Just reread CrossFit Journal on Metabolic Conditioning...

[Shane Skowron]

Originally Posted by Chad Cilli

You make some excellent points. I certainly wasn't trying to justify or minimize the danger of rhabdo from Crossfit, but I was just trying to keep in mind that many sports (real sports, not the sport of working out) have fatalities. Every year there are reports of kids dying at football camp, guys breaking their necks playing hockey, and pitchers getting smacked with line drives. But, you make an excellent point, the risk is rather high in Crossfit when compared to marathons which have a much higher number of participants. So, I guess when you consider it, percentage wise, Crossfit is considerably more dangerous than other activities.

Oh, absolutely.

It always gets me when people say -- "Marathoning? Don't a lot of people die doing that?" or "Lifting weights? Isn't that dangerous?"
But yet people don't blink an eye when playing a sport like football or soccer, where tearing an ACL due to getting your foot caught in the grass while cutting is routine.

And I don't think the general public really knows enough about CF to understand that not only is it prone to the traumatic type of injuries similar to those seen in gymnastics, but also since everything is done all-out every day with this unnecessary sense of bravado that it's also prone to some more unusual conditions like compartment syndrome, rhabdo, and adrenal fatigue.

[Andrew Wilson]

There's a giant misconception in "people die from marathoning", people don'tdie from the marathon, but already have a cardiovascular abnormality, enter the marathon, and the stress from the marathon magnifies the abnormality which gives into to the stress and causes the death.

In the case of crossfit, rhabdomyolysis isn't a predeveloped condition like you see in the cardiovascular abnormality deaths in marathons. Rhabdomyolysis is 100% induced through a crossfit workout prescription. Its not caused by a genetic or physical abnormality, its completely caused by massive overwhelming muscle trauma

Causes of sudden death in competitive athletes
Barry J. Maron MD, FACC, a, Stephen E. Epstein MD, FACCa and William C. Roberts MD, FACCa
a Cardiology and Pathology Branches, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland.
Received 22 January 1985; revised 26 March 1985; accepted 7 May 1985. Available online 24 May 2010.

Cardiovascular diseases responsible for sudden unexpected death in highly conditioned athletes are largely related to the age of the patient. In most young competitive athletes (<35 years of age) sudden death is due to congenital cardiovascular disease. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy appears to be the most common cause of such deaths, accounting for about half of the sudden deaths in young athletes. Other cardiovascular abnormalities that appear to be less frequent but important causes of sudden death in young athletes include congenital coronary artery anomalies, ruptured aorta (due to cystic medial necrosis), idiopathic left ventricular hypertrophy and coronary artery atherosclerosis. Diseases that appear to be very uncommon causes of sudden death include myocarditis, mitral valve prolapse, aortic valve stenosis and sarcoidosis. Cardiovascular disease in young athletes is usually unsuspected during life, and most athletes who die suddenly have experienced no cardiac symptoms. In only about 25% of those competitive athletes who die suddenly is underlying cardiovascular disease detected or suspected before participation and rarely is the correct clinical diagnosis made. In contrast, in older athletes (≥35 years of age) sudden death is usually due to coronary artery disease, and rarely results from congenital heart disease.

[Andrew Wilson]

Rhabdomyolysis is also a "race against death" condition; if medical treatment is completely ignored or delayed for a long time, the person is going to die.

This isn't going to happen with an acl mcl tear, meniscus tear, fracture, condromalacia, tendonitis, torn muscle ligament tendon found in sports, where if ignored, yes it will be painful, but its not going to immediately kill the person.

If the crossfitters that rhabdo-ed did not have immediate access to an emergency room, there would be a rhabdo death count of 132

The injuries are non comparable

Other sports and competitions are not putting people in an injury state that is a race against death- but crossfit is.

1 of every 20 Crossfit rhabdo-er will have permanent kidney scarring and will need a kidney transplant later on.
1 of every 100 Crossfit rhabdo-er will die.

[Ryan Hoegner]

I'm recovering from a ruptured achilles (basketball). Not a fun injury. There are much better ways to get your heart rate up than 100's of box jumps...

[Andrew Wilson]

CrossFit Rhabdo 132
CrossFit Rhabdo 133
CrossFit Rhabdo 134

[Andrew Wilson]

The SLAP man strikes again.




In his blog's comments...

[Andrew Wilson]

Originally Posted by crossfit.com

The CrossFit program is designed for universal scalability making it the perfect application for any committed individual regardless of experience. We’ve used our same routines for elderly individuals with heart disease and cage fighters one month out from televised bouts. We scale load and intensity; we don’t change programs.

The needs of Olympic athletes and our grandparents differ by degree not kind. Our terrorist hunters, skiers, mountain bike riders and housewives have found their best fitness from the same regimen. . .

This 84 year old is going to win the olympics after this

[Andrew Wilson]

Crossfit Rhabdo 135

[Andrew Wilson]

Crossfit Rhabdo 136

[raj rihal]

wtf is an 84 year old doing box jumps for.