CrossFit responds aggressively to criticism
By Cliff Weathers, AlterNet
You’d be hard pressed to find an article — outside one written by a CrossFit enthusiast — that reviews this exercise phenomenon without asking some real tough questions about its safety, effectiveness, cost, and even the philosophy behind it. Shouldn’t all products, whether good or bad, be held up to such scrutiny? Maybe General Motors, Comcast and Apple grudgingly accept this, but CrossFit — both the corporation and its acolytes — can’t seem to take criticism in stride. And there’s been a lot of it going around lately.
The New York Times magazine was the latest publication to take issue with CrossFit and other extreme fitness programs, likening them to nothing more than labor camps you pay a king’s ransom to join. “Why not join a roofing crew for a few hours instead? Surely there’s a tunnel somewhere that needs digging,” sniffs Times columnist Heather Havrilesky.
In response, commenters, many of them CrossFitters, swarmed the online version of the article, posting more than 800 messages. Many were sharply critical of Havrilesky’s assessment of the workout routines.
The Times magazine article is only one in a recent wave of brickbats hurled at the sports-fitness brand, which now boasts an estimated 10,000 affiliates. Its critics are as diverse as medical researchers, fitness organizations, sportswriters, and social commentators. They’ve all found a bone to pick with CrossFit, and no, they’re not joining them for a Paleo diet dinner.
Critics and online commenters have likened CrossFit to a cult, insinuating that it’s not much more than a paramilitary, post-apocalyptic wet dream. They’re fitness preppers ready to take on whatever catastrophe awaits mankind. CrossFit’s own website hints at this on its ” What is CrossFit?” page: “We have sought to build a program that will best prepare trainees for any physical contingency — not only for the unknown, but for the unknowable.”
CrossFit’s founder, Greg Glassman takes the rhetoric a step further in his CrossFit newsletter, stating “nature, combat and emergency can demand high volumes of work performed quickly for success or for survival.”
So this gym for ultra competitive people is modeled after the SEAL program. So What?
It probably does attract a particularly aggressive clientele, who are risk takers and accept the fact that injuries happen.
If you don’t like it, don’t go to one. Why waste all this ink on a fad that will quite likely diminish and disappear
This is no different than any top training program for skiers, racers of any type, gymnastics, and so on. I don’t see anyone writing tomes about the dangers of Nascar or motocross, or training for the winter Olympics.
CrossFit only has one difference…it is more available to the common dreamers who want to set themselves apart by competing in this manner.
Somehow, our current culture seems bound and determined to out compete everybody in all things.
The guys all see Rambo, a totally made up character, in the mirror in the morning.
The ladies, well, maybe they like hanging out with Rambo, and/or want to feel good about their physical abilities in a crunch.
What does this hurt? Get over it.
Because Gerald we’ve become the nation we’re someone else has to watch out for you and take care of you. Somebody has to save us for the evil and dreaded cross fit workout!
Please note the sarcasm in my line.
I’m sure cross-fit is very appealing to all those people nobody could stand in school and now want revenge of some sort. Kinda like teabaggers and religious grifters.