Just reread CrossFit Journal on Metabolic Conditioning...

[Andrew Wilson]

[Arien Malec]

Originally Posted by Geoffrey Thompson

If you're going to be the head of a multimillion dollar fitness empire, why not have some fun with it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

[Andrew Wilson]

[Grissim Connery]

Originally Posted by Justin Z. Smith

Glad they got ANSI certified - because that means they're serious!

Both are NOT work safe.

http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CFSC_HeiniePic.mov
http://www.crossfit.com/mt-archive2/...uzExposure.jpg

this is standard rule #34 of the internet

http://www.urbandictionary.com/defin...term=Rule%2034

granted it's not really bad, more just unprofessional. maybe they'll make a pole dancing WOD. first they'd have to figure out the most effective way to rip your shoulder apart on that apparatus

"150 kipping flag presses for time"

[Derek Weaver]

Originally Posted by Andrew Wilson

Lay here,
Lay here,
Lay a martyr Lion,

http://board.crossfit.com/showthread.php?t=64220
A Lion, striken by the blade of the foul and skinny sheep,
Hommage shall be paid to him,
Oxen shall be burned to the gods and wine shall be poured from gold,
For he went with a fight,
A fight bestowed in honour and truthe.
Lo there do I see my father troll.
Lo there do I see my mother troll and my sister trolls and my brother trolls.
Lo there do I see the line of my trolls, back to the beginning.
Lo, they do call to me, they bid me take my place among them,
in the Halls of TrollValhalla,
where the brave may live
...forever.

We, weightlifters, shall stay united as petrified glaciers of the artic thundra.
Well done my comrade,
Well done.
You will be,
Remembered.
As we all shall

On this day the gods have marked to be yours.

Yeah, that guy was doing good work over there. Didn't last long.

[Andrew Wilson]

http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/C...ramn101114.mov

Originally Posted by Tony Budding

We're NOT going to NOT program it because people can get hurt with it

WOW

Originally Posted by Tony Budding

What does everyone need? I don't know.

about push jerk

Originally Posted by Tony Budding

There's a lot of core strength involved... your core better be damn strong. Well what happens in rounds 4 and 5 when you've been doing, you know, you're on your 80th GHD situp, what happens to that core and you're ability to stabilize, I think that's interesting.

Originally Posted by Tony Budding

I would be interested to see how much weight I could control and sustain as I start to fatigue the core more and more. That's interesting to me.

WOW

[Arien Malec]

OK, exhibit A:

http://www.crossfit.com/journal/libr...luteHam_SU.pdf

Wherein Glassman tells the story about

Matt Weaver (www.speed101.com), arguably the world’s fastest human being. On top of being known for hitting 85 mph on a bike, Matt was crowned “King Sit-Up” in high school for completing 100 perfect-form bodyslapping sit-ups in one minute."

Glassman puts him on a WOD that includes:

twenty-one reps of GHD sit-ups with a full range of motion, hands reaching back to the floor

The aftermath:

his abs had swollen and distended markedly. This kid looked fat and sunburned where the week before he’d been ripped and lily white. As the swelling subsided, his scrotum grew and grew and grew....Before the swelling stopped Matt’s scrotum had become the size of a small and very ugly cantaloupe. Why we have no pictures we’ll never understand.

This is pretty amusing, per Glassman:

Matt’s father, John, is an ER doc, so he was consulted. He laughed himself to near seizure. (Our kind of doc.)

OK, so we have an exercise so dangerous that a person with strong abdominal strength can get swelling so bad that his testicles fill with fluid to the size of a cantaloupe on 21 reps. And the solution: program in 100 reps.

Oh, and Glassman's warning in the article:

We also caution against unbridled bouts on the GHD for newcomers to avoid the Matt Weaver cantaloupe syndrome described above. This is a potent exercise and it has sidelined dozens of strong, strong, athletes for a few days to a week.

is nowhere to be found on the mainsite, that purports to be:

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.

Glassman knows this stuff. Dangerous legal territory.

[Arien Malec]

Let's say the naive Crossfitter, not knowing how amusing it is to have your abdominal muscles injured in a workout, attempts to do this WOD. He clicks "How to Start", skips over the "jump right in" section, and reads

2) If some or many of the exercises are unfamiliar to you and you are only modestly acquainted with elite athletic training, we recommend that you follow the WOD and substitute other exercises for those where you don't have either the equipment or skill and then devise a plan for acquisition of the necessary skills or equipment needed to participate completely. We are developing a Substitution Chart in the FAQ for replacing exercises for which you've not developed the skills or don't have the equipment.

Great, let's look at the FAQ about how to handle GHD situps:

3.14. What can I sub for Glute-Ham situps?
Just like for the back extensions, there are lots of ways to creatively do GHR situps - lying over swiss ball with feet hooked under bench or bar (finally! a use for that Smith machine) is a common one. You can lie crosswise across a bench, with your feet hooked, as well.

Hmm, where's that disclaimer?

Finally, what exercise that has "sidelined dozens of strong strong athletes for a few days to a week" has any place in any S&C program?

[Andrew Wilson]

[Patrick Donnelly]

Originally Posted by Steve Shafley

And they were all gay porn bondage sites.

Oh, lovely. I was never so lucky as to click one of the links during that period.

Actually, are we sure that it wasn't just redirecting back to the CrossFit.com media page? Because we might have seen the videos on there and mistaken it for a porn site.



It's kind of crazy how Glassman can direct thousand of sheep to throw themselves into the slaughter day after day, and not get sued when injuries occur. If this guy were a trainer at Gold's, he'd be so gone by now. So gone.

I wonder if anybody will ever give themselves rhabdomyolysis "intentionally" (while pushing a workout very hard at an affiliate gym that follows the main page workouts) in order to sue. Mimms got $300k, but with the silliness that's going on right now, $30mil from CrossFit Inc. for a near-death workout experience wouldn't be too much to ask. There'd be a tooth and nail legal battle over it, but I'd have real trouble seeing CrossFit come out on top.

The trick is that you'd have to be able to feign reasonable ignorance to the dangers of the workout. So, all of us here would be out of the running immediately, since we've publicly expressed our (generally negative) views of the program... But somebody could make big bucks off of this (albeit, fraudulently, if you really are giving yourself rhabomyolysis on purpose, but legitimately otherwise), and while it'd mean permanent liver damage, that's no biggie. Glassman's liver has seen worse than 100 cases of the ailment, but he's doing all right.



I'd be glad to testify as an expert witness in the hearings.



Anyway, that was fun to muse about, but enough rambling from me. I've got more important things to do, like twiddling my thumbs, holding staring contests with the person that lives in the mirror, and organizing the hair trimmings from my bi-weekly crew cuts by hair length, diameter, and color.