By: Seth Walker
When I originally planned to write this blogpost, it was going to primarily be about the difference between the sport of CrossFit and CrossFit as a health and fitness program. However, as I began to try and put everything together, the direction of the blogpost began to change a bit. One reason being that I believe there are actually a lot of similarities between the two. Secondly, before jumping into a comparison of the difference in CrossFit as a sport and as a health and fitness program, I want to talk about people’s tendency to rush past the fundamentals or rush into specializing. And while these things may seem unrelated, I believe it is very pertinent to this subject and I will try to tie them together at the end.
Chris Spealer said it best, “Our needs don’t vary by kind, only by degree.” The growth of CrossFit as a sport has really made people want to skip the initial development of the fundamentals of movement, which in my opinion, is the most important phase of an athletes training. Anyone who has coached long enough knows, it’s far easier to teach an athlete something that they have never done than it is to try to teach an athlete something they have been doing wrong for a long period of time. Often times, the younger an athlete is when you get to start working with them, the easier they are to teach. I love the concept of virtuosity in movement. It is essentially performing the common, uncommonly well. I have found it to be very elusive and the mark of true mastery.
Greg Glassman said it this way in his article entitled, “Virtuosity”: “ There is a compelling tendency among novices developing any skill or art, wether learning to play the violin, write poetry, or compete in gymnastics, to quickly move past the fundamentals and on to more elaborate, more sophisticated movements, skills, or techniques. This compulsion is the novice’s curse.” If you have ever had the privilege to work with one of the best in a given field, you will probably be surprised at how simple, fundamental, and basic their instruction is. They always take you back to the bottom, because this is usually where the biggest problems reside. We must learn to commit to the fundamentals, no matter how good we become.
There is no magic shortcut to gain mastery in anything. It simply takes lots of time, effort, and repetition; things most are unwilling to give. One must be able to keep the perspective of their long term development. Its not only about how good can I be by next month, or even this year, we must look at how good can we be years from now. Don’t make short term sacrifices, at the cost of long term development. A basic example is, one should be able to perform a strict version of a movement in gymnastics before adding any other variation to it. One should be able to perform a air squat before they overhead squat, and perform a overhead squat before a snatch. Skipping these foundational movements, to get to the “sexier” movements quicker is a colossal mistake.
One of the things I love about CrossFit, is that it introduces you into so many different exercise modalities. Because of this, there is always so much to learn and improve on, which keeps training/coaching fun for me. On the other side, it makes it very difficult to have mastery in all areas. This is the beauty of it though. You become competent in all areas, but maybe not a specialist in any. Most people do CrossFit classes simply to be healthier humans. There is no need for specialization in one area. These people don’t want to just be good inside the gym, but outside of the walls as well. This could be a hobby, or even as simple as being able to play with their grandkids. Having a well rounded base, does however make it much safer to specialize in something if you so choose. In my opinion this is one of the most dangerous things happening in youth sports; kids are specializing at far too young of an age. This is when they really need to be building a general base of strength and conditioning. In other words, allow your kids to play multiple sports and have fun doing different activities. Don’t treat your twelve year old baseball player as if he is a MLB player. I can almost guarantee you he will end up hurt or at the very least burned out.
So what does talking about the difference of CrossFit as a sport versus a health and fitness program and the idea of not rushing past the fundamentals or specializing too quickly have to do with one another?
CrossFit existed for 33 years before the inaugural CrossFit Games that everyone sees on TV now even existed. Therefore, elite level competition should not define CrossFit. In any program, competitive or not, the three most important and interdependent facets are safety, efficacy and efficiency. So in my opinion, whether you are looking to compete or just become healthier, the foundation of your training is the same. If you want to get better at a movement or just be healthier, it is best to pursue mastery of the movement above all in both cases. Don’t be so quick to want to complete more reps or add more weight. Always keep movement quality at the pinnacle of your training. If you are not good at muscle-ups, just adding loads and loads of them into your training is not going to fix what you are doing wrong. Do skill transfer exercises to attack your weakness in them. Once you are able to do good ones with low intensity, then begin to add volume/intensity to them. Just because you can do a movement, doesn’t mean you are doing it correctly.
So what are the differences between the sport of CrossFit and CrossFit as a health and fitness program?
The two primary differences in my opinion are volume and risk. I believe the volume of training for a competitive CrossFit athlete is going to be higher than that of a regular class athlete. With that being said, I will say that some people are way too fast to consider themselves competitive and add loads of volume to their training. For most people, skill work is far more needed than loads of volume in the form of Metcons and heavy Olympic lifts. The other big difference is the risks that are taken. As a competitor, you have to know and be ok with the fact that you are no longer just doing it for health purposes, therefore putting yourself at a higher risk for injury. In this case, you grinding out that PR could be the difference of being on the podium and not if taken place during a competition. Having said that, a person that can squat 405 is not necessarily healthier than one that can squat 135. In class, I would much rather have someone finish a heavy squat with great form and feel they have 5-10 more pounds in them, then have someone grind out a PR in not so ideal positioning. They risk/reward ratio is not there.
Does this mean I think you shouldn’t push yourself and find out what you’re capable of? Absolutely not. But if you continually put yourself out of ideal positioning it will eventually catch up to you, and if you’re hurt you’re certainly not healthier. Just like with any sport, there are going to be injuries. But when training, the approach should still be to move well over moving faster. Moving well, means moving efficiently, and moving efficiently will result in moving faster. There’s a reason there isn’t a lot of full contact in the NFL in season practices. If a star player gets hurt in practice, he’s not much help in a game. But, you better believe they still bust their butts at practice.
I personally like Pat Sherwoods outlook on it. He said, “The goal is just to get fit, make it the best hour of your day, stay safe, turn up the music, high five some people, and blow off some steam.” Learn to be patient, enjoy the process and always crawl first, walk second, and run last.
REFERENCES:
“Training CrossFit vs Crossfit as a sport” – Chris Spealer
“Understanding CrossFit”- Greg Glassman
“Virtuosity”- Greg Glassman