Zetetical Society Meeting Notes

(Me in the back, knowing that I’m not going to get this muscle-up)

A week and a half ago, I went out to Park Slope for a Level One CrossFit instructors certification at CrossFit South Brooklyn. I have to say right up front that I didn’t have very high expectations. I wasn’t really looking for training in how to teach CrossFit to others. I wanted more information on programming and training for myself. The Level Ones have a bit of a bad reputation for having very high attendance and a 100% pass rate. In addition, the affiliate I work out at has a very good introductory program, Elements, which covers bodyweight exercise, powerlifting, Olympics lifts and metcons. So, what I was expecting was a weekend of “CultFit 101,” a bunch of propaganda, some references to exercise science which supports CrossFit’s worldview and some minor fitness celebrities rehashing what I did in Elements last year. High five. Here’s your paper. I was wrong. Well, it was propaganda, exercise science and some great CrossFitters covering a lot of what Elements did, but the quality of the presentation and coaching more than made up for any of the stuff that seemed basic and the “propaganda” was actually very balanced and comprehensive information.

My expectations point to a lot of what’s wrong with fitness in the Internet age. I joked that I started doing CrossFit in the first place because I’m willing to believe anything that I read on the Internet, but the net is actually what fuels interest in different fringe exercise specialties these days. It’s immediately possible to get more information than you want or need on any sports discipline. Non-CrossFit fringe sports example: Want to be an Ultrarunner? You can find blogs by Ultrarunners, training guides, race schedules and information on why Ultrarunning is both super awesome and super unhealthy and unawesome any time you want. You used to have to really work to find that sort of community. Now, I’d be willing to bet that most CrossFitters spend a comparable amount of time on the Net reading about CrossFit as opposed actually working out. That’s not the case with Ultrarunners. Most of them have no time to do anything except run, run, run and ice their legs. Poor Ultrarunners.

So, what’s wrong with that? Well, a lot of the information you get about exercise and health borders on hyperbole. People who do a particular exercise specialty get smug about it and in combination with the bully pulpit of the net, you have a lot of groups preaching and trying to prove that everyone not doing their system just sucks. There’s no place this is more prevalent or annoying than in the strength side of sport. In six months of just trying to get more out of going to the gym in less time, I’ve learned more about who hates my gym and why they are wrong than I’d ever care to know. I’ve read the arguments from both sides and ultimately a lot of that was just a waste of time. Given my life, if I were really worried that I couldn’t back squat 600 because my program sucks, I’d have deeper issues.

I’ve also found that a lot of the information on exercise is contradictory and junk. Take running. I’m a bad runner, despite fits of mileage which border on problematic, so I’m always looking for something to get me out of my 9 minute mile rut. Here’s what I’ve learned: A lot of long/slow distance running is a terrible way to get ready for distance races because you don’t recover. There’s no way to get ready for distance races without a lot of long/slow distance. Sprints are useless except for a few weeks to sharpen an endurance athlete. Sprints are most of what you should do in your program year round. Shoes are bad. More running shoe protects the runner. You should only land with your forefoot, midfoot or heel, but not your forefoot or heel. Running destroys the knees. Runners have stronger knees over the long haul. All of this is contradictory, and I’ve read all of it presented as valid advice within the last week. The sad thing is that each contradiction is probably true for someone. I like forefoot running, sprinting and not much shoe. Somewhere out there is a guy just like me who loves long/slow distance and heel striking in his Brooks Beast and he’s faster and less injured than I am. If I did what he did, I’d break my shins. Running is a fundamental human activity. Give me a pitchfork and a hockey mask and I can prove it. Nobody can agree even how to run.

The same goes for diet. If you try to follow athletic diet advice, you eventually get whiplash. Vegan? Zone? Paleo? Primal? Slow and organic? Dark Rage? I’ve met healthy people who’ve done all. The more diet advice I read, the more I just wonder if I’m allowed to eat basic stuff like carrots and yogurt. I can’t tell what system I’m on. I can’t even see the forest for the trees. I had candy, an energy bar and four cups of coffee yesterday afternoon and I read part of the Paleo Diet for Athletes on the subway without even a sense of irony. I had no carbs at breakfast, a salad at lunch with some stolen fries and I am still wondering about the mayo at dinner. Sadly for me, at some point someone told me that everything I ate was healthy. Even the mayo. I guess. Nothing in the diet seemed normal. It never does. I read so many blogs where the dietary advice is like “Ignore common sense, you want to eat something as close to Cave Bear heart as you can” that I can even argue that line. Poor bears.

So, anyway, back to the Cert. It was so reasonable. Chuck Carswell and Adrian Bozman did a lot of the presenting. I was expecting a lot of “here’s why were *&$&$$## right and they suck” in the weekend, but the presentation was smooth and professional. They went over the system, were totally open to hearing any questions or critiques, and were respectful of other people who train differently. They really focused on presenting CrossFit as a system which tries to balance a lot of different physical skills and activities in a way which benefits the total athlete. I was expecting more of the “Our dial goes to 11!” sort of presentation. #*&$#**# 11! Moth#&&#&# 11!”

For example, a common critique is that CrossFit doesn’t make you as strong as, say, power lifting. This can be accompanied by yelling on both sides. The presenters were perfectly willing to concede the point and then try to show that focusing exclusively on strength would impact other physical traits they thought you should develop. But unlike a lot of the online debates, that wasn’t a “powerlifters suck, they can’t run 10 yards” flamefest. It was more like “Yeah, power lifting is awesome and all, but if you really specialize in it, other areas might suffer a bit and our system doesn’t like that. Endurance is great, but endurance specialists tend to be weak in these strength areas.” They gave a lot of examples of this from real athletes they’ve trained and were very respectful of athletes in other disciplines. They keep hauling out the example of poor Mark Allen. He’s one of the greatest triathletes ever, but can’t jump that high and once got stuck under a 95 pound bench press. But it turns out that while they keep hauling him out, he’s a friend of CrossFit and knows that he gets used as the weak endurance guy punching bag. The presenters were also the first to point out that Mark Allen is just an amazing specialized athlete and none of them could do what he does.

Another common critique: Slop, that point where form breaks down. A lot of lifters think CrossFit encourages it. They didn’t encourage it. They were open to the idea that someone pushing it within the limits of safety might benefit from the extra effort even if form breaks down a bit, but again they were stickers about having it be within safe limits. As for slop in the cert itself? The demos, mostly by Jenn Hunter, were flawless. The form demanded by the instructors during actual training was very strict. Anyone expecting a room of rounded backs and elbows pointing at the floor would have been disappointed. This was actually really cool in my case. I’m prone to endlessly revisiting a chronic knee injury and a lot of the finer points of form which were covered in the squat, snatch, deadlift, push-press and clean drills have kept my knee safe over the last week. I didn’t get push press knee this week. Yet…

At some point, Chuck was asked about programming swimming and yoga on a rest day and his attitude was like “well, we say you should learn new sports, so yeah, jump in the pool.” Where was the angry workout cult?

If you mix training and the Internet, you hear a lot of noise. You’re much better off if you ignore the noise and just seek out the best information you can online and offline. Try things out. If something is working for you, it’s working for you. If something isn’t working, you have to question why. You might be doing something wrong. It might be doing something wrong to you. The process of finding ways around that is what constitutes the great lessons of training and your own development as an athlete. If you listen to all the “he said, she said, blah, blah, blah” flamewars, you’re missing the reality of the process for yourself. Likewise, if you just have a dogma instead of a program, you’re missing out on the possibility that you can learn from someone else. It’s important to have some sort of process for yourself, but that process isn’t one-size fits all. You have to find what works for you and improve on that.

In the end, I’m surprised that I learned so much about a balanced, rational approach to exercise at a CrossFit cert. Of all the things. We still did Fran, our dial went to 11, the music was loud, and it was still a lot of fun, but the message wasn’t adolescent. It was about doing things well and what you get and don’t get out of the program. All in all, it was an impressive and fun weekend.