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Crossfit Inc. suspends use of Facebook and associated properties

222 points by smsm42 7y ago

p1necone 7y ago
tldr: "Facebook banned our harmful pseudoscience, clearly academia is wrong and not us"
- xeromal 7y ago
  What is wrong with a` low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet.`? That doesn't really seem like pseudoscience in the realm of anti-vaccine and grapefruit diet BS. It's a valid diet.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    I don’t know much about the diet, but when it went crazy at my office a few years ago, half of the crossfitters ended up with significant injuries. The fitness program is dangerous and dumb.
    - cglace 7y ago
      Meh. Depends on the gym. Some emphasize form. Some don’t. Simple as that.
  - Finnucane 7y ago
    But eventually you end up writing paranoid conspiracy stuff on the Internet from the lack of glucose going to your brain.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    CrossFit is not just a diet regimen.
krustyburger 7y ago
This is actually a big deal. CrossFit, whether you like it or not (I’m not a fan) is at this point a major consumer brand. Not too long ago it would have been unthinkable for a brand this significant to make this kind of move.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  It should be unthinkable. Do we really want social issues litigated by major brands slinging mud at each other? Imagine Pepsi publishing the equivalent article about how Comcast is evil.
  - badfrog 7y ago
    > Do we really want social issues litigated by major brands slinging mud at each other? I agree the mud slinging in this post is pretty ridiculous, but I certainly like it when major brands refuse to do business with other brands that are harmful to society. For example, those that chose not to advertise on Fox News.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      And, since you mentioned Fox News, look at the last tweet's date on https://twitter.com/foxnews https://twitter.com/foxnews. Boycotts have a long, storied history.
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      I can respect a decision to simply not do business. Going on a rant about it just feels like an attempt to manipulate public discourse for Crossfit’s benefit.
  - paulddraper 7y ago
    > It should be unthinkable. Zuckerberg, is that you?
  - rajacombinator 7y ago
    I’d much rather have megacorps slugging it out with each other than making wink & handshake deals to play nice.
chrisseaton 7y ago
Wow I had heard Crossfit was a bit of an obsession for some people and a quirky approach to fitness, but I had no idea their official spiel was this level of paranoia - attacking academia as an unholy alliance of the establishment? > The voluntary CrossFit community of 15,000 affiliates and millions of individual adherents stands steadfastly and often alone against an unholy alliance of academia, government, and multinational food, beverage, and pharmaceutical companies.
- tw04 7y ago
  If you've ever been an athlete, and have spent 30 seconds watching crossfit - it becomes obvious the goal is to see how dumb of an "exercise" you can do before getting hurt. There are two type of crossfitters - those who have gotten a permanent and serious injury, and those who are going to get one.
  - dominotw 7y ago
    Always wondered how one of my friends is uninjured from CrossFit doing it 3 times a week for 10 yrs. I am guessing he doesn't push himself to the limit.
    - amluto 7y ago
      Supposedly there are (rare) good CrossFit trainers who keep their class safe.
      - wallace_f 7y ago
        Supposedly. In personal experience, I've observed an actual 100% fit for people who lack critical thinking skills, or often even general intelligence, and significant Crossfit engagement. I really do think it is an obviously anti-intellectual consumer cult. I know many people who have tried it and decided it was not reasonable. Edit: I think my comment comes across as a generalized put-down, which rubbed people the wrong way and garnered the downvotes. The experience I shared is truthful. Every single person I know that has really fallen into the Crossfit consumer cult is as far as I can tell a person who proves themselves to be susceptible to morally bankrupt, intellectually inept ideas. All of these people legitimately lack critical thinking skills. That's my own experience. As far as the actual regime goes, it is pretty-well established to be anti-intellectual and flagrantly dismissive of science. They advertise this. Yes some very fit people also do it and profit off of it. Some very rich people also promote MLM, which is a consumer cult deserving of similar, but worse criticism. Should I not be able to criticize people who fall into MLM consumer cults? I think we need to allow criticism. What about scientology, or other religious cults? What about other anti-intellectual cult of ideas like flat earth, anti-vax or phrenology? Tell me exactly where the line is drawn, and why.
jstr 7y ago
> Facebook’s news feeds are censored and crafted to reflect the political leanings of Facebook’s utopian socialists while remaining vulnerable to misinformation campaigns designed to stir up violence and prejudice. Wat.
hcho3 7y ago
> “millions of individual adherents“ Is Crossfit a cult? At first I thought the article was a parody or something
- busymom0 7y ago
  It has become a cult. I personally have no problem with people lifting and motivating each other and CrossFit was originally quite good, especially the competitive athletes. But now a days it’s become a huge cult where it’s all about people motivating each other to see how many reps of a certain exercise a person can do while completely throwing the form out of the window. Couple of my friends are in sports medicine field and they tell me on how CrossFit has become a way to keep sports meds employed because it’s single handedly the most cases of sports injury in their clinic.
  - manmal 7y ago
    To be fair, the growing numbers of CrossFit athletes alone could describe the growing numbers of injuries. If e.g. 10x as many people do CrossFit than do handball, they will account for a majority of injuries.
    - FireBeyond 7y ago
      Maybe, but CF regularly uses for workout of the day an acronym that escapes me for now that is basically "until exhaustion" (possibly "amrap" - as many repetitions as possible). So many of those is going to make you susceptible to injury, especially with their "keep going" mentality.
      - busymom0 7y ago
        Yea, usually motivation by your peers is a good thing but in CrossFit, it’s detrimental as it forces you to stop listening to your own body because of peer pressure.
        bryanwb 7y ago
ImprovedSilence 7y ago
Interesting, because there's no way crossfit the brand gets where it is today without FB and IG and it's millions of believers posting #crossfit #blessed #pump #cross #fit #getsum #etcetc. Having said that, maybe it's trying to avoid the masses of troll hashtags much like mine above....
klim_bim 7y ago
Facebook = AOL + friendster and was founded by a someone who called his users dumb f*cks. What else can you expect from a company with this kind of DNA.
paulcole 7y ago
CrossFit talking about “corrupted nutritional science”. That’s rich.
RenRav 7y ago
Wow, I actually had no idea crossfit was an organization. I thought it was just a name for an activity, like calisthenics or something. That's good they are disengaging from facebook. I was clueless that facebook had forums or community stuff. I always thought of forum users using fake handles, aliases, anything but their real identities. Hopefully they can bolster up their own site and provide an example for others.
notananthem 7y ago
CrossFit is fucking bananas, as an "exercise" as well as a cult/religion. Not trying to sound defensive of facebook at all but holy shit, CrossFit is crazytown. The company, the idea, and the customers.
- ixtli 7y ago
  That you're getting downvoted means that people here don't know about CrossFit's history. (c.f.: the 'uncle rhabdo' shit from a few years ago http://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-rhabdomyolysis-and-whats-its-connection-to-crossfit-75623 http://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-rhabdomyolysis-... )
thex10 7y ago
Wow, I enjoyed following their Instagram account and am sad to see it go, but good for them for making that decision.
tedmcory77 7y ago
There’s some ridiculous stuff going on where users come into a group, post bad stuff, then report the group. Boom, group deleted. Facebooks gotta do something about it...
ixtli 7y ago
Uh this is typical cultish reaction to being called out: accuse others of doing exactly what you yourself are doing. I'd like to remind everyone here, in case you are considering crossfit, that several years ago they caused a rash of cases of rhabdomyolysis. So in response they created a clown character called "Uncle Rhabdo" which they attached to propaganda that tried to convince their members that this possibly fatal condition isn't serious. Seriously: http://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-rhabdomyolysis-and-whats-its-connection-to-crossfit-75623 http://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-rhabdomyolysis-... "There is a lively online community posting selfies from hospital and who consider a rhabdo diagnosis as a badge of honour, showing their dedication to exercise."
- conanbatt 7y ago
  The Uncle Rhabdo clown there looks scary as hell
- crikli 7y ago
  Did CrossFit for 5 years and a shoulder surgery. During that time I visited about 30 gyms all over the US. At no point did I ever see rhabdo treated as anything but a serious concern. There was a gym somewhere that did that Uncle Rhabdo stuff but it’s inaccurate to act as though that is or was the prevailing attitude in CrossFit. I have several issues with CF but this idea that rhabdo is glorified is not true.
- JohnBooty 7y ago
  Been doing Crossfit since December. Had to sign a pretty sensible waiver upon joining. There was a section describing the symptoms of rhabdo, letting me know in NO uncertain terms that it was a potentially fatal medical emergency. Honestly, I'd never heard of it before reading that waiver. Rather than encouraging me to experience rhabo, Crossfit gave me some crucial warnings there! Safety's a big deal at the Crossfit gym I go to. I'm out of shape and the instructors pay special attention (and suggest reduced/modified versions of exercises) to make things work for me. "There is a lively online community posting selfies from hospital and who consider a rhabdo diagnosis as a badge of honour, showing their dedication to exercise." Erm, ah, that's hard to say. While I'd certainly agree that intentionally injuring yourself is utterly insane, I'm not sure that'd be my interpretation of any of this. Like many hobbies and professions, athletes engage in shop talk that borders on gallows humor. Imagine two violin students comparing their painful callouses. Or software engineers exchanging horror stories about late-night debugging battles with Internet Explorer 6 or talking about screwups where they accidentally deleted some live data. Or firefighters comparing all the scars they've accumulated over the years. Athletes are no different. Shit happens, sometimes you get hurt and then you laugh about it because it's all part of the journey. That's how you get through it. Screwed up my ankle playing tennis the other week. First thing I did was share it with my fellow tennis buds. We help each other and share the pain and laugh. I don't want to stereotype Hacker News readers, because a lot of engineer-types do enjoy sports and exercise, but I would imagine there are a lot of HN readers who would have a hard time understanding athletes laughing about their injuries since they've never been there. Just like a pro football player might not be able to understand how/why HN readers willingly spend those late nights hunched over a keyboard. For those of us who straddle both worlds, it's kind of funny, because we know the folks living in those worlds aren't nearly as different from their counterparts as they think they are.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bryanwb 7y ago
Actions like this are an annoying distraction. Crossfit HQ is kind of a nuthouse. The Crossfit program is truly wonderful as long as you always use proper form. If you can't use proper form on a rep, don't do the rep. It's that simple. I have been doing Crossfit for a year and haven't seen any significant injuries. But my gym emphasizes proper form over numbers. Some gyms ensure people use proper form, some don't. Crossfit (done properly) is leagues better for your overall health than weightlifting, running, bicycling, you name it. It is not necessarily more fun however.
- ixtli 7y ago
  > If you can't use proper form on a rep, don't do the rep. It's that simple. This is sorta disingenuous. A layman can't tell if they're doing an exercise correctly without instruction, and you can do something correctly 99 times and still becomes seriously injured by doing it incorrectly one more time. I'm not trying to make an argument that you shouldn't exercise but it's definitely not "simple."
  - bryanwb 7y ago
    It is not disingenuous. Many crossfit exercises are complex as you correctly observe and require a good bit of practice before you can do them w/ any substantial weight. A layman should not do them w/out instruction and a good coach will not let laymen do regular workouts until they have mastered the basics. A good coach also observes a new student's abilities and advises them how to scale the movement properly as they progress. A bad coach does not. for the same reasons, you should never attempt Olympic weightlifting movements w/out a coach, i.e. snatch and clean+jerk. In fact, I feel pretty strongly you should not learn how to squat or deadlift w/out a coach or personal trainer.
    - crikli 7y ago
      I did CrossFit for 5 years and a shoulder surgery and visited about 30 gyms during that time. What you’re saying isn’t disingenuous but it’s thoroughly idealized and unrealistic. Workouts with high volumes of technical movements are regularly programmed. RFT workouts with 60 snatches. High volumes of kipping pull-ups. Form goes to shit when you get tired, period, whether you are running or snatching, but being on a clock does not lend itself to slowing down, setting up right, and doing a technical movement with good form. It’s completely antithetical to it. The coaching quality at CF gyms is widely varied and in my experience most of the folks regardless of their great intentions have no business coaching that many people doing that many complex movements. There are much safer ways CF could be doing things. Ditch snatches and kipping pull-ups for a start. Snatches are dangerous when done improperly and kipping pull-ups are specifically bad for shoulder joints in individuals who have not built up enough strength to do several strict pullups.
busterarm 7y ago
I'm somewhat shocked seeing almost the entire HN commentariat more upset at CrossFit then they are at Facebook. If I were to weigh the two companies and their potential harm that can be done to society, globally, Facebook breaks the scale. Is it really a big surprise to see CrossFit, a company run by people, to come to similar conclusions that inspired things like #DeleteFacebook? Addendum: I guess the flood of downvotes on this is similarly unsurprising. HN will defend to the death Facebook's private property rights, while absolutely slamming a CrossFit'ers rights to do what they want with their own body. Wait a second, I thought this place skewed Progressive politically... ...I smell a hypocrisy.
kristianc 7y ago
> 2. Facebook collaborates with government security agencies on massive citizen surveillance programs such as PRISM. It's slightly weird to only find this an issue _after_ your Facebook page with 1.65m fans has been deleted. The tone of this piece comes over as really off and aggressive generally.
- anonnyj 7y ago
  Is it though? I've seen the same thing played out before in other contexts. Someone being abused/taken advantage off, but making lots of money, so they keep their mouth shut. Once they get fired / stop being profitable, they're free to call out what bugged them.
chris_wot 7y ago
"The voluntary CrossFit community of 15,000 affiliates and millions of individual adherents stands steadfastly and often alone against an unholy alliance of academia, government, and multinational food, beverage, and pharmaceutical companies." Paranoid much? Or perhaps it is Crossfit that gets it wrong?
- rblatz 7y ago
  It’s part of their battle against sugar and type 2 diabetes.
JohnBooty 7y ago
I've been doing Crossfit since December and wow. That manifesto I just read there was pretty scary and cult-like, complete with totally off-topic jabs at socialism and uh, science?. I'm having a hard time reconciling that with what my wife and I have experienced at our local Crossfit gym, which has been among the most supportive and pressure-free experiences I've ever had in my life. To be honest, nobody's ever even mentioned diet to me there and I'm pretty overweight. The Crossfit diet seems to be low-carb, high-protein, high-vegetable which frankly is very sensible and not exactly extreme. One thing I'd been warned about before doing Crossfit was that they don't always teach proper form for weighted exercises and that therefore there's an injury risk. I've been very wary about that. But the instructors at my gym are super responsive and proactive when it comes to my form. High marks there. As others have said, Crossfit gyms are independently operated. Culture is going to vary by gym. I suspect (like anything else) the gyms that garner the most attention are the ones that are kinda on the fringe and not the majority where you go do fun/grueling workouts with a supportive community.
- bryanwb 7y ago
  This is exactly my experience.
arthurofbabylon 7y ago
Two things stand out to me as startling/interesting. First, CrossFit is sort of presenting FB as a public health threat. Obviously it is, but I don’t hear a lot of entities make that argument. Second, CrossFit is doing a role reversal, saying that they will place FB under review, they will decide if FB is an appropriate platform for them. In a way, they’re assuming a dominating position (yes everyone knows FB is bigger/stronger, but you can still scare bears off by shouting and looking large, and even weaker players can find upper hands or shift position). That’s a strange take on receiving FB’s perceived abuse that I have not observed before.
- abtinf 7y ago
  It is hard to say whether FB or CrossFit has more influence in this situation. I have friends on FB who are fanatical about CrossFit. They write and post photos about workouts, events, and achievements. They seem to have limited use for FB otherwise. With their sizable national (and increasingly global) community of dedicated fitness enthusiasts, I suspect CrossFit has better-than-even odds of launching a wildly successful sports-and-fitness-oriented social network. They would be able to instantly attract a large member base, have a presence in every metropolitan area, and those people would recruit their friends onto the network. Edit to add: from what I can tell, CrossFit is a social network already. Except its a real-life network with people who spend a lot of time together.
  - weq 7y ago
    CorssFit isnt a social network, its a cult. Ive had multiple friends join the cult, including one friend whos wife divorced him because he didnt share her love of CrossFit. The end result was always the same - chronic injuries usually only seen in professional sports people -> move to multi-level-marketing / influencing for any product linked to fitness / inspirational pr0n.
    - JohnBooty 7y ago
      Been doing it for six months and never seen any of this. Obsessive people are gonna obsess, and some will be drawn to Crossfit, but I've seen nothing more obsessive about Crossfit than other sports I've participated in like tennis or hockey. And honestly I'm not sure any of them hold a candle to software development in terms of obsessiveness... never known anybody to exercise 60 hours a week, but I know a lot of coders and gamers who hunch over a keyboard for that long. (Including me) > move to multi-level-marketing I just go and work out and have no idea about the community around it (other than liking the folks at my gym) but I don't get the MLM jab here? I've never heard of any kind of referral-based or MLM opportunity in crossfit. > chronic injuries usually only seen in professional sports people I can only share my own anecdotal experiences and that is that our gym's trainers are super focused on healthy techniques for weighted exercises. (And I might add, at least at our gym, you're never supposed to do them at anywhere near your max weight!) Ultimately, a lot of athletes including me are making a reasoned choice. You can't really control a lot of things about your body, but you can definitely control your cardio fitness and your muscle mass to an extent. There are some risks involved with furthering your cardio and strength but also massive rewards. > including one friend whos wife divorced him because he didnt share her love of CrossFit Is her exercise routine really the cause here, or is it a symptom? This doesn't sound like the healthiest marriage. I definitely understand that it can cause friction when one partner puts effort into healthier living and one doesn't. I've been on both sides of that coin. Right now my wife's taken the lead, I need to catch up. I've watched friends die because they refused to be proactive about diet, health, and exercise in general. Never had a friend die from exercising yet. Although some of them really ought to talk a bit less about it if you ask me.
saintPirelli 7y ago
I see a lot of scepticism towards CrossFit here and it's probably with good reason, but I just want to add that your experience with the method of training is very dependant on the actual gym you go to. Where I started training (and I was like the definition of "out of shape") the coaches preach form > intensity every step of the way and actually forbid you to do any dynamic movement before you have not sufficently mastered the strict equivalent. That said, I have also met Crossfitters that can do ten unbroken kipping pull ups and not a single strict one, which is obviously incredibly irresponsible and stupid. I have now moved away from doing regular CrossFit workouts for many of the reasons listed in this thread, but I can honestly say, that changing my habits from couchpotato to fit dude would have not happened if it wasn't for the community and the style of training I have encoutered there. I learned how to backsquat there, I learned how to lock in my shoulders there, I learned how to stretch there, I learned about the basics of training methodology there. This would have never happend if I would have just gone to Planet Fitness (or whatever) on my own.
- dsl 7y ago
  I'm not judging CrossFit on the program or its value. I take great issue with this straight up anti-vaxx type of thinking: "Facebook is acting in the service of food and beverage industry interests by deleting the accounts of communities that have identified the corrupted nutritional science responsible for unchecked global chronic disease." science is responsible for disease, listen to us instead
  - smsm42 7y ago
    Replacing "corrupted nutritional science" with just "science", as if they deny science as a concept, is a very dishonest rhetorical trick. We have seen very bad nutritional advice given under the guise of "nutritional science" for years, and now we know that advice was very bad. We're still not entirely sure, as far as I know, how good nutritional advice looks like, in many cases, and it may be completely appropriate to point to some nutritional advice as bad nutritional science. And yes, using such advice can cause disease - just as using "science" at the time which denied the germ theory was the cause of many cases of disease. It's a very far cry from denying whole science or even nutritional science.
gvand 7y ago
Reminder: Always reflect on who you are associating yourself with, in a cult, company owned group, non-democratic group, activity that marks you as "one of them",etc... you cease to be an individual and become just the fuel behind someone else's agenda and values (neither of which you can control). Be an individual.
- jeffrallen 7y ago
  Yes, we're all individuals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QereR0CViMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QereR0CViMY
jeffrallen 7y ago
Wow, it's not often you get a win/win. Facebook will have less bullshit CrossFit stuff, and CrossFit will be less vulnerable to Facebook's bullshit censoring. Way to go team!

222 points by smsm42 7y ago

p1necone 7y ago

tldr: "Facebook banned our harmful pseudoscience, clearly academia is wrong and not us"

xeromal 7y ago
What is wrong with a` low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet.`? That doesn't really seem like pseudoscience in the realm of anti-vaccine and grapefruit diet BS. It's a valid diet.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  I don’t know much about the diet, but when it went crazy at my office a few years ago, half of the crossfitters ended up with significant injuries. The fitness program is dangerous and dumb.
  - cglace 7y ago
    Meh. Depends on the gym. Some emphasize form. Some don’t. Simple as that.
- Finnucane 7y ago
  But eventually you end up writing paranoid conspiracy stuff on the Internet from the lack of glucose going to your brain.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  CrossFit is not just a diet regimen.

krustyburger 7y ago

This is actually a big deal. CrossFit, whether you like it or not (I’m not a fan) is at this point a major consumer brand. Not too long ago it would have been unthinkable for a brand this significant to make this kind of move.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
It should be unthinkable. Do we really want social issues litigated by major brands slinging mud at each other? Imagine Pepsi publishing the equivalent article about how Comcast is evil.
- badfrog 7y ago
  > Do we really want social issues litigated by major brands slinging mud at each other? I agree the mud slinging in this post is pretty ridiculous, but I certainly like it when major brands refuse to do business with other brands that are harmful to society. For example, those that chose not to advertise on Fox News.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    And, since you mentioned Fox News, look at the last tweet's date on https://twitter.com/foxnews https://twitter.com/foxnews. Boycotts have a long, storied history.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    I can respect a decision to simply not do business. Going on a rant about it just feels like an attempt to manipulate public discourse for Crossfit’s benefit.
- paulddraper 7y ago
  > It should be unthinkable. Zuckerberg, is that you?
- rajacombinator 7y ago
  I’d much rather have megacorps slugging it out with each other than making wink & handshake deals to play nice.

chrisseaton 7y ago

Wow I had heard Crossfit was a bit of an obsession for some people and a quirky approach to fitness, but I had no idea their official spiel was this level of paranoia - attacking academia as an unholy alliance of the establishment? > The voluntary CrossFit community of 15,000 affiliates and millions of individual adherents stands steadfastly and often alone against an unholy alliance of academia, government, and multinational food, beverage, and pharmaceutical companies.

tw04 7y ago
If you've ever been an athlete, and have spent 30 seconds watching crossfit - it becomes obvious the goal is to see how dumb of an "exercise" you can do before getting hurt. There are two type of crossfitters - those who have gotten a permanent and serious injury, and those who are going to get one.
- dominotw 7y ago
  Always wondered how one of my friends is uninjured from CrossFit doing it 3 times a week for 10 yrs. I am guessing he doesn't push himself to the limit.
  - amluto 7y ago
    Supposedly there are (rare) good CrossFit trainers who keep their class safe.
    - wallace_f 7y ago
      Supposedly. In personal experience, I've observed an actual 100% fit for people who lack critical thinking skills, or often even general intelligence, and significant Crossfit engagement. I really do think it is an obviously anti-intellectual consumer cult. I know many people who have tried it and decided it was not reasonable. Edit: I think my comment comes across as a generalized put-down, which rubbed people the wrong way and garnered the downvotes. The experience I shared is truthful. Every single person I know that has really fallen into the Crossfit consumer cult is as far as I can tell a person who proves themselves to be susceptible to morally bankrupt, intellectually inept ideas. All of these people legitimately lack critical thinking skills. That's my own experience. As far as the actual regime goes, it is pretty-well established to be anti-intellectual and flagrantly dismissive of science. They advertise this. Yes some very fit people also do it and profit off of it. Some very rich people also promote MLM, which is a consumer cult deserving of similar, but worse criticism. Should I not be able to criticize people who fall into MLM consumer cults? I think we need to allow criticism. What about scientology, or other religious cults? What about other anti-intellectual cult of ideas like flat earth, anti-vax or phrenology? Tell me exactly where the line is drawn, and why.

jstr 7y ago

> Facebook’s news feeds are censored and crafted to reflect the political leanings of Facebook’s utopian socialists while remaining vulnerable to misinformation campaigns designed to stir up violence and prejudice. Wat.

hcho3 7y ago

> “millions of individual adherents“ Is Crossfit a cult? At first I thought the article was a parody or something

busymom0 7y ago
It has become a cult. I personally have no problem with people lifting and motivating each other and CrossFit was originally quite good, especially the competitive athletes. But now a days it’s become a huge cult where it’s all about people motivating each other to see how many reps of a certain exercise a person can do while completely throwing the form out of the window. Couple of my friends are in sports medicine field and they tell me on how CrossFit has become a way to keep sports meds employed because it’s single handedly the most cases of sports injury in their clinic.
- manmal 7y ago
  To be fair, the growing numbers of CrossFit athletes alone could describe the growing numbers of injuries. If e.g. 10x as many people do CrossFit than do handball, they will account for a majority of injuries.
  - FireBeyond 7y ago
    Maybe, but CF regularly uses for workout of the day an acronym that escapes me for now that is basically "until exhaustion" (possibly "amrap" - as many repetitions as possible). So many of those is going to make you susceptible to injury, especially with their "keep going" mentality.
    - busymom0 7y ago
      Yea, usually motivation by your peers is a good thing but in CrossFit, it’s detrimental as it forces you to stop listening to your own body because of peer pressure.
      - bryanwb 7y ago

ImprovedSilence 7y ago

Interesting, because there's no way crossfit the brand gets where it is today without FB and IG and it's millions of believers posting #crossfit #blessed #pump #cross #fit #getsum #etcetc. Having said that, maybe it's trying to avoid the masses of troll hashtags much like mine above....

klim_bim 7y ago

Facebook = AOL + friendster and was founded by a someone who called his users dumb f*cks. What else can you expect from a company with this kind of DNA.

paulcole 7y ago

CrossFit talking about “corrupted nutritional science”. That’s rich.

RenRav 7y ago

Wow, I actually had no idea crossfit was an organization. I thought it was just a name for an activity, like calisthenics or something. That's good they are disengaging from facebook. I was clueless that facebook had forums or community stuff. I always thought of forum users using fake handles, aliases, anything but their real identities. Hopefully they can bolster up their own site and provide an example for others.

notananthem 7y ago

CrossFit is fucking bananas, as an "exercise" as well as a cult/religion. Not trying to sound defensive of facebook at all but holy shit, CrossFit is crazytown. The company, the idea, and the customers.

ixtli 7y ago
That you're getting downvoted means that people here don't know about CrossFit's history. (c.f.: the 'uncle rhabdo' shit from a few years ago http://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-rhabdomyolysis-and-whats-its-connection-to-crossfit-75623 http://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-rhabdomyolysis-... )

thex10 7y ago

Wow, I enjoyed following their Instagram account and am sad to see it go, but good for them for making that decision.

tedmcory77 7y ago

There’s some ridiculous stuff going on where users come into a group, post bad stuff, then report the group. Boom, group deleted. Facebooks gotta do something about it...

ixtli 7y ago

Uh this is typical cultish reaction to being called out: accuse others of doing exactly what you yourself are doing. I'd like to remind everyone here, in case you are considering crossfit, that several years ago they caused a rash of cases of rhabdomyolysis. So in response they created a clown character called "Uncle Rhabdo" which they attached to propaganda that tried to convince their members that this possibly fatal condition isn't serious. Seriously: http://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-rhabdomyolysis-and-whats-its-connection-to-crossfit-75623 http://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-rhabdomyolysis-... "There is a lively online community posting selfies from hospital and who consider a rhabdo diagnosis as a badge of honour, showing their dedication to exercise."

conanbatt 7y ago
The Uncle Rhabdo clown there looks scary as hell
crikli 7y ago
Did CrossFit for 5 years and a shoulder surgery. During that time I visited about 30 gyms all over the US. At no point did I ever see rhabdo treated as anything but a serious concern. There was a gym somewhere that did that Uncle Rhabdo stuff but it’s inaccurate to act as though that is or was the prevailing attitude in CrossFit. I have several issues with CF but this idea that rhabdo is glorified is not true.
JohnBooty 7y ago
Been doing Crossfit since December. Had to sign a pretty sensible waiver upon joining. There was a section describing the symptoms of rhabdo, letting me know in NO uncertain terms that it was a potentially fatal medical emergency. Honestly, I'd never heard of it before reading that waiver. Rather than encouraging me to experience rhabo, Crossfit gave me some crucial warnings there! Safety's a big deal at the Crossfit gym I go to. I'm out of shape and the instructors pay special attention (and suggest reduced/modified versions of exercises) to make things work for me. "There is a lively online community posting selfies from hospital and who consider a rhabdo diagnosis as a badge of honour, showing their dedication to exercise." Erm, ah, that's hard to say. While I'd certainly agree that intentionally injuring yourself is utterly insane, I'm not sure that'd be my interpretation of any of this. Like many hobbies and professions, athletes engage in shop talk that borders on gallows humor. Imagine two violin students comparing their painful callouses. Or software engineers exchanging horror stories about late-night debugging battles with Internet Explorer 6 or talking about screwups where they accidentally deleted some live data. Or firefighters comparing all the scars they've accumulated over the years. Athletes are no different. Shit happens, sometimes you get hurt and then you laugh about it because it's all part of the journey. That's how you get through it. Screwed up my ankle playing tennis the other week. First thing I did was share it with my fellow tennis buds. We help each other and share the pain and laugh. I don't want to stereotype Hacker News readers, because a lot of engineer-types do enjoy sports and exercise, but I would imagine there are a lot of HN readers who would have a hard time understanding athletes laughing about their injuries since they've never been there. Just like a pro football player might not be able to understand how/why HN readers willingly spend those late nights hunched over a keyboard. For those of us who straddle both worlds, it's kind of funny, because we know the folks living in those worlds aren't nearly as different from their counterparts as they think they are.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

bryanwb 7y ago

Actions like this are an annoying distraction. Crossfit HQ is kind of a nuthouse. The Crossfit program is truly wonderful as long as you always use proper form. If you can't use proper form on a rep, don't do the rep. It's that simple. I have been doing Crossfit for a year and haven't seen any significant injuries. But my gym emphasizes proper form over numbers. Some gyms ensure people use proper form, some don't. Crossfit (done properly) is leagues better for your overall health than weightlifting, running, bicycling, you name it. It is not necessarily more fun however.

ixtli 7y ago
> If you can't use proper form on a rep, don't do the rep. It's that simple. This is sorta disingenuous. A layman can't tell if they're doing an exercise correctly without instruction, and you can do something correctly 99 times and still becomes seriously injured by doing it incorrectly one more time. I'm not trying to make an argument that you shouldn't exercise but it's definitely not "simple."
- bryanwb 7y ago
  It is not disingenuous. Many crossfit exercises are complex as you correctly observe and require a good bit of practice before you can do them w/ any substantial weight. A layman should not do them w/out instruction and a good coach will not let laymen do regular workouts until they have mastered the basics. A good coach also observes a new student's abilities and advises them how to scale the movement properly as they progress. A bad coach does not. for the same reasons, you should never attempt Olympic weightlifting movements w/out a coach, i.e. snatch and clean+jerk. In fact, I feel pretty strongly you should not learn how to squat or deadlift w/out a coach or personal trainer.
  - crikli 7y ago
    I did CrossFit for 5 years and a shoulder surgery and visited about 30 gyms during that time. What you’re saying isn’t disingenuous but it’s thoroughly idealized and unrealistic. Workouts with high volumes of technical movements are regularly programmed. RFT workouts with 60 snatches. High volumes of kipping pull-ups. Form goes to shit when you get tired, period, whether you are running or snatching, but being on a clock does not lend itself to slowing down, setting up right, and doing a technical movement with good form. It’s completely antithetical to it. The coaching quality at CF gyms is widely varied and in my experience most of the folks regardless of their great intentions have no business coaching that many people doing that many complex movements. There are much safer ways CF could be doing things. Ditch snatches and kipping pull-ups for a start. Snatches are dangerous when done improperly and kipping pull-ups are specifically bad for shoulder joints in individuals who have not built up enough strength to do several strict pullups.

busterarm 7y ago

I'm somewhat shocked seeing almost the entire HN commentariat more upset at CrossFit then they are at Facebook. If I were to weigh the two companies and their potential harm that can be done to society, globally, Facebook breaks the scale. Is it really a big surprise to see CrossFit, a company run by people, to come to similar conclusions that inspired things like #DeleteFacebook? Addendum: I guess the flood of downvotes on this is similarly unsurprising. HN will defend to the death Facebook's private property rights, while absolutely slamming a CrossFit'ers rights to do what they want with their own body. Wait a second, I thought this place skewed Progressive politically... ...I smell a hypocrisy.

kristianc 7y ago

> 2. Facebook collaborates with government security agencies on massive citizen surveillance programs such as PRISM. It's slightly weird to only find this an issue _after_ your Facebook page with 1.65m fans has been deleted. The tone of this piece comes over as really off and aggressive generally.

anonnyj 7y ago
Is it though? I've seen the same thing played out before in other contexts. Someone being abused/taken advantage off, but making lots of money, so they keep their mouth shut. Once they get fired / stop being profitable, they're free to call out what bugged them.

chris_wot 7y ago

"The voluntary CrossFit community of 15,000 affiliates and millions of individual adherents stands steadfastly and often alone against an unholy alliance of academia, government, and multinational food, beverage, and pharmaceutical companies." Paranoid much? Or perhaps it is Crossfit that gets it wrong?

rblatz 7y ago
It’s part of their battle against sugar and type 2 diabetes.

JohnBooty 7y ago

I've been doing Crossfit since December and wow. That manifesto I just read there was pretty scary and cult-like, complete with totally off-topic jabs at socialism and uh, science?. I'm having a hard time reconciling that with what my wife and I have experienced at our local Crossfit gym, which has been among the most supportive and pressure-free experiences I've ever had in my life. To be honest, nobody's ever even mentioned diet to me there and I'm pretty overweight. The Crossfit diet seems to be low-carb, high-protein, high-vegetable which frankly is very sensible and not exactly extreme. One thing I'd been warned about before doing Crossfit was that they don't always teach proper form for weighted exercises and that therefore there's an injury risk. I've been very wary about that. But the instructors at my gym are super responsive and proactive when it comes to my form. High marks there. As others have said, Crossfit gyms are independently operated. Culture is going to vary by gym. I suspect (like anything else) the gyms that garner the most attention are the ones that are kinda on the fringe and not the majority where you go do fun/grueling workouts with a supportive community.

bryanwb 7y ago
This is exactly my experience.

arthurofbabylon 7y ago

Two things stand out to me as startling/interesting. First, CrossFit is sort of presenting FB as a public health threat. Obviously it is, but I don’t hear a lot of entities make that argument. Second, CrossFit is doing a role reversal, saying that they will place FB under review, they will decide if FB is an appropriate platform for them. In a way, they’re assuming a dominating position (yes everyone knows FB is bigger/stronger, but you can still scare bears off by shouting and looking large, and even weaker players can find upper hands or shift position). That’s a strange take on receiving FB’s perceived abuse that I have not observed before.

abtinf 7y ago
It is hard to say whether FB or CrossFit has more influence in this situation. I have friends on FB who are fanatical about CrossFit. They write and post photos about workouts, events, and achievements. They seem to have limited use for FB otherwise. With their sizable national (and increasingly global) community of dedicated fitness enthusiasts, I suspect CrossFit has better-than-even odds of launching a wildly successful sports-and-fitness-oriented social network. They would be able to instantly attract a large member base, have a presence in every metropolitan area, and those people would recruit their friends onto the network. Edit to add: from what I can tell, CrossFit is a social network already. Except its a real-life network with people who spend a lot of time together.
- weq 7y ago
  CorssFit isnt a social network, its a cult. Ive had multiple friends join the cult, including one friend whos wife divorced him because he didnt share her love of CrossFit. The end result was always the same - chronic injuries usually only seen in professional sports people -> move to multi-level-marketing / influencing for any product linked to fitness / inspirational pr0n.
  - JohnBooty 7y ago
    Been doing it for six months and never seen any of this. Obsessive people are gonna obsess, and some will be drawn to Crossfit, but I've seen nothing more obsessive about Crossfit than other sports I've participated in like tennis or hockey. And honestly I'm not sure any of them hold a candle to software development in terms of obsessiveness... never known anybody to exercise 60 hours a week, but I know a lot of coders and gamers who hunch over a keyboard for that long. (Including me) > move to multi-level-marketing I just go and work out and have no idea about the community around it (other than liking the folks at my gym) but I don't get the MLM jab here? I've never heard of any kind of referral-based or MLM opportunity in crossfit. > chronic injuries usually only seen in professional sports people I can only share my own anecdotal experiences and that is that our gym's trainers are super focused on healthy techniques for weighted exercises. (And I might add, at least at our gym, you're never supposed to do them at anywhere near your max weight!) Ultimately, a lot of athletes including me are making a reasoned choice. You can't really control a lot of things about your body, but you can definitely control your cardio fitness and your muscle mass to an extent. There are some risks involved with furthering your cardio and strength but also massive rewards. > including one friend whos wife divorced him because he didnt share her love of CrossFit Is her exercise routine really the cause here, or is it a symptom? This doesn't sound like the healthiest marriage. I definitely understand that it can cause friction when one partner puts effort into healthier living and one doesn't. I've been on both sides of that coin. Right now my wife's taken the lead, I need to catch up. I've watched friends die because they refused to be proactive about diet, health, and exercise in general. Never had a friend die from exercising yet. Although some of them really ought to talk a bit less about it if you ask me.

saintPirelli 7y ago

I see a lot of scepticism towards CrossFit here and it's probably with good reason, but I just want to add that your experience with the method of training is very dependant on the actual gym you go to. Where I started training (and I was like the definition of "out of shape") the coaches preach form > intensity every step of the way and actually forbid you to do any dynamic movement before you have not sufficently mastered the strict equivalent. That said, I have also met Crossfitters that can do ten unbroken kipping pull ups and not a single strict one, which is obviously incredibly irresponsible and stupid. I have now moved away from doing regular CrossFit workouts for many of the reasons listed in this thread, but I can honestly say, that changing my habits from couchpotato to fit dude would have not happened if it wasn't for the community and the style of training I have encoutered there. I learned how to backsquat there, I learned how to lock in my shoulders there, I learned how to stretch there, I learned about the basics of training methodology there. This would have never happend if I would have just gone to Planet Fitness (or whatever) on my own.

dsl 7y ago
I'm not judging CrossFit on the program or its value. I take great issue with this straight up anti-vaxx type of thinking: "Facebook is acting in the service of food and beverage industry interests by deleting the accounts of communities that have identified the corrupted nutritional science responsible for unchecked global chronic disease." science is responsible for disease, listen to us instead
- smsm42 7y ago
  Replacing "corrupted nutritional science" with just "science", as if they deny science as a concept, is a very dishonest rhetorical trick. We have seen very bad nutritional advice given under the guise of "nutritional science" for years, and now we know that advice was very bad. We're still not entirely sure, as far as I know, how good nutritional advice looks like, in many cases, and it may be completely appropriate to point to some nutritional advice as bad nutritional science. And yes, using such advice can cause disease - just as using "science" at the time which denied the germ theory was the cause of many cases of disease. It's a very far cry from denying whole science or even nutritional science.

gvand 7y ago

Reminder: Always reflect on who you are associating yourself with, in a cult, company owned group, non-democratic group, activity that marks you as "one of them",etc... you cease to be an individual and become just the fuel behind someone else's agenda and values (neither of which you can control). Be an individual.

jeffrallen 7y ago
Yes, we're all individuals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QereR0CViMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QereR0CViMY

jeffrallen 7y ago

Wow, it's not often you get a win/win. Facebook will have less bullshit CrossFit stuff, and CrossFit will be less vulnerable to Facebook's bullshit censoring. Way to go team!