CF Football

[Brandon Oto]

Originally Posted by Justin McCallon

That your overall ability to do a broad range of purely physical tasks increases...

Just the ones that produce a bunch of work.

Oh, and if we're going to just add the work together, you're going to have to find a way to quantify the value of having more modal domains. Otherwise I'm just going to do five thousand reps of 5lb curls and do hueg work.

[Dave Van Skike]

i'm not sure that modal domain has any meaning for people outside of CF.

[Justin McCallon]

Originally Posted by Dave Van Skike

i'm not sure that modal domain has any meaning for people outside of CF.

I don't know exactly what you're saying by "[doesn't have] any meaning." i.e. it doesn't help with anything else, or people just don't know what the term is...


Brandon, I don't see what you're getting at, either. Curls would be one modal domain, and the time it takes to do 1000 reps would be one time domain... The fact that you're good at that one thing doesn't mean a whole lot.

[Emily Mattes]

Originally Posted by Justin McCallon

That your overall ability to do a broad range of purely physical tasks increases...

I know that, I know what it technically means.

But that phrase, to me, represents everything that's wrong with Crossfit: it is both uselessly broad and its endless recitation represents those followers who wax poetic about the program without bothering to learn anything about fitness aside from "Crossfit is the best EVER!" It's like an incantation that will summon the Glassman Genie and put an end to the debate.

"How will Crossfit improve my powerlifting?"
"Broad time and modal domains! Broad time and modal domains!"

"How will Crossfit improve my 100m run?"
"Broad time and modal domains! Broad time and modal domains!"

What time and modal domains? How do you define work capacity? What the hell are time and modal domains, anyway? Anything you want them to be? In what way are you improving and how quickly? Everything is improving, forever?

It's effectively worthless. It's not an argument or a description of what Crossfit does, it's fancy-sounding jargon that falls apart when you start actually thinking about specific goals and how to achieve them.

[George Mounce]

Originally Posted by Emily Mattes

....when you start actually thinking about specific goals and how to achieve them.

More work capacity isn't a specific goal, so I believe you hit the nail on the head Emily. I for the most part stay out of CF debates now as I've said my piece a million times over. CF makes you great at CF, it makes you good at any one specific task. The funny thing is CF mantra also says its trying to get you in the top 20%, not the top 5%. Hence the reason for the creation of the CF games, and not a bunch of strictly CF people (please reread what I just typed and italicized) invading sports and competitions around the world. Because they cannot win them. Specificity will eventually win out over non-specialization when it comes to competition unless you build the competition around the construct of anything goes. Even those elite who do dabble in CF require the fundamental training of their "modal domain" to remain dominate against others.

Sorry for the rehash of what most know already. I just had to put it into my own words.

[Ben Smith]

Would it be safe to say that CrossFit is an exercise program for:

a. people with no specific athletic goals (people who just want to "get in shape" - nothing wrong with this, it just means they are not athletes)
b. compete in CrossFit (people who pursue CrossFit as their sport, "specializing" in the movements and "modal domains" that CrossFit prioritizes)

?

?

[Dave Van Skike]

Originally Posted by Emily Mattes

I know that, I know what it technically means.

But that phrase, to me, represents everything that's wrong with Crossfit: it is both uselessly broad and its endless recitation represents those followers who wax poetic about the program without bothering to learn anything about fitness aside from "Crossfit is the best EVER!" It's like an incantation that will summon the Glassman Genie and put an end to the debate.

"How will Crossfit improve my powerlifting?"
"Broad time and modal domains! Broad time and modal domains!"

"How will Crossfit improve my 100m run?"
"Broad time and modal domains! Broad time and modal domains!"

What time and modal domains? How do you define work capacity? What the hell are time and modal domains, anyway? Anything you want them to be? In what way are you improving and how quickly? Everything is improving, forever?

It's effectively worthless. It's not an argument or a description of what Crossfit does, it's fancy-sounding jargon that falls apart when you start actually thinking about specific goals and how to achieve them.

Emily, I like your style. Are you familiar with IGX?

all the jargon blather aside, what I'm saying is that there isn't a single substantive element of CF that hasn't been part of the physical culturist idea since the pre-steroid bodybuilding era.


health and physical strength as a continuum...check
weightlifting complexes...check
odd object lifts and games...check
Peripheral Heart Action, check...
gymnastics...check...
Olympic Lifting, check...
randomly removing shirt whilst lifting...check.

sounds like bodybuilding to me....not that there's anything wrong with that.

[Patrick Donnelly]

Originally Posted by Emily Mattes

Goddammit, I am so fucking sick of that phrase. What does it even mean anymore?

Agreed. If I ever hear anyone try to feed me that garbage in person... I can't even imagine...


My input on some of the recent topics (previously typed elsewhere, then copy & pasted here - if you've read it or simply don't care, feel free to skip over).

Re: "Fitness"

The CrossFit program puts the attainment of Fitness upon a pedestal - it also follows its own definition of that term: "increased work capacity of broad time and modal domains." That catchphrase is a recent one and shows a drastic change in the philosophy of the program. Back in October 2002, Greg Glassman described improving work capacity though ever-changing workouts as a way to attain fitness, an improvement in your general physical skills. Now, it is Fitness. Now, the only way to be Fit is to train those "broad time and modal domains," ie. CrossFit.

Re: Survival Justification

Lately, I've played with the idea of simply doing my conditioning work "for completion," using a single exercise. I might do a heavy set of Zercher lifts with a high number of reps that lasts for a little while, or I might take my tire sled for a walk. By the end, I'm definitely tired, sometimes, I'll even lie down to catch my breath. However, I don't do it daily and I don't time it, since Fitness is not my goal. I don't even try fool myself into thinking that sometime in the next few months that I'll be in an emergency where I'll have to drag a huge chunk of rubber in order to save human lives, and especially not that I'll have to do it five or six days a week.

Re: CrossFit Competition

You cannot have a sport where the rules of the game have the ability to change widely from each match to the next. How can a winner be defined within a set of changing parameters? If you held one competition, and one athlete beat out the second place guy by a phenomenal amount of points, and you held another competition three months later, at a time where neither athlete had made substantial improvements, and the scores were reversed, who's the winner? The second guy, because he's the most recent winner? If the competition workouts had been reversed, the first guy would be the most recent. They can't be equal athletes, because they both excel in different things. If a Fit person is well rounded, then would the guy who placed third in both competitions actually be the winner? There are just fundamental problems with holding these sorts of competitions.

With the case of strongman, it's not widely varied - at least, not to the literally infinite amount of "variation" that CrossFit workouts have. It's pretty varied, but it's all very much biased towards strength (you wouldn't see a 5k run in the WSM) and there are a number of very common events you can expect to see (eg. Atlas stones).


On another note, the WSM guys actually are pretty widely accepted by the general population as actually being the world's strongest men... Not just among their own inner circle of competitors... Something you don't really see with CrossFit...

[Justin McCallon]

Part of this is that I think people are using different ideas of what CrossFit "is." And, part of that problem is that it can be interpreted as many different things. You can consider it a specific workout program (the main page WODs as prescribed), a set of different workout programs (including CFFB and CFE), a set of principles (which I outlined awhile ago), or even a sport in itself (the CF Games). I tried to make it clear what I was talking about by not mentioning the word "CrossFit" and instead using WCABTAMD.

As far as the last page, I was talking about CF as a sport in itself. If you don't want to call it a "sport" (which is defined as "Physical activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively"), then it is an attempt to measure who has the highest WCABTAMD.

I'm not arguing that all athletes should follow the main site CF. I think it's a pretty good (albeit not optimal) set of background training principles for MMA athletes and people with goals very close to increased WCABTAMD. Other than that, if you very broadly interpret the principles (I outlined these several pages ago), they're pretty good for many different sports (i.e. Everett's WODs are what I would consider a very broad interpretation of CF principles and applying them to Olympic Weightlifting).

compete in CrossFit (people who pursue CrossFit as their sport, "specializing" in the movements and "modal domains" that CrossFit prioritizes)

Hmm, this almost worked for me, but if the CF competitions were done "right" the modal domains in the games would be very unpredictable.


Emily -- I don't know what you are trying to argue here. I have not claimed that maximizing WCABTAMD is the answer to improving your powerlifting total or 100m dash. I also don't see how you think the concept of increasing WCABTAMD is "uselessly broad" or "effectively useless."

Some of this you just might have tried so hard not to be "brainwashed" that you avoided reading about the concept.

What time and modal domains?

The totality of them. It's supposed to be broad. That's the point. A modal domain is like a way of moving, or an exercise. A modal domain could be to skip 100m, to run 100m, to run backward 100m, etc, etc. You want to maximize the totality of the possible modal domains.

How do you define work capacity?

(Ability to generate) Power. Power = Work / Time...

What the hell are time and modal domains, anyway?

I explained modal domains above. Broad time domains would be the range ofpossibe times. So anywhere from less than 1 second to over 5 hours.

In what way are you improving and how quickly? Everything is improving, forever?

That is obviously up to you. Greg Everett talks in Plandomization at focusing on specific areas while doing just enough of the rest to maintain your abilities.

Honestly, no offense, but I don't think you are grasping the concept. Either that, or you think I'm arguing for something I'm not.

Part of this is a kinda abstract, i.e. "how many points in time are between 1 second and 10 seconds?" But, if you think abstractly, I think it's a cool thing to compete in. In very basic terms, it's like a contest to be the best, overall, at everything from running a marathon as fast as possible to clean & jerking the max weight. The main site of CF has one program for maximizing WCOBTAMD. Everett takes a diferent approach, which I like more.

The biggest problem to me is that after Glassman thought of such a cool concept and the idea of competing to see who has the highest WCOBTAMD, his competitions were not great measurements.

CF makes you great at CF, it makes you good at any one specific task. ... Specificity will eventually win out over non-specialization when it comes to competition unless you build the competition around the construct of anything goes.

??? If this is what you and Emily are arguing, you aren't arguing with anyone.

what I'm saying is that there isn't a single substantive element of CF that hasn't been part of the physical culturist idea since the pre-steroid bodybuilding era.

I don't really care that much about whether CF came up with something new or not, but if this is your line of thinking, then has anyone come out with anything new?
Can you show me any pre-1960s programs that: (a) employed the ordinary concurent method, (b) mixed running/rowing, gymnastics, and weightlifting in highly-intense cardio circuits, (c) performed highly varied 1-5 rep max work about 3 of every 12 days, and (d) randomized their workouts?

I mean, yeah, if you broaden things like crazy then all this stuff was around forever. AFAIK people lifted external objects, ran, and did bodyweight movements about 2500 years ago. In that sense, nobody has come up with anything new since then.

It's pretty varied, but it's all very much biased towards strength (you wouldn't see a 5k run in the WSM) and there are a number of very common events you can expect to see (eg. Atlas stones).

I hope you don't interpret this the wrong way, but if this is your stance then you're just missing the point, too. WSM is centered on "strength" and can potentially have any set of events to test that. If WSM started to pick specific events, then it would not be a contest of who is the strongest, but instead who is the best at Atlas Stones, or deadlift, or log press, or whatever.
I really don't see how you can say the random WSM events make a legitimate sport, but CF events (which aim to test WCABTAMD) do not make a legitimate sport.

[Joe Hart]

How bout this "do what you like". Screw what science and webster's dictionary says. CF Football is fun in an odd way. It gives me some structure to lifting heavy shit and making the neighbors wonder about me. Then again I do other stuff too. If you have a goal then you know what you need to do. CF might cover that it might not. Lets give this a rest it is almost making it to the enormous size of that thread in community that got shut down because we were being funny.

I wish could remember what it was...damn beer.