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22 thoughts on “Wed, Oct 29th”

1. If anyone takes a gander at the oxidative stress link, I’d suggest reading through the comments. There’s a fairly decent back and forth on it.

2. Oh and Will, just saw your comment from last night and well, the name Dave Castro comes to mind. I’m certainly not trying to start an argument (even more so one against you) but I think the elitism and dismissiveness is pervasive throughout all levels of CF and is one of my (few) dislikes–not of the game, just the players. Or is it playas?

3. Got a txt from Jonny earlier seeing if we could head up to Elite 400 early enough on Sat. I’m thinking meet at the gym (or Chez Will) around 8.30 and head on up so we could hit their 10 o’clock class, and if we get lost, hit the 11 o’clock?

   So, who’s going?

4. Oh, got that Buddy Lee Jump Rope Training book yesterday. Fantastic little reference. It sounds stupid but it actually made me better by just reading it a bit before I went to bed last night. Anyone who likes skipping or would like to better at it should give it a read.

   Once I’m finished with it I’ll drop it into the gym, give me about two weeks or so!

5. Cheers Bobby!

   Meant to say, if we want to see Bond on Saturday night, can you let us know and we’ll book tickets. Also, anyone heading up North, we can feed you guys on Saturday when we get back (free gaff!)

6. Oh, quick question Colm, I know its against policy and all that but can you tell me the WOD for tomorrow? I can’t make saturday due to my plans to get mullered on Halloween and I need to make plans about tomorrow if I want to make it to CrossFit for 8, thanks.

7. I dunno Klye, I haven’t watched the video since it came out, but my memory of it is that the esteemed Mr Castro was saying the public perception of “fitness=endurance” was a load of crap, and was getting pissed off at Outside’s perpetuation of it.

   If he’s actually seriously saying that endurance athletics itself is a bunch of crap then yep, he’s being an ass and giving the rest of us a bad name.

   I always thought when people are pointing out things like “all Lance Armstrong can do is pedal” it was for the purpose of illustrating that long distance cycling is a crappy model for a GPP programme, rather than it being a slur against Lance himself (who is a bloody amazing guy any way you slice it).

   In the same vein, regarding the “what is fitness” journal, it’s worth pointing out that Coach is a personal friend of the triathlete he was expressing incredulity about (and if I remember correctly, the guy agreed with his assessment).

   There’s a subtle but important difference between “I don’t want to be like an endurance athlete” and “I don’t like endurance athletes”.

8. Good points Will, you got there before me.

   Yep, Mark Twight is a friend of Glassman and in agreement with his assessment.

   Bobby, tomorrow is
   21 Shoulder Presses, 45Kg
   21 Box Jumps
   21 Push Presses, 45Kg
   21 Box Jumps
   21 Push Jerks, 45Kg
   21 Box Jumps

   for time.

   Now, names for CFNI/Food/Bond?

9. Hehe, I suppose you mean “Mark Allen”, right? Twight and Coach are hardly what you’d describe as friends these days.

   Re: Nordie trip – I’m in.

10. Thanks Colm, my hip is still acting up so I wanted to see if the workout was squat-tastic, it isn’t so I’ll be up for 8 tomorrow night.

    CFNI sounds like a larf but I’ll hopefully be asleep in some nurse’s (I’m going to a nursing ball) bed at that ungodly hour, have fun though!

    I’m a bit out of the loop, who’s Dave Castro when he’s at home? Anyone got a link to the videos?

11. I’m also at work so I can’t watch the videos but I feel fairly confident in saying that none of the guys featured in the article called Dave to thank him for his kind words of glowing appreciation. As a side note I find his challenge as meaningless as Lance Armstrong offering $5k of money ‘from his own pocket’ to any CF’er that can win the Tour de France. But that takes us back down the rabbit hole of defining fitness which has been done to death.

    I am surprised to hear Glassman and Allen are friends, and more surprised to hear that Allen agreed with him. I’m guessing that Outside interviewed him for the article so how did that go, “thanks for the recognition guys, but honestly I have to express my incredulity at your selection of me as the world’s fittest man…”

    Castro aside, I’d dare say you’ve spent far more time on the message boards as me but doesn’t it seem that any time there is any sort of slightly contentious issue (and even many that aren’t) an air of CF elitism rears its ugly head? Sure those discussions generally have folks pointing that out and arguing against it but I don’t think you’d be hard pressed to find evidence of it.

    Ok, that post seems a bit more sarcastic and negative than I intended but frankly I’m too lazy to try and reword it.

    Will, why do I always have the sneaking suspicion you’re on a first name basis with the Glassmans?

12. Wow, what a mature man. No Shane, there’s no acknowledgment of the featured men’s achievements, he only refers to how they all belong in one single metabolic pathway.

    I don’t see why Dave cares so much about it, and why CrossFit.com would allow such a video to be posted, it hardly helps their cause does it? Unless part of their business plan is to create an air of elitism about the whole system?

13. So I just watched the Castro vids again, and if you want to interpret his “this guy cycled 100 miles on a mountain bike, that’s pretty cool” comment as a dig against endurance athletes, OK I guess that’s valid until he decides to clarify it.

    If we’re going to start inferring the shades of his opinion on a complex subject from the subtleties of his tone of voice, I think we’re on pretty shaky ground.

    Mostly though, I still came away with the impression that he just thought that equating fitness with endurance was retarded, and his derision was aimed at the magazine rather than the athletes.

    Do I need to take off my rose-tinted glasses?

    Kyle – I fully agree that the CF message boards have turned to near complete crap. The sensible, decent folks on there are getting drowned out by the growing population of brand new fitness experts (“well, I’ve been doing crossfit for 3 months now, and in my experience…”), keyboard warriors (the “experts” who dont EVEN do the workouts) and trolls.

    Unfortunately, a huge percentage of the guys on there are coming straight from the “3 sets of 10 on the resistance machines” background, getting exposed to actual useful athletic training for the first time through crossfit, and then forming the opinion that crossfit is thus the only form of useful athletic training, and everything else is just some silly variation of jogging or benching and curling.

    Oh, and I got pretty shocked when we were chatting to Coach at the cert and he addressed me by my first name. Of course, I then remembered I was wearing a name tag

14. I get what you mean Will. I just find it funny that people get so worked up over the word ‘fitness’.

    Maybe some CrossFitters are looking for their moment in the spotlight, their feature in Flex? I dunno, what I got from the video was that Dave was pissed because there were no CrossFitters on that list.

15. There’s been plenty of crossfit articles in the fitness rags Bobby. Dunno about Flex, but I think we’ve been in Muscle&Fitness a few times, ditto Men’s Fitness and Men’s Health.

    I get the impression Dave wouldn’t have dismissed the article so completely if there had been ANY other type of athlete, never mind a crossfitter. Why not feature a decathlete, an MMA fighter or a sprinter amoung the list for example? Just seems like an unfairly narrow interpretation of fitness.

16. Will, I suppose the reason they only used endurance athletes is because people can easily relate to them, as per the discussion yesterday. People relating to a story sells magazines.

    I’ve never read Outside magazine, but if its anything like “Outsider”, an Irish mountaineering magazine, then I can understand why they only used endurance athletes. Mountaineering is primarily an endurance sport, you need to be strong to a degree but its mainly endurance. Thus a magazine who’s core readership fall under this banner would be more interested in endurance athletes than a decathlete or MMA fighter. Just a thought.

    And before someone harps on about how strong climbers are I’m talking about general mountaineering, not technical rock or ice climbing. Hoooooge difference.

    Shane, maybe its the nice guy in me but I just can’t get my head around why CrossFit would post such a video. I see no need for it in terms of furthering the CrossFit cause. I know they don’t care if people get annoyed, I just can’t figure out why they’d post it.

    Maybe to get people talking, like we’re doing just now. *Slaps head*

17. Oh,

    ME Day today, left out squats and deads as my hip was having none of it.

    Shoulder Press 5-5-5

    45-45-45

    Too easy altogether. I did this weight last time but with my 1 and a half week layoff I didn’t want to push it. Finished off with some skipping. I can now do 140 simple bounces and about 80-90 alternates. Also I can now double under a lot better and can do the straddle jump. Now only 13 more “Basic” skills to go!

18. Look, Will if you’re going to keep using facts to back up your assertions and actually watching videos before making inflammatory statements based on some half-cocked memory from a guy that can’t remember his back squat numbers the next day, I really don’t understand how I’m meant to come out looking good in these discussions.

    Ok, as expected, Will is right again. The videos aren’t slamming the athletes nor their accomplishments. Elitist attitude is not too hard to find in that video but it seems to be directed at Outside and those that don’t buy in to the CF methodology.

    I have to say that with the rash of functional fitness and world’s fittest man discussions as of late, I seem to keep coming to the same point each time. So what? I got a little of that from Castro’s video where he says we’re not defining the best athlete, just the fittest man or something like that. Why? When we’ve done that do we need to find the best athlete? Then the fittest athlete? Then the most functional? The most functional fitness athlete?

    Bobby, if 90% of what Glassman puts on his site is to boost his business model, it’s completely lost on me. Although, I’ll be the first to admit that Glassman operates on a higher intellectual plane than me so I just accept it and try not to dwell too much on it.

19. I think the best athlete stuff in the vid was coming hard on the heels of that notable decathletics coach coming out and saying that he agreed crossfitters were the fittest people around.

    I don’t remember who the guy was, but I seem to recall a connection to Brian Clay being bandied about.

    He remained of the opinion that decathletes were “better athletes”, but agreed that there was no way any of them could match the broad work capacity of the top CFers. Since no one has really sat down and hammered out a working definition of what an athlete is yet, that’s probably just about the best endorsement we’re going to get.

20. As far as CrossFit’s business plan goes: Glassman said at the Manchester cert that for the bulk of CrossFit’s existence there hasn’t been one. He talked a lot about how in the early days things were taken as they came. The first certifications were other people’s idea, likewise the website. Given that CrossFit has ‘recently’ become profitable I’d assume they’ve got one now alright.

    I still don’t buy get the theory that CrossFit is in any way optimised towards raking in the big bucks. At the end of the day, most of it is free and the only two avenues they have for making money are the CFJ (which is ludicrously cheap) and affiliation/certification (which is only taken up by a gym-owning minority).

    What I’m saying, in a really roundabout way, is that there’s a high volume of media being put up on the site. It’s inevitable that some of it is going to be less than diplomatic. I don’t think they’re thinking that painstakingly about everything that goes up.

    Will- Yep, from what I remember that’s how the Clay thing went. Bit of a semantic tangle as to how he reconciles decathletes as ‘better athletes’ versus CF’s top tier being fitter across a broader spectrum.

21. Well said Ruairi. Due to its popularity CF central could be making considerably more than they are. In the end i guess complaining about the main site to me seems like telling someone their cooking was questionable when they invited you over for dinner.

22. “telling someone their cooking was questionable when they invited you over for dinner.”

    Jesus Kyle, it was just some constructive criticism (the smiley face let’s everyknow I was joking about that)

    The proposal was that Clay (or his coach) admitted that yes, CrossFitters were fitter athletes, and yes, they were mentally tougher athletes, but decathletes were better athletes. In Glassman’s eloquent way he said “Fuck it, I’ll take take that”

    Listen to the Everett interview tomorrow’s (well, at this stage the post is out) post. Great insights.