CrossFit's Dirty Little Secret

No, I'm saying that crossfit the program is bullshit. Crossfit started out as a workout, everyday, on crossfit.com. It's no secret that crossfit.com WODs are atrocious and most serious people give them little to now thought. Now, if you aren't doing crossfit.com workouts, are you doing crossfit? What is crossfit?

If you are "doing crossfit" that your coach, or you, or someone else programmed, are you doing crossfit?

I do my own programming. I'm a competitive athlete. I do olympic lifts, have a base strength program, combine cardio, HIIT and bodyweight exercises. Am I crossfitting?

Crossfit can't lay claim to cross training. The concept has existed for literally ever.

All that being said, you'll never find me fucking kipping my pullups. I like my shoulders way to much for that.

> Which is exactly the opposite of what I see in real CF

No true scotsman. And beyond that, what is "real CF"?

* everytime I breathe in or down I felt like screaming

* moving almost any part of my body even an inch made me scream

* my urine was dark red

All my life I've had above normal pain tolerance from another chronic illness but it took rhabdomyolysis to really break me--quite literally. Ultimately it resulted in being put in a stretcher as I screamed my ass off.

It took a lot of morphine to find any relief and dialysis to fully recover.

This author hasn't been to a well-managed gym or worked with more experienced coaches. The same is likely true of those who get rhabdo. They have exposed themselves to more than their body can handle physically, as a result of poor coaching, and/or poor decision making.

I've seen high rep pullups and high rep weighted squats cause Rhabdo in people (not at my gym). I've also seen thousands of people do those same movements (in a safe way) and not get injured. Any good coach shouldn't be exposing clients to those things that expose clients to injury or death.

A responsibility of any gym owner/trainer is to protect clients from injury. If you go to a gym (CrossFit or not) that programs things that expose you to to any kind of injury, then you should absolutely leave. Coaches should be aware of the risks.

If you attempt to lift too much weight, do too many reps, do things with bad form, of course you exposure yourself to injury. I hope rational people would consider that CrossFit is a very effective fitness program, and, despite its criticism, is something that produces amazing results in people if done properly.

Interestingly, my biggest injury was from a heavy single clean and jerk. I've never had Rhabdo and done tons of high rep stuff, but stay away from high rep box jumps, deads, pullups and other silly things. I do enjoy high rep oly lifting in CrossFit and I total 180kg as a 69kg oly lifter. They are completely different movements; to think otherwise is just dumb.

TL;DR - people who are irrational are dumb.

Mark Rippetoe (he's a popular personality in the powerlifting world) was affiliated with Crossfit in the beginning, mainly doing workshops on demonstrating basic barbell lifts. He liked how Crossfit was, at the time, a welcome antidote to the "Globo-Gym" death grip on fitness.

But he has distanced himself from Cross-fit for years now, and has a huge amount of criticism due to the emphasis on high-rep Olympic lifts. The high reps result in poor execution and injury at worst, and in uselessly light loads at best.

The first time I ever saw rhabdo was when I was sent to Outward Bound for a month as a teenager. A guy in my group wasn't very fit, and he got it from several days in a row of intense distance while backpacking. We were told how insanely rare it was when he got back, and the doctor at the time told him it was only seen in guys in boot camp.

Suddenly, a few years back, my rock climbing gym had a crossfit area. Then I start hearing about rhabdo all the time. I noticed that extremely fit rock climbers would do some of the team workouts, and then refuse to go back for the rest of the class they paid for. Their conclusion was the same as mine: any fitness regimen that makes it difficult to function in your day to day activities for days on end due to extreme soreness is not something that should ever be viewed as fitness. Fitness is something that can be integrated into a normal life.

I think CrossFit fell victim to its monetizations scheme. The original folks made their money by awarding certifications to trainers, who would then go start their own classes/gyms.

Like everything else: it started as a movement, turned into a business, and then devolved into a racket.

I am not a doctor, but I think what you experienced was what rhabdo leads to if untreated: myoglobinuria (kidneys poisoned due to excess myoglobin) which then leads to acute renal failure (kidneys fail).

The normal treatment for rhabdo is intravenous saline (I had 5 days of saline), whereas myoglobinuria or acute renal failure require dialysis, since your kidneys have shut down.

In any case, that sounds absolutely frightening in the worst way imaginable. Any long-lasting side effects?