Crossfit Programming Relevance

Posted on July 10, 2008 by Kelly

Interesting blog over on Catalyst Athletics about the relevance of crossfit programming. Check it out: http://www.cathletics.com/forum/showthread.php?p=34066#post34066

First entry that started the whole thing is here:
Okay, so I decided to actually make a new thread because I didn’t really want to taint the congratulations thread. I have been thinking about this a bit over the past few days but here’s something to think about:

Josh (if you read this) would you say that your CF games profile is an accurate representation of your training?
Quote:
How am I preparing for the games? Nothing special really. My weakly schedule looks like this…

Monday: agility drills followed by either 30yd sprints with a sled or sprints on the track up to 300m… everything is with full recovery… no fatigue
Tuesday: about 45 min of O-lift training focusing on snatches and sn asst movements a few sets of light C&J. After this I do a wt room based Crossfit (no running)
Wed: Sprints: 40yds up to 150m again with full recovery
Thursday: 45min of O-lifting focused on C&J along with heavy squats. I follow this with a running based Crossfit
Friday: rest day
Saturday: heavy o-lift day sn, C&J, squat… I usually follow this up with either 3×10 L-chins or 1×40 regular chins

Basically I enjoy sprinting & O-lifting so it makes up the bulk of my training. I’m ignoring training for the distance run because I felt like doing that last year really wore me down and I couldn’t have run any worse than what I did anyways. As far as being mentally prepared… mostly I’m just visualizing my self being successful…also thinking of any and all possible wods and how I would attack them. The toughest part for me will be convincing myself to compete on the run… I have no interest in running over 200m competitively.
If that’s the case, then since Josh doesn’t really do CF WODs either:

1. There is a flaw in CF programming (whereby people who don’t follow mainpage can get good at FITNESS)

2. You can get good at FITNESS without actually doing “CF” (as in a majority of “metcons”). This may actually go along with Gant’s hybrid thread and MEBB routines for those weaker individuals who need more strength “before” fitness… but that may be another argument altogether.

This opens another question actually which is were this CF games and last years an accurate respresentation of gauging “fitness” or rather “increased work capacity across broad time and modal domains.” I would argue yes, they were an accurate respresentation but this could be another whole thread in itself.

Basically, if yes the CF games were an accurate respresentation, then we have an incident where [1] CF (mainpage) does not necessarily “optimally” produce fitness or [2] FITNESS may be derived from multiple pathways not just CF programming. Might be a combination of the two, but I’m leaning towards #1 at the moment just because I’ve seen the effect lots of strength can have very easily on metcon ability (aka Donnie’s grace).

Thoughts?

Edit: I realize prior training pre CF or athletic background is definitely a big one. One of the main problems with analyzing CF right now is most of the elite “CFers” have athletic/strength backgrounds. This may also play a factor seeing as how strength is harder to gain while conditioning is fairly easy to obtain. But I don’t think this is a major factor in the argument above.
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Posts not intended as a professional advice either medical, training or nutrition.

One of the universal truths is this: the human body operates on a logarithmic scale — strength gains/training structure and programming, body composition (BF%), mass gain, etc. It takes a small amount of work for good initial gains, but a huge amount of work to get that last little bit.

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  • Max

    There isn’t one unique way to get beastly at broad general fitness. Crossfit just happens to be a very, very good training method that works well for most people.

    In Josh’s example, you’ll notice he still does metcons twice a week and heavy lifting three times a week, along with other high intensity work. While it’s not typical CF programming in the unpredictable, random sense, it’s still similar to CF’s high intensity workouts and heavy lifting.

  • fern

    If you go to the actual discussion on the pmenu board Josh lays right out there what modification to the Games would have dropped him from #2 to DNF … shorten the rest period between events. If instead of 4hr intervals the games ran at 1.5hr intervals he would not have placed where he did. So then suppose that HAD actually been the format of the games … would we be justified in saying that Josh Everett is not fit? … of course not … the only thing you could say is that measured by that day’s “crossfit” challenges, he was not as good at “Crossfit.” as people who did better… which is kind of a big “so what??”.
    The Games are/were just the Games … who did well that weekend, and that weekend alone. To extrapolate to a larger analysis of who is the most bestest fitterest in the world is pretty silly IMO.