CrossFit Oakland

Olympic lifts "Highly technical"? Rubbish. Only compared to the rest of weight training. There are thousands of gymnastics movements fantastically more technical than the clean and jerk and the snatch. In any case, CrossFit, with high rep weightlifting, has been shown in clinical and institutional settings to be dramatically safer than the traditional run, sit-up, pull-up, jumping jack, push-up, lather, rinse, repeat, PT. This is not due to the "highly technical" nature of jumping jacks and running.

Not practicing complex movements fatigued? More rubbish. Only by practicing them fatigued will we advance the point where fatigue adversely affects form. Learning to race cars at high speed increases the likelihood of crashing. It is not the crashing that improves the driver's skill, however, but transiently increasing the likelihood of crashing is an essential part of decreasing the likelihood of crashing at any given speed.

Show me a program where form is controlled to the point of never failing and I'll show you an athlete who a) will fall apart at output levels where CrossFitters are untaxed and moving with grace, and b) cannot match the work capacity of CrossFitters.

The ideal state for learning new activities is certainly when the athlete is fresh. This should not be confused with advancing the horizon line where form is maintainable under duress.

Mr. Boyle was able to quantify his concerns for the dangers of high rep weightlifting - anything approaching twelve reps. As reported to me, this wasn't load qualified, but rep qualified.

If taking your one 1RM for the C&J and attempting 20 reps is an example of dangerous high rep weightlifting then it's dangerous like trying to jump up and touch the sun, and I haven't met anyone stupid enough to try or even think it possible. Calling 100 clean and jerks with a twenty pound medicine ball for time dangerous makes even less sense, and this effort qualifies by Mr. Boyle's statement. It is also consistent with CrossFit programming. (Hmmm?)

At the SOCOM Conference Mr. Twight (Yes, Mark) appeared with his arm in a sling due to a recent surgical repair of a climbing injury. To great derision and laughter, his condition was attributed to high rep weightlifting. That cheap shot holds the crux of Mr. Boyle's logic and reveals what really motivated his and other presenters’ gripes about CrossFit - we're eating their lunch in the marketplace of ideas.

Sadly this has nothing to do with safety, efficacy, and efficiency and everything to do with falling in a very distant second place, or more likely even further, in the quest for improving human performance. Mr. Boyle's problem with CrossFit is that his program got left behind. Think tipped over rice bowls, not dangerous lifts.

Where CrossFit has been analyzed, injuries have been recorded, the analysis has had to bear the investigators' names, and the results made public, CrossFit has been shown to be safer than traditional PT.

The assemblage of presenters at the SOCOM conference is like a conference on retailing where Penny's, Sears, and K-Mart are presenting on WalMart. You bet they think it's dangerous.

We'll hear every bit of noise imaginable from Mr. Boyle, but here's what you'll not ever see: Him posting his athletes’ work capacity across broad time and modal domains like we do here three days out of four. That would truly be dangerous.