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13 thoughts on “Tue, Apr 21st”

1. That bar seems a tad high (or is it a high bar squat?). Needs to work on the flexibility to straighten out her wrists on the bar. I’ve squatted far far worse.

   I realise you didn’t post this for critique but I’m bored.

2. The parentheses in the first sentence seem a tad unnecessary. Perhaps it should have been a separate sentence. He needs work on his use of personal pronouns. I’ve missed commas in many, many more posts.

   I realize that you don’t consider realise a misspelling, but it gets the red squiggly line on my computer and I’m not one to argue with Bill Gates.

   I’m bored too. And occasionally a smart ass.

3. Ok, so I hope I came across as terribly witty, and not just a jerk. Anyway, the picture on the main site hits on some of the ideas from Glassman’s what is fitness/who is fit videos. I remember this garnered some discussion on boards and at CFI a while back and I have to say that the idea of ‘area under the curve’ seems a really good definition of fitness (ok, physical fitness) to me. Logical, comprehensive, and theoretically measureable.

4. Touche Kyle,

   I now have no idea of what you are talking about now,

   Bag of tayto bossman,
   Hows tricks,

   I do think the fitness stuff is very true, there are two sides of that coin though. Whilst crossfitters believe they are fit, so does everybody that works hard at any sport.

   I am very keen to see how Colm’s crossfit abilities translate in a triathlon,

   I do however think that I am now more confident to have a go at any sports based on crossfit as opposed to training a specific or specialised sport, eg running

5. http://fazed.net/video/view/?id=863 Sent by a mate today, now this lad has some skills. Work Safe,

6. Kyle, occasionally a smart ass?

   I like the way Glassman has dropped the fitness thing and gone with GPP, it causes less arguments.

   He seems to continually miss the point with elite athletes though, they don’t care about their GPP, they care about winning their respective sport. Granted, CrossFit will give you a good fitness base for most levels of sport but it won’t win you an olympic medal.

   “Every athlete we’ve worked with, from Olympic medalists to UFC Legends, has some glaring chink in his/her GPP”

   No shit Glassman, they’re Olympic medalists and UFC legends, not CrossFitters. They have the fitness for their respective sports, they don’t need anything else. I’m fully aware that an increase in my GPP will probably make me a better wrestler but I doubt sincerely that it will make an olympic silver medalist into a gold medalist.

   CrossFit is great; the atmosphere in a CrossFit affiliate is beyond what you find in any GloboGym. CrossFit will also get 99% of people fitter than they thought possible. But will it make them champions? Not at the highest level and the quicker Glassman admits this the less arguments he’ll run into.

7. I think the idea of shoring up the chinks in you GPP base is really just the old “train your weaknesses” idea by another name, rather than a suggestion that, say, top powerlifters need to get their marathon times down, and elite marathon runners need more muscle-ups.

   If the people who are beating you in your sport can all do 20+ pullups, and you can’t, I think we’ve got a pretty productive direction to take your training in for next season. This sort of thinking isn’t unique to crossfit, it’s what every sensible performance coach on the planet does.

   If you’ve got an athlete who, compared to his opponents, is amazing at some aspect of his sport, but sucks at others, the most useful thing you can do with him is make him suck less at the parts that are holding him back.

   Obviously, depending on the sport, not every element of crossfit-style GPP is going to be directly beneficial to them (think Lance Armstrong talking about how losing something like 10lbs of upper body muscle mass helped him with hill climbs, for example), but for sports that utilise many different movement patterns and metabolic pathways, I really don’t see any way they could hurt.

   But at the end of the day, I’m not sure anyone knows exactly what it takes to turn an olympic silver medalist into a gold medalist, and if they did, I’m thinking they’d be out doing it, rather than writing about it on the internet.

8. Nice reply Will.

   “But for sports that utilise many different movement patterns and metabolic pathways, I really don’t see any way they could hurt.”

   I’m not sure about this. In a perfect world where infinite time is available for both S&C work and sports specific training then yes, but in our little old world no. Sporting performance is not solely proportional to GPP, it is dependent on a myriad of variables. An elite athlete, by getting “fitter”, may be worsening their performance as they are taking time away from other aspects of their training.

   For me, getting fitter couldn’t hurt. But for Anderson Silva (UFC Middleweight Champion and probably the best MMA fighter ever) getting fitter probably wouldn’t help him as much as getting better at wrestling for example.

   Personally I’m sick of CrossFit being heralded as the answer to everything. It’s a good GPP program, but it’s nothing revolutionary and it isn’t a program for producing elite level athletes, no matter what Glassman continues to claim. Don’t get me wrong, I love CF, but I’d wish they’d give up on this “We’re the best” routine.

9. But we are the best, Bobby.

   I could be an ass hole and simply say ‘Name a better training protocol’, but I won’t.

   There are a lot of elite level athletes that have gotten to the top in spite of their training, rather than because of it. If you read any of the Munster lad’s biographies they’ll say how their preperation wasn’t sufficient for competing in the latter stages of the HEC for years before they got their prep in order. Rog had no style of kicking for years. The Irish Rugby team fucked up their RWC2007 mightily by concentrating on the wrong things.

   There are triathletes all over the country who continue to put in extra hours cycling, swimming, and running without a thought as to improving speed and strength work for recovery. You could counter argue that the elite level gusy are doing something better but I’d wager that they’re still sub optimal.

   On the Wrestling Coaching course I did the strength training aspect was absolute pants, recommending 3 x 10 and a nice low fat, high grain diet. And these were the most knowledgeable people in Ireland talking about wrestling.

   I experienced the same lack of understanding amongst most of my class in Sports Management, and a massive lack of understanding in Sports Science in University.

   Right, enough rambling. My point is that elite performance isn’t understood and there is room for improvement, particularly on the break down between sports specific work (skill work) and conditioning.

   And you’ve made some logical errors in your argument, which stenches of traveller. Now, go back and finish your thesis young man.

10. Tony: 50kg, 295 as rx’d
    Liam: 45kg, 150 as rx’d
    Dale: 50kg (4), 211 as rx’d
    Stephen: 62.5kg, 217 as rx’d
    Jason: 50kg, 230 as rx’d
    Garvan: 50kg, 178 as rx’d
    Eoin: 50kg, 205 as rx’d
    Jeff: 40kg, 212 as rx’d
    Sue: 25kg, 167 as rx’d
    Robbie: 45k, 226 as rx’d
    Tom: 42.5kg, 258 as rx’d
    Paul: 50kg, 315 as rx’d

11. Oi! We’ll have none of that crazy zealotry around here, next person to use the term “true crossfitter” gets tabata wallballs after their next wod.

    But seriously, Tony’s best round on the wod was 111, and he still managed 109 on the “rematch” with Colm standing right beside him counting every rep. How far from the ground can his SDHPs have realistically been to account for a difference of less than 2% in his score? Oh, and that’s without factoring in him being fatigued the second time.

    If I was gonna go after him on anything here Jason, I’d pick on his wide-ish grip on the pushups.

12. Jason,

    I admire the fact you didn’t back down, even after been conclusively beaten. The world needs more people like you.

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