8 ms·

Some Turn to Church; Others, to CrossFit

50 points by nerfhammer 11y ago

Spooky23 11y ago
They even have a penance... After you fuck up your back doing deadlifts and swinging stuff, you end up self-excommunicating.
- solids 11y ago
  If you fuck up your back while doing deadlift, its because you are doing it wrong.
radoslawc 11y ago
Mark Rippetoe, author of Starting Strenght has some good insights about CrossFit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM_7pN-TJgM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM_7pN-TJgM I believe it's good to engage people in any kind phisical activity, but when it's fueled by marketing rules and encouraged competitivity might especially for people without any sport background cause sometimes unreversible phisical harm. Plus in Church of Brodin it's a sin ;) (http://bookofbrodin.wikia.com/wiki/The_Story_of_Brometheus http://bookofbrodin.wikia.com/wiki/The_Story_of_Brometheus) Wheymen!
- nailer 11y ago
  It seems like a lot of people who write about crossfit haven't seen a significant amount of crossfit. We're 'competing', but someone is doing overhead squats with 60 kilos and someone else is doing it was a plastic bar. Someone's doing strict pull ups, others are using giant elastic bands. Cross fit has scaling built in. At the three boxes I've been a member of, coaches ask yo to take off weight when your form breaks down.
xacaxulu 11y ago
I'm an atheist but I'm pretty sure church is safer...and if you're single the dating pool is probably more tolerable. No creatine small talk.
hoodoof 11y ago
CrossFit works for me. The reason CrossFit is better - for me - than the ordinary gym, is because in the past I would join a gym and not know what to do, and not know how to use the equipment, and not have a specific time to be there, and not have anyone to ask what to do, and feel silly, and stop going (but keep paying). CrossFit is like group personal training, not a cult. The trainer is very good and there is a big focus on safety and avoiding injury. The trainers are always available to help and guide you on how to exercise properly and safely. In fact I think it's much safer than going to an ordinary gym where you are left to work it out yourself and you'll probably do it wrong, endangering your health. I don't love exercising - I value it but nothing more than that. So at CrossFit I don't need to think about it. I go along and get told what to do and it's a balanced exercise program. I just try not to go too hard - I'm in it for the long haul. It's friendly but it's not a church or a love-in. I did get a shoulder injury (currently recovering from it) but it's because of my years of sedentary living my muscles are weak and things like shoulder muscles aren't held together well by atrophied muscle. That's not the fault of CrossFit.
- jmspring 11y ago
  >The reason CrossFit is better - for me Glad it works for you. > CrossFit is like group personal training, not a cult. This is relative. > The trainer is very good and there is a big focus on safety and avoiding injury. This is also relative and a bigger problem. Crossfit pushes profit motives over competence. Living in Santa Cruz, ground zero for Crossfit, the over zealousness of opening gyms, inconsistency of quality, etc. is pretty prominent. You find the routine that works for you. For me, Crossfit reminds me of Bikram Yoga, the business/franchise aspect takes precedent over quality. Myself, I've seen similar in yoga and martial arts. But, if you find a program that works for you, that is all that should matter.
- 1563565 11y ago
  I am not surprised that you don't like exercise. There is a general trend in society to exercise instead of just live an active lifestyle by playing sport, going for walks, helping your friends move house, and so on. Being active develops your body in a much better way as well. Muscles and tendons are much more complex than what is suggested by people who lift weights. Squatting heavy for 10 reps is only going to result in a very specific type of muscular development. Muscles have multiple compartments as determined by the various nerve endings. They have different types of muscle fibres and there are multiple smaller muscles all over the place. It is pretty easy to recognise people who lift weights and don't do anything else because their bodies look strange. Many people at gyms have bigger chests than the worlds greatest fighters, bigger legs than the fastest people in the world, and wider shoulders than the fastest swimmers. Their muscles are counterproductive to being athletic as their legs rub together when they walk and so on. It is not just about size, it is about everything. No it was the fault of crossfit. Most likely you had overdeveloped internal rotators which caused impingement due to poor posture. Any responsible trainer would get you to do facepulls and rows and maybe posterior chain exercises like deadlifts to correct your posture before you did overhead work. Injuries at the gym are extremely common because the body is more complex than some people think. Having fun outdoors should be people's main source of exercise, not rep 1, rep 2, protein shake. Nutrition is another topic. Weight lifting is to being active as supplements, frozen meals, processed shit is to actual real food. And no you don't need 500 grams of protein per day. The whole fitness industry is garbage. It presents these bizarre bodies that nobody finds attractive as ideals and so people try to obtain them.
elipsey 11y ago
Someone opened a Crossfit gym next to my house a couple of years ago, which is in a mixed residential-commercial neighborhood. The building is closely surrounded by residences. They operated largely outdoors, they woke me and my neighbors up every morning before dawn yelling and throwing stuff outside, and they kept it up until after dark six days a week. A lot of cops hung out there, and the city PD wouldn't enforce the noise ordinance against them. In a way, I spent 16 hours a day 6 days a week at Crossfit, for a couple of years. It really did seem kind of like a religion or a cult; clearly the owners and the more serious customers had deeply invested their identities in what they were doing, and were seeking approval from one another. I perceived a kind of aloofness or elitism in the way that they valued validation from the in group over the rights and values of their neighbors. I came to recognize many of the customers, some whom were often there 20 or more hours per week. It seemed that one of the core tenets of the religion was that one must always have an audience while working out, if not willing then captive. Cheering, yelling, throwing large objects like tractor tires, and just generally doing everything outdoors, at maximum volume, in a public space, was apparently mandatory. I worked at home for a couple years next to these guys. I could hear them inside my house all day, which they ran laps around in groups, with the leader shouting commands like a drill Sargent. When I worked in garden they were they there, throwing weights – it was required that all weights be thrown forcefully to the ground, in a dominance display accompanied chimpanzee-like shrieks, never merely set down on the pavement. When I retired to my porch for a cup of coffee, they were there, milling around next to my yard taking about their core workouts and protein shakes. So it was almost like I lived at Crossfit for a while. In principle, I love the idea of a community gym. Now and then I would see one of the instructors cheering on a chunky middle aged person lifting weights, and that was so great it almost made up for it. Almost. They moved away last year. My life has become much more pleasant, and I have had several months to reflect on this strange phenomenon. I value health and fitness, and I'm really not just jealous because they were more “swole” then me. For what it's worth, I ran 25 miles and lifted this week, but you probably wouldn't guess by looking at me. I'm not perfect, but I'm pretty much where I want to be with fitness – trying to do my best mostly, and not be nut job about it. But is it really necessary to serve up personal fitness with a double side-order of external validation and group identity? Good health is it's own reward, and when our self image is so narrowly invested in one aspect of our lives, especially appearances, it's easy to overlook other personal growth opportunities. My neighbors muscles were big enough; I think they should have taken a break to work on their personalities. I'd like to close with a joke: “If a Vegan does Crossfit, which one do they talk about first?”
mhb 11y ago
Crossfit's Dirty Little Secret: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10639874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10639874
kyllo 11y ago
I've been doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for the past 8 years and I sometimes joke that it's my church because it's very much the "third place" for me. The camaraderie has kept me coming back, it's great to train with a group of people you know and trust several times a week and help each other progress over months and years. I've met many of my friends at the gym, of whom several have since quit training, but we still keep in touch. I can see the appeal of Crossfit because it also taps into the camaraderie that people crave, as opposed to a traditional gym where you put in your headphones, zone out and never talk to anyone.
paltman 11y ago
LOL at people talking about CF being dangerous.
- austinjp 11y ago
  Any weights routine is more hazardous than doing nothing, in the short term (not the long term). CrossFit is no exception.
  - paltman 11y ago
    Thanks for the laugh! :) "Hazardous". Haha.
    - austinjp 11y ago
      It is truly bizarre that you are blind to well-documented hazards. https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?as_vis=1&q=weightlifting+injuries&hl=en&as_sdt=1,5 https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?as_vis=1&q=weightliftin...
      - paltman 11y ago
        You can be injured doing any activity, especially activities incorrectly. You can also die prematurely from inactivity. I've been doing CrossFit for 2 years and feel better than I have in decades. I do have a background in weightlifting (college football). However, my wife does CrossFit as well and prior to starting she never touched weights. Again, she feels better than ever. But then again she isn't being stupid about doing movements she is uncomfortable with and isn't loading until she has got the technique down. Furthermore, there are 70+ year olds in our classes, some of them first timers as well. They are obviously not snatching their body weight but scale the exercises appropriate to them. I guess this just goes along with a general societal trend to eschew personal responsibility and blame externalities.
        austinjp 11y ago
        > You can be injured doing any activity I completely agree. Your comment seems to support my assertion that there are "well-documented hazards" which I took the time to cursorily reference. And yet you replied with "Thanks for the laugh! :) 'Hazardous'. Haha." Your comments don't seem logically consistent. (Plus there's more than a touch of ad hominem attack in there, which isn't necessary.) You follow this with bandwaggoning and appealing to anecdote: "I do X, I know someone who does X" etc etc. > "general societal trend to eschew personal responsibility" I just have absolutely no idea how you arrive at this. For the record: I lift weights. I highly recommend it. It mitigates the risk of certain diseases. It increases the risk of certain injuries. I really have no idea why you'd debate this.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
austinjp 11y ago
Lots of ill-informed comments in this thread, and some good stuff sprinkled in here too. If you get injured, it's a combination of luck, morphology, and activity, ie the interaction of your genes with the environment, just like anything else. You can follow an excellent routine with exemplary form and still pick up injuries, although good technique should reduce this. However good technique and appropriate routines are hotly debated. So here's the truth: what works for you will work for you. And that's it. There's no magic formula that works for everyone. Consequently you have to experiment, and consequently you risk injury. That's the story. Trainers are (probably) not medically qualified, or qualified in rehabilitation. ("Qualified" is a technical term, it does not mean "enthusiastic about"). Consequently they (probably) do not know why your shoulder/whatever got injured, and what to do about it. "Imbalances" and "core" and "posture" are (probably) nothing to do with it. Do not follow their advice. Do not follow the advice of the guy who's had the same injury as you. Do not follow your friend's advice. Go see a professional. And shop around to find the right one for you. Here the secret secret to recovery from nearly all injuries: Stop doing what caused it, and what makes it worse. Quit that stuff for 3 months. Replace it with something else if you need to (analyse your goals; think long-term not short term). Stay motivated and realise that your body is hugely resilient and adaptable. When you go back to the aggravating activity start from square one, real beginner-level basics, and sloooooooowly phase up the frequency and intensity. Modify, adapt, find your own path. Good luck :)
WizardlySquid 11y ago
Not even once

50 points by nerfhammer 11y ago

They even have a penance... After you fuck up your back doing deadlifts and swinging stuff, you end up self-excommunicating.

solids 11y ago
If you fuck up your back while doing deadlift, its because you are doing it wrong.

radoslawc 11y ago

Mark Rippetoe, author of Starting Strenght has some good insights about CrossFit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM_7pN-TJgM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM_7pN-TJgM I believe it's good to engage people in any kind phisical activity, but when it's fueled by marketing rules and encouraged competitivity might especially for people without any sport background cause sometimes unreversible phisical harm. Plus in Church of Brodin it's a sin ;) (http://bookofbrodin.wikia.com/wiki/The_Story_of_Brometheus http://bookofbrodin.wikia.com/wiki/The_Story_of_Brometheus) Wheymen!

nailer 11y ago
It seems like a lot of people who write about crossfit haven't seen a significant amount of crossfit. We're 'competing', but someone is doing overhead squats with 60 kilos and someone else is doing it was a plastic bar. Someone's doing strict pull ups, others are using giant elastic bands. Cross fit has scaling built in. At the three boxes I've been a member of, coaches ask yo to take off weight when your form breaks down.

xacaxulu 11y ago

I'm an atheist but I'm pretty sure church is safer...and if you're single the dating pool is probably more tolerable. No creatine small talk.

hoodoof 11y ago

CrossFit works for me. The reason CrossFit is better - for me - than the ordinary gym, is because in the past I would join a gym and not know what to do, and not know how to use the equipment, and not have a specific time to be there, and not have anyone to ask what to do, and feel silly, and stop going (but keep paying). CrossFit is like group personal training, not a cult. The trainer is very good and there is a big focus on safety and avoiding injury. The trainers are always available to help and guide you on how to exercise properly and safely. In fact I think it's much safer than going to an ordinary gym where you are left to work it out yourself and you'll probably do it wrong, endangering your health. I don't love exercising - I value it but nothing more than that. So at CrossFit I don't need to think about it. I go along and get told what to do and it's a balanced exercise program. I just try not to go too hard - I'm in it for the long haul. It's friendly but it's not a church or a love-in. I did get a shoulder injury (currently recovering from it) but it's because of my years of sedentary living my muscles are weak and things like shoulder muscles aren't held together well by atrophied muscle. That's not the fault of CrossFit.

jmspring 11y ago
>The reason CrossFit is better - for me Glad it works for you. > CrossFit is like group personal training, not a cult. This is relative. > The trainer is very good and there is a big focus on safety and avoiding injury. This is also relative and a bigger problem. Crossfit pushes profit motives over competence. Living in Santa Cruz, ground zero for Crossfit, the over zealousness of opening gyms, inconsistency of quality, etc. is pretty prominent. You find the routine that works for you. For me, Crossfit reminds me of Bikram Yoga, the business/franchise aspect takes precedent over quality. Myself, I've seen similar in yoga and martial arts. But, if you find a program that works for you, that is all that should matter.
1563565 11y ago
I am not surprised that you don't like exercise. There is a general trend in society to exercise instead of just live an active lifestyle by playing sport, going for walks, helping your friends move house, and so on. Being active develops your body in a much better way as well. Muscles and tendons are much more complex than what is suggested by people who lift weights. Squatting heavy for 10 reps is only going to result in a very specific type of muscular development. Muscles have multiple compartments as determined by the various nerve endings. They have different types of muscle fibres and there are multiple smaller muscles all over the place. It is pretty easy to recognise people who lift weights and don't do anything else because their bodies look strange. Many people at gyms have bigger chests than the worlds greatest fighters, bigger legs than the fastest people in the world, and wider shoulders than the fastest swimmers. Their muscles are counterproductive to being athletic as their legs rub together when they walk and so on. It is not just about size, it is about everything. No it was the fault of crossfit. Most likely you had overdeveloped internal rotators which caused impingement due to poor posture. Any responsible trainer would get you to do facepulls and rows and maybe posterior chain exercises like deadlifts to correct your posture before you did overhead work. Injuries at the gym are extremely common because the body is more complex than some people think. Having fun outdoors should be people's main source of exercise, not rep 1, rep 2, protein shake. Nutrition is another topic. Weight lifting is to being active as supplements, frozen meals, processed shit is to actual real food. And no you don't need 500 grams of protein per day. The whole fitness industry is garbage. It presents these bizarre bodies that nobody finds attractive as ideals and so people try to obtain them.

elipsey 11y ago

Someone opened a Crossfit gym next to my house a couple of years ago, which is in a mixed residential-commercial neighborhood. The building is closely surrounded by residences. They operated largely outdoors, they woke me and my neighbors up every morning before dawn yelling and throwing stuff outside, and they kept it up until after dark six days a week. A lot of cops hung out there, and the city PD wouldn't enforce the noise ordinance against them. In a way, I spent 16 hours a day 6 days a week at Crossfit, for a couple of years. It really did seem kind of like a religion or a cult; clearly the owners and the more serious customers had deeply invested their identities in what they were doing, and were seeking approval from one another. I perceived a kind of aloofness or elitism in the way that they valued validation from the in group over the rights and values of their neighbors. I came to recognize many of the customers, some whom were often there 20 or more hours per week. It seemed that one of the core tenets of the religion was that one must always have an audience while working out, if not willing then captive. Cheering, yelling, throwing large objects like tractor tires, and just generally doing everything outdoors, at maximum volume, in a public space, was apparently mandatory. I worked at home for a couple years next to these guys. I could hear them inside my house all day, which they ran laps around in groups, with the leader shouting commands like a drill Sargent. When I worked in garden they were they there, throwing weights – it was required that all weights be thrown forcefully to the ground, in a dominance display accompanied chimpanzee-like shrieks, never merely set down on the pavement. When I retired to my porch for a cup of coffee, they were there, milling around next to my yard taking about their core workouts and protein shakes. So it was almost like I lived at Crossfit for a while. In principle, I love the idea of a community gym. Now and then I would see one of the instructors cheering on a chunky middle aged person lifting weights, and that was so great it almost made up for it. Almost. They moved away last year. My life has become much more pleasant, and I have had several months to reflect on this strange phenomenon. I value health and fitness, and I'm really not just jealous because they were more “swole” then me. For what it's worth, I ran 25 miles and lifted this week, but you probably wouldn't guess by looking at me. I'm not perfect, but I'm pretty much where I want to be with fitness – trying to do my best mostly, and not be nut job about it. But is it really necessary to serve up personal fitness with a double side-order of external validation and group identity? Good health is it's own reward, and when our self image is so narrowly invested in one aspect of our lives, especially appearances, it's easy to overlook other personal growth opportunities. My neighbors muscles were big enough; I think they should have taken a break to work on their personalities. I'd like to close with a joke: “If a Vegan does Crossfit, which one do they talk about first?”

mhb 11y ago

Crossfit's Dirty Little Secret: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10639874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10639874

kyllo 11y ago

I've been doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for the past 8 years and I sometimes joke that it's my church because it's very much the "third place" for me. The camaraderie has kept me coming back, it's great to train with a group of people you know and trust several times a week and help each other progress over months and years. I've met many of my friends at the gym, of whom several have since quit training, but we still keep in touch. I can see the appeal of Crossfit because it also taps into the camaraderie that people crave, as opposed to a traditional gym where you put in your headphones, zone out and never talk to anyone.

paltman 11y ago

LOL at people talking about CF being dangerous.

austinjp 11y ago
Any weights routine is more hazardous than doing nothing, in the short term (not the long term). CrossFit is no exception.
- paltman 11y ago
  Thanks for the laugh! :) "Hazardous". Haha.
  - austinjp 11y ago
    It is truly bizarre that you are blind to well-documented hazards. https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?as_vis=1&q=weightlifting+injuries&hl=en&as_sdt=1,5 https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?as_vis=1&q=weightliftin...
    - paltman 11y ago
      You can be injured doing any activity, especially activities incorrectly. You can also die prematurely from inactivity. I've been doing CrossFit for 2 years and feel better than I have in decades. I do have a background in weightlifting (college football). However, my wife does CrossFit as well and prior to starting she never touched weights. Again, she feels better than ever. But then again she isn't being stupid about doing movements she is uncomfortable with and isn't loading until she has got the technique down. Furthermore, there are 70+ year olds in our classes, some of them first timers as well. They are obviously not snatching their body weight but scale the exercises appropriate to them. I guess this just goes along with a general societal trend to eschew personal responsibility and blame externalities.
      - austinjp 11y ago
        > You can be injured doing any activity I completely agree. Your comment seems to support my assertion that there are "well-documented hazards" which I took the time to cursorily reference. And yet you replied with "Thanks for the laugh! :) 'Hazardous'. Haha." Your comments don't seem logically consistent. (Plus there's more than a touch of ad hominem attack in there, which isn't necessary.) You follow this with bandwaggoning and appealing to anecdote: "I do X, I know someone who does X" etc etc. > "general societal trend to eschew personal responsibility" I just have absolutely no idea how you arrive at this. For the record: I lift weights. I highly recommend it. It mitigates the risk of certain diseases. It increases the risk of certain injuries. I really have no idea why you'd debate this.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

austinjp 11y ago

Lots of ill-informed comments in this thread, and some good stuff sprinkled in here too. If you get injured, it's a combination of luck, morphology, and activity, ie the interaction of your genes with the environment, just like anything else. You can follow an excellent routine with exemplary form and still pick up injuries, although good technique should reduce this. However good technique and appropriate routines are hotly debated. So here's the truth: what works for you will work for you. And that's it. There's no magic formula that works for everyone. Consequently you have to experiment, and consequently you risk injury. That's the story. Trainers are (probably) not medically qualified, or qualified in rehabilitation. ("Qualified" is a technical term, it does not mean "enthusiastic about"). Consequently they (probably) do not know why your shoulder/whatever got injured, and what to do about it. "Imbalances" and "core" and "posture" are (probably) nothing to do with it. Do not follow their advice. Do not follow the advice of the guy who's had the same injury as you. Do not follow your friend's advice. Go see a professional. And shop around to find the right one for you. Here the secret secret to recovery from nearly all injuries: Stop doing what caused it, and what makes it worse. Quit that stuff for 3 months. Replace it with something else if you need to (analyse your goals; think long-term not short term). Stay motivated and realise that your body is hugely resilient and adaptable. When you go back to the aggravating activity start from square one, real beginner-level basics, and sloooooooowly phase up the frequency and intensity. Modify, adapt, find your own path. Good luck :)

WizardlySquid 11y ago

Not even once