Just another blog with the thoughts of someone you really don't know
I spend some time hanging out on the Crossfit message boards, reading posts to learn more, asking and answering questions. The typical message board stuff.
This morning I posted a link to a blog post by Robb Wolf. Of course posting links to Robb Wolf’s site on the CF boards is a no-no, just like posting links to Starting Strength, so I used bit.ly to post the link. Now all of my posts have to undergo moderator approval before showing up.
Their boards, their rules, just find it amusing.
I mentioned before about Robb Wolf’s gym being kicked out of Crossfit. Now another group, Whole 9, has lost their affiliation. From the letter Whole 9 received from Crossfit HQ:
“I am writing to thank you for your year of affiliation with CrossFit and to inform you that we will not be renewing your affiliation when it expires on 3/17/2010. .. Since you are moving in a different direction, we cannot continue to carry you as an affiliate and we feel that our continued association is no longer mutually beneficial. We wish you the best of luck in your new endeavors.”
Seems strange to me. Whole 9 has a successful and popular program going, but Crossfit doesn’t like the direction Whole 9 was going. Probably too much strength work and not enough met-con for Crossfit’s liking. I could post some of the babble Crossfit posts at time, cream rising to the top, let’s see who has the best program, yada yada yada.
I wonder who will be next to lose their affiliation?
I wrote before about some of the things that make me shake my head over on the Crossfit boards, but I’m at the “you just got to laugh at the craziness” stage. I should add it’s Crossfit’s message board that they offer for free so they can make the rules and do what they want.
One of the way Crossfit promotes itself is as “open source”, meaning they say here is what you do if you think you have a better way lets hear and debate the issue. Sounds great, unless the Crossfit powers that be don’t like the message. Starting yesterday on the message boards if you posted a link to the Starting Strength website or Robb Wolf’s website the links get filtered, meaning they get changed to *******. In effect those sites are now banned on the Crossfit message board.
Why you may ask? Well those two along with others have stated they think they could do something better than the way Crossfit is currently doing something. In Robb Wolf’s case it is nutrition, for Mark Rippetoe (Starting Strength) it’s the importance of strength. In these cases Crossfit becomes closed-source. I’ would guess that it has to do with Crossfit’s tie-ins with Barry Sear’s of The Zone and Louie Simmons.
Crossfit even does some wacky things if you try to link to their message boards and they don’t like you. As an example if you post a link to the Crossfit boards in The couch thread (a thread making fun of Greg Glassman and Crossfit) on the Irongarm boards, you’ll just get bounced back to Irongarm if you click on the link.
As I said, their boards, their rules, but what are they afraid of facing? Someone that may have a better idea?
In this post I mentioned that Robb was no longer doing the Crossfit Nutritional Certifications. Latest news is that Robb has been stripped of his Crossfit affiliation. Greg Everett of Catalyst Athletics received the same notice.
Best of luck to you Robb, the cream will rise to the top.
Update: Dr. Kurt Harris weighs in on the issue in his blog post Crossfit Nutrition Eats its Young.
As you should well know, 4 Lakewood, WA. police officers were killed in the line of duty. Here are two ways you can show your support to their friends and families, and to law enforcement officers as a whole:
Or was at least fired from Crossfit Nutritional Certification.
If things played out as Robb describes, Crossfit HQ should be doing some deep soul searching at the people running things for Coach Glassman. I’ve seen shades of this mentality from other Crossfitters before and owe lots of it to them having pride in their organization. Nothing wrong with that but always be open to different thoughts and new ideas, that is how you grow.
For you non-Crossfitters WOD is Workout Of the Day. Lee Stewart created a web site to help you.
Jeff Barnett over on the Crossfit Boards posted a link to something his wife wrote up explaining the Zone Diet. Go check it out.
3 of us were at Planet Fitness in Lewiston, Maine, tonight doing a WOD (20 minutes of 4 burpees, 8 pushups, 16 squats), wearing t-shirts saying “Crossfit” on them. We were told that we were violating Planet Fitness policy, which says you can not instruct or lead others in exercise.
Okay fine, we are doing an exercise together and since it is going for max sets none of us are even doing the same exercise at the same time, nor is anyone instructing another person. We were encouraging but other than not not much else going on. What PF said was the issue is that one of us (one person there is level 1 cert) had come up with an exercise routine so therefore he was leading us. The only one that is allowed to lead or instruct is the PF staff trainer. I then posed the manager on duty (Sarah) a question: “What if 3 people came in, 2 ask what should we do tonight and the third said I know, lets do 3 sets of bench presses and 3 sets of squats, would this be against club policy”. To give her credit she answered that yes it would be against club policy.
At no time were we trying to recruit other people in joining us in our WOD, and we are club paying members. I guess PF doesn’t want us as member. Hopefully we’ll get something setup where we can workout and can drop the PF memberships.
Recently I’ve been learning more about Crossfit, and getting more involved in their fitness philosophy. Part of doing this I’ve been reading their message board. People ask questions, other people answer them, all a good way of learning. However, on any message board, Crossfit and others, you will run into the arrogant assholes (AA). I do think the Crossfit boards have a slightly higher percentage of these then other boards. Hey if people feel strongly about something that attitude can come out. I wish to point out one here and add my comments.
A young man by the man of Alec Sean Kellsh posted a message asking about squat depth. Good question, and one that could bring a wide variety of answers. His question was based on what his coach for cross-country told him to do, which is different then what Crossfit tends to say. In doing a little research his coaches advice matches what I found as a suggested way of doing squats as a way to improve your running. What caught my eye in this thread was aposting by one Andrew H. Meador. His reply? “Tell him to kill himself.” Andrew of course was referring to the coach.
Now one could take this as being a sarcastic reply. I know I’ve made my share of sarcastic replies and sarcasm doesn’t always come out well on the Internet. But Andrew clarified things a little later by stating “In the quoted post above my tone was more appropriate for other forums – CF’s is more family-oriented, so for that I’m sorry.”
So he isn’t sorry for making such a statement but rather for making it in a family friendly forum. No doubt Andrew went to the other forum where he could bash the coach all to pieces and state how any male children should be castrated to prevent the gene pool from getting dirty.
Andrew may be a real knowledgeable guy when it comes to Crossfit, but for me him being an AA means I’ll pretty much ignore anything he says. I’ve seen other posts by him and Andrew being an AA is pretty much a typical thing. So for others out there, when you want to sway an argument try doing so via reasoning and logic, not by being an AA.