albeit, a complex, slower-growing one) and the reason it has a strong community is because they've created a cult.

In terms of business, it is a genius program and anyone who says Xfit is dumb or the creator is an idiot is wrong—he's intelligent and has done very well for himself.

In terms of furthering the fitness community, I don't think Xfit is good at all. It's spawned a snotty, elitist attitude amongst everyone who is involved, which nobody outside of xfit wants to be around, and it's taught people that the best way to work out is to do high volume reps on technical lifts without spending time learning the lifts first.

I saw a girl on ******** post a video of her front squatting 135 lbs for 1 rep, with terrible form (elbows straight down, back and hips rounding at the bottom, leaning forward) followed by awkwardly dangerous re-rack of the weight by essentially running into the jhooks while the weight was actively falling off of her—instead of dropping the weight since it was a with rubber plates. Wouldn't have been an issue if she wasn't like 10 feet from the squat rack, but with no real experience in lifting, she didn't see the inefficiency in stepping back 10 feet before doing a squat, nor the danger of trying to rerack a weight that was falling from her shoulders, nor the pointlessness and injury-risk of doing a 1rm of an exercise she hadn't yet perfected the form on.

I explained this to her, (and I've helped this girl about 100 times over the past 3 years and she used to come to me regularly for advice, she just started xfit like 2 months ago) and her response was "Yes, I KNOW. I was working on my max. My coaches are awesome, don't bash my box."

This entire scenario represents xfit in a nutshell.

[johnshade]

Actually not a single top crossfitter, except maybe lindsay valenzuela was a competitive O-lifter or powelifer. Most have backgrounds in other sports, many in gymnastics and track and field. Strength and power at the outset of crossfit training confer the same advantage it does in any other sport. A competitive O-lifter would certainly beat any of the top crossfitters at max effort olifts, just as an elite marathon runner would crush them in distance running....its your combined ability in all those areas that matters to crossfitters. Im not saying thats right, Im saying the define fitness as " work capacity across broad time and modal domains"

Again looking at the best crossfit has, rich froning, baseball player in college. He can clean and jerk 365' snatch 280, deadlift 550 and run a mile in 5:30 and handstandwalk 100yds unbroken .....none of those numbers would be competitive in their respective sports but you take them in aggregate and you can see the argument that crossfit is making

[tovlakas]

Well part of the issue is terminology in this debate. Crossfit just takes anything that is cross-training and slaps its own label on it and says it's "Crossfit". Someone who is a "crossfitter" who doesn't do wods, isn't a crossfitter. They are someone who does normal cross training and happens to participate in an event called the "crossfit games". The crossfit games and crossfit workouts don't have anything unique in them. they're just standard exercises, there isn't a single exercise that I can think of that Crossfit invented. They've even gone as far as to create new "brands" like crossfit football and crossfit endurance, which are literally periodized strength training and SAQ training. It's like an entire business build on white labeling.

Last time I checked, an olympic lifter could easily add sprinting into his routine, if he cared to. Just because Crossfit workouts combine "sorta" strength training with "sorta" metabolic conditioning doesn't mean it's the only or even first to do so. It's just good at marketing it, and the cult atmosphere makes it's members vehemently defend the notion that Crossfit invented it.

Crossfit is the only sport I can think of that celebrates mediocrity. If crossfit was able to produce athletes who were COMPETITIVE in all areas of fitness, with specialists in those areas, then they would be onto something. Instead, it's just another workout style with no strategy that is simply designed to exhaust/injure anyone who isn't lucky enough to be a genetic anomaly.

[johnshade]

Rather I would say its the only sport that doesnt reward specificity. In fact specificity is punished in that sport. If you focus on one area solely and avoid say, distance running, then you will fail in endurance when that challenge arises. Like all sports, croasfit is measurably testing for some type of capacity. And the capcity that it tests for is GPP. This is why if you look at the crossfit games you see five days of workouts that test for all types of fitness, the winner very often doesnt outright win many of the individual events...he just performs the best across all the tests.

I agree crossfit has invented nothing new in the way of specific exercises.To my knowledge it never claimed to. In fact, its early days were more of a back to basics type movement. The "gimmick" of crossfit is the gaming of circuits. Thats all wods are, gamed circuits.

[popupwindow]

Crossfit games are hard, and even if some of the events are silly or random and you can debate whether or not it's a 'sport', it is a grueling test and anyone who finishes in the top 10 at the CF games is an athletic stud deserving of respect. They're not going to beat specialists, but who cares, neither will a triathlete or decathlete. The problem is the assertions about what a few days a week of WODs will achieve for the average person looking to lose weight and get in shape (why 95% of people do CF), and the differences between the crossfit methodology (constantly varied, functional movements at high intensity) and how the top guys train for the games (limited variation especially in strength and oly work, sensible progressions, 'non-functional' aerobic base work on cardio machines, cyclic intensity and lots of work in the high medium zone): (http://games.crossfit.com/video/days-life-rich-froning). There's also the fact that most top CFers have been CFing for 1-3 years, but spent the previous 10-15-20 years before that doing D1 sports, proper S&C and so on, and if they did 10 straight years of CF.com workouts, they would not be where they are today.

[nksharp]

I
Wrt p90x...what is comparable other than the interval and vaiance???? Crossfit is about 60% barbell related movements...are there barbells in p90x? Ive never done it so I dont know but i thought it was mostly bodyweight.

You can use barebells in p90x but they also show how to do there workouts with resistance bands. I did p90x in 2009 and went from 230lbs to 170lbs (5'11") so it helped me quite a bit. The problem I had before was I didn't know quite where to start or what to do so it was a pretty good program for someone with no idea of what to do since it lays everything out.

I didn't come across any injuries while doing the program, just sore muscles. I actually plan on starting it up again since I started getting lazy and started gaining weight.

[Wolf200]

The thing with P90X (I have done it before I started getting serious, saw great results, but big part was from watching my diet for the first time in my life) is it's easy for people to follow and stick to because EVERY time you workout, you have the DVD to go along with for motivation/support/knowing exactly what you're doing.

[Mr.ILL]

Its hard to say if crossfit is a fad or not. People were saying it was a fad four years ago, now look at it.