Speed thrills. Watching an athlete chase down an opponent, or dash away from someone chasing them, is an iconic and exhilarating element of sport around the world. An athlete with acceleration to burn will always raise eyebrows amongst coaches and scouts, and there's no athlete who doesn't want to get faster for his or her sport.
Jackie and Justin Roth use fitness and healthy eating to improve quality of life and reduce disease symptoms, but the discipline and community they found at Mountain Loop CrossFit changed their lives in unexpected ways.
Jackie Roth was doing her best to prove gym owner Mitch Roehl wrong. In January 2015, she joined Roehl's Mountain Loop CrossFit in Lake Stevens, Washington, and started working out twice a week. She continued to drink six Red Bulls and a soda and smoke a pack of cigarettes every day. More often than not, lunch was at Taco Bell or Jack in the Box.
Roehl told 37-year-old Roth she couldn't outwork an unhealthy diet.
“OK, yeah, sure, watch me,” she thought.
Roth desperately wanted to change. She was 100 lb. overweight and had struggled with her weight her entire life. She'd tried diet pills, juicing and human chorionic gonadotropin shots, but she would always regain the weight she lost. What Roth didn't realize was that although a change would require determination, consistency and hard work, she first needed to surrender. She had to wave the white flag, admit defeat and ask for help.
For Jackie, defeat came in the form of a doctor's appointment. In August 2015, Roth's feet and legs became so swollen that the indentation remained when she pressed on them. She went to the doctor and discovered she had high blood pressure and was prediabetic. Finally, she surrendered.
“I emailed (Roehl) and I said, 'You know what? My way isn't working. I'm willing to try whatever you want me to do,'” Roth said.
Roehl said: “Start showing up.”
“I'm on a diet, so I usually prepare something different than what my kids are eating.”
I hear this too often from people who are either currently on a diet or have been on one in the past. Since their kids eat “kid food” like nuggets, fries, lasagna, fast food, or pizza, they have to prepare boiled chicken and asparagus to eat on the side.
Breaking Muscle recently presented a one-hour webinar focused on how to stay out of the weeds on your drive to succeed online. In this webinar, our top executive shares his vast industry knowledge and experience leading one of the fitness world's most successful online ventures.
Far too many retirees avoid exercise and doom themselves to decrepitude and loss of independence during the Golden Years.
For most of us who were born before NASA, color TV, McDonald's, Walmart, Disneyland, Bannister's four-minute mile and the polio vaccine, we have an emerging problem: We decide not to go to the gym. We are making this choice far too often, and it has a direct effect on how functional we are in our later years and how many of those years we have.
Anyone nearing retirement age needs to understand that inactivity will have a dramatic negative effect on quality of life. Our decisions to do nothing now create the consequences of frailty, decrepitude, loss of health and-very importantly-loss of independence in later life. Choosing to be physically active, but not fit, extends our lives without carrying forward our ability to thrive in the face of the world's constant challenge.
For those of us who make the choice to be physically active in later life, it is a very good thing. A choice to try to be disease-free as long as possible is brilliant. But we can do better.
To rage against aging is to choose to actively seek fitness, to logically and progressively train to reap the promise of a spectacular return on your physical investment-health, independence, vitality and longevity. There simply is no substitute for sweat equity earned with time in the gym-time spent training hard to progressively improve fitness and quality of life to last a lifetime.
The other choice is to sit back and wait for time to rob you of your quality of life and longevity.
The couch may be comfy, but you need to choose wisely for your benefit and the benefit of those you care about.
You hit the gym. You're feeling strong, pumped, and ready to attack a new squat PB. But as you unrack the bar, descend to the bottom of the squat, and turn the power on to drive back up, the unthinkable happens. Your hips shoot up, your chest falls forward, and you get stuck in a good morning position, fighting for your life to get out of the hole.
Welcome to our brand new weekend roundup, Three of the Best! Every Sunday, we'll post up Breaking Muscle's top three articles of the week. These pieces have caught your attention throughout the last seven days. So here they are in one place for you to consume, digest, and enjoy.
Executive Producer Sevan Matossian once again gives us unprecedented access to the fittest athletes on the planet, catching CrossFit Games competitors in intimate moments and vulnerable positions.
In the final installment, Matossian follows the drama behind the scenes as the athletes head into the last three events: Midline Madness, Pedal to the Metal 1 and Pedal to the Metal 2.
Eventual champion Ben Smith, a notoriously low-drama competitor, makes Matossian work hard to find material. When asked what he's thinking on the final day, Smith responds, “I'm not thinking much. That's the key.”
Emotions run slightly higher with other competitors. As the podium enters her sights, Tia-Clair Toomey tells Matossian, “I'm freaking out. It's a massive shock to me.”
Energy levels again surge as the athletes prepare to enter the competition floor for the last time.
“Let's fucking do this,” Chyna Cho says to Lindsey Valenzuela.
Video by Sevan Matossian.
1 hr 28min 29sec
Additional reading: “The Positive Impact of Physical Fitness on Emotional Fitness” by Dr. Brooke R. Envick and Rick Martinez, published May 25, 2010.
This article was written by Matt Whitmore.
If you follow Fitter Food, you'll know our approach to nutrition is a simple one. This hasn't always been the case. I've been as guilty as the next guy of overcomplicating my quest to find the perfect diet to build muscle and maximise performance.
In this video, Nick Massie of PaleoNick.com shares his recipe for Mexican Meatballs, a delicious blend of grass-fed ground beef, vegetables and spices.
Massie's meatballs get their kick from chipotle powder, cinnamon, garlic and the Paleo Nick spice blend Super Radical Rib Rub.
Squash calabacitas rounds out the dish, providing the carbohydrate that balances the protein in the meatballs.
While the meatballs brown in one skillet, Massie sautés the vegetables in another. He toasts the garlic, onions, peppers and spices before adding the squashes, mushrooms and tomato puree.
Massie is the instructor for the CrossFit Specialty Course Culinary Ninja, which is designed to give you confidence in the kitchen while you learn the basics of balanced recipe development as informed by CrossFit's nutrition principles.
To download the recipe for Mexican Meatballs, click here.
Click here for more information and a list of upcoming CrossFit Culinary Ninja courses.
Video by Nick Massie.
4min 29sec
Additional reading: “Butter Balls” by Shirley Brown and Alyssa Dazet, published Feb. 28, 2012.
Odd Haugen is 66 years old, and he is stronger than you.
Okay, maybe not stronger in every way, but almost certainly stronger than most in some way: grip strength, MAS wrestling skills, or handling Thor Hammers, atlas stones, or Thomas Inch dumbbells.
Executive Producer Sevan Matossian once again gives us unprecedented access to the fittest athletes on the planet, catching CrossFit Games competitors in intimate moments and vulnerable positions.
In Part 4 of five, Matossian offers a look at all the “glamor” behind the scenes-ice baths, drug tests and blood blisters-as the athletes complete Sprint Course 1 and Sprint Course 2, the Soccer Chipper, Clean and Jerk, and Triangle Couplet.
Matossian also gets rare glimpses into athletes' personal lives. Former champion Camille Leblanc-Bazinet confides that husband Dave Lipson “every day is asking for a baby.”
Denae Brown confesses that she missed out on last year's Games because she “was accidentally pregnant at regionals.”
“It's because it's CrossFit and she looks better naked,” friend and fellow competitor Whitney Gelin says with a knowing smile.
At the end of the day, rising star Katrin Tanja Davidsdottir refuses to rest on her laurels as she sits near the top of the leaderboard.
“I don't think this counts for much,” she says. “Tomorrow afternoon, no one's going to care where you were in the middle of Saturday. All that matters is where you're standing after the last event on Sunday.”
Video by Sevan Matossian.
1 hr 16min 13sec
Additional reading: “High Performance Pregnancy” by Andrea Nitz, published Dec. 20, 2008.
Training really comes down to one thing: stress management. In the gym you add stress to try to push your body to a new level. Outside the gym, you do everything you can to alleviate the stress imposed in the gym.
Physicians explain what “prediabetes” is and what the diagnosis means for your health.
The word “prediabetes” makes Dr. Donna Polk's patients pay attention.
She can tell them about their risk of a heart attack, a stroke-“they don't care,” she said.
“But when I say 'prediabetic,' they say, 'What? I don't want to be diabetic,'” explained Polk, medical director for cardiac rehab at Brigham and Women's Hospital, a nonprofit teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School.
The word, she explained, indicates where on the spectrum a person's health lies.
“It's a continuum,” said Polk, also director of the hospital's cardiovascular fellowship training program. “It's not like one day someone wakes up and they're diabetic.”
Specifically, a person is considered prediabetic in the United States when his or her fasting blood glucose falls between 100 and 125 milligrams per deciliter of blood, Polk said.
Half of U.S. adults had diabetes or prediabetes in 2012, according to The Journal of the American Medical Association. The American Diabetes Association puts the number of Americans 20 and older with prediabetes at 86 million-nearly a 9 percent increase from two years earlier.
“It's huge. It's ever growing,” Polk said. “People will call it an epidemic.”
The Mayo Clinic-said to be the first and largest integrated nonprofit medical group practice in the world-lists “prediabetes” on its website's Diseases and Conditions page, saying it constitutes a blood sugar higher than normal but not yet high enough to be classified as Type 2 diabetes.
“Without intervention, prediabetes is likely to become type 2 diabetes in 10 years or less. If you have prediabetes, the long-term damage of diabetes-especially to your heart and circulatory system-may already be starting,” according to the Mayo Clinic, whose yearly research budget exceeds US$500 million.
Untreated, many cases of prediabetes progress to Type 2 diabetes, which can lead to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, even blindness and limb amputation.
“It's a valid concept because it means that you have moved further up the curve to having diabetes,” noted Dr. David Cavan, director of policy and programs at the International Diabetes Federation in Belgium. Before holding his current position, Cavan was a diabetes physician in the U.K. for more than two decades.
But, Polk and Cavan said, lifestyle changes-specifically diet and exercise-are the most effective at lowering blood sugar to a healthy level.
“Whether you go up or down that curve is very closely related to lifestyle,” Cavan said.
While medication can mitigate some of the effects, a diet high in sugar or carbohydrates will “outwork” the benefit, he continued.
“It is actually a very helpful thing … to be able to identify someone as being at risk of developing diabetes and therefore be able to motivate them to make lifestyle changes … that, at best, reverse them back down to normal metabolism,” Cavan said.
Even a modest lifestyle change can make a significant difference, Polk noted. A mere 7 percent weight loss and only 150 minutes of exercise per week, for example, is all it takes to make a significant change, she said.
“It doesn't take much, and that's what I often tell my patients. Even 10 or 15 pounds can make a huge difference, can normalize a lot of those numbers.”
Polk added: “It's really about little changes. Little changes that will make a huge difference that will prevent diabetes and its subsequent complications.”
About the Author: Andréa Maria Cecil is assistant managing editor and head writer of the CrossFit Journal.
Executive Producer Sevan Matossian once again gives us unprecedented access to the fittest athletes on the planet, catching CrossFit Games competitors in intimate moments and vulnerable positions.
In Part 3 of five, Matossian interviews the athletes as they recover from the physical and emotional aftermath of Murph and try to rally for Snatch Speed Ladder and Heavy DT-the latter a Hero-workout variation selected by fans via a Twitter vote.
Carted off on a stretcher after staggering across the finish line to complete Murph, Kara Webb bounces back with help from three bags of IV fluids.
“I was just worried … that I was going to let my little sister down. I'm trying to get money so I can pay for her private school,” she says.
Two former champions react to the day's disappointments. After finishing 36th in Snatch Speed Ladder, Camille Leblanc-Bazinet slumps in anger and frustration. Nearby, Annie Thorisdottir, 33rd in Murph, confesses that things are not going as planned.
“I'm definitely going to be a little bit sad tonight. I know that's going to happen, and there's no point of trying not to be.”
Brooke Ence, on the other hand, lights up the screen after taking first place in Snatch Speed Ladder.
“I'm 25, and I'm not going to wait to be amazing,” she says.
Video by Sevan Matossian.
50min 36sec
Additional reading: “Portraits in Motion” by Kieran Kesner, published Sept. 16, 2015.
Tell me if this sounds familiar. You're pedalling at a fair rate of knots and feel you're riding well. Then a fellow cyclist of a similar age and build comes flying past, leaving you for dust as he overtakes you with apparent ease.
If this seems to be happening to you a lot lately, it's time to do something about it. Read on for the seven most likely reasons that other rider is faster than you.
Zach Forrest, others share strategies for identifying suboptimal movement and helping athletes make positive changes.
When seeing and correcting athletes' movements, the most important thing to remember is to encourage, coaches said.
“We want to give them something to work towards-not something that they're doing wrong. That helps us keep it positive. Because correcting by its very nature is critical. You're telling someone they're not as good as they could be,” explained Zach Forrest, owner of CrossFit Max Effort in Las Vegas, Nevada, and a member of CrossFit Inc.'s Seminar Staff.
“Some people respond well to being criticized and taking harsh corrections, but the majority of people do not.”
Seeing and correcting, Forrest added, are the two most important skills for a coach to develop.
“You're only as effective as a coach as you can see and correct. The more that a beginner coach focuses on those specific two things, the broader of a foundation they have to grow from.“
Welcome to our brand new weekend roundup, Three of the Best! Every Sunday, we'll post up Breaking Muscle's top three articles of the week. These pieces have caught your attention throughout the last seven days. So here they are in one place for you to consume, digest, and enjoy.
Executive Producer Sevan Matossian once again gives us unprecedented access to the fittest athletes on the planet, catching CrossFit Games competitors in intimate moments and vulnerable positions.
In Part 2 of five, Matossian shadows competitors before and after Event 3-Murph-and asks prying questions about everything from nutrition and training to self-doubt and hair care.
Jonne Koski, who holds first place after two events, talks about his father's pressuring him to be an athlete.
“For a teenager he was a pain in the ass sometimes, but I'm really thankful that he didn't give up on me. I wouldn't be here without him,” he says.
In the moments before the event, Matossian eavesdrops on Games Director Dave Castro's pep talk with the athletes before Murph, a Hero workout named for Medal of Honor recipient Lt. Michael P. Murphy.
“This workout is something special. It's bigger than this weekend.”
Matossian is also there as athletes cross the finish line in varying degrees of distress, seeking water and shade.
“I've never felt so bad in my life,” Sara Sigmundsdottir says once she's able to speak.
Video by Sevan Matossian.
42min 2sec
Additional audio: “CrossFit Radio Episode 358” by Justin Judkins, published Dec. 6, 2014.
What's the best way to warm up for jogging? The answer used to be to stretch and start off slow. More recently, the answers are clouded in clinical studies, systematic reviews, and expert opinion.
The true answer is, it depends. Everyone is different. Everyone's jogging is different. Everyone's training history is different. Everyone's movement behaviour is different. And everyone requires an individual approach to waking up the nervous system so it can be at its most efficient.
Executive Producer Sevan Matossian once again gives us unprecedented access to the fittest athletes on the planet, catching CrossFit Games competitors in intimate moments and vulnerable positions.
In Part 1 of five, Matossian gets up close and sometimes uncomfortably personal as he interviews athletes before and after the Pier Paddle and Sandbag 2015 events.
Matossian-also Director of CrossFit Media-chats with 2014 second-place finisher Mat Fraser about the pressure that comes with being the favorite before catching him throwing up in the bushes because of nerves.
“It's good luck,” Scott Panchik says with a smile.
When asked whether she thought about quitting after failing to qualify for the Games in 2014, Lindsey Valenzuela is blunt: “I went through that for about a week, and then I was like, 'Fuck that. I want to be here.'”
Multi-year Games veteran Neal Maddox, who was stung by a stingray at Hermosa Beach, offers a pat summary of the pain brought on by the day's events: “Shit sucked, man.”
Video by Sevan Matossian.
1hr 13min 2sec
Additional reading: “Behind the Beasts” by Michael Brian, published July 14, 2015.
You wake up in the middle of the night and your shoulder is screaming as you lie on it. In the morning, you can barely bend over to put your Stance socks on after that heavy squat session yesterday. Box jumps and double-unders are impossible because of your heel pain. You've rolled, smashed, broke out the bands, taped, and enlisted a “super-friend”. Nothing works.
What gives? Is this the life of a CrossFitter?
“I'm not a teacher; only a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead - ahead of me as well as you.” George Bernard Shaw
There is a fine line between being a real coach and someone who is just strong and writes motivational quotes on the whiteboard, along with a “WOD.”
Mike Burgener offers quick tips to correct errors in the snatch and clean and jerk.
Just as it's possible to correct weightlifting errors, it's possible to cause errors when cues go awry.
Take, for example, the oft-used cue “finish!” What the coach is looking for is a natural position created by perfect balance and unbridled aggression. In a snatch or clean, a profile shot of the finish will show a lifter at full extension-ankles, knees and hips-with the body completely rigid.
Once the finish position is hit for just a fraction of a second, the lifter must move around the bar to the receiving position. “Around” is the key word.
“If he goes straight down, he's going to hit himself in the face or he's going to intuitively swing that bar around his face,” said Mike Burgener of CrossFit Weightlifting.
A rigid finish position with balance between bar and athlete will allow the lifter to efficiently and quickly move around the bar to the receiving position. In that finish position, a straight line can be drawn from the foot through the hips and torso to the head. This line is not vertical but leans backward slightly.
The position is sometimes called “layback,” but Burgener doesn't use that term.
“'Layback' is a misconception,” he said. “You've got to understand that that position is nothing more than the body being rigid. You're up on your toes really because you've driven so hard with your legs. That body now comes down and around the bar.”
The proper finish is naturally created by precise balance in the first and second pulls and an aggressive leg drive through the full foot to create extension of the ankles, knees and hips. Some coaches will improperly attempt to demonstrate this position with PVC or light barbells, thrusting the hips forward and pulling the shoulders back while balancing on their toes in a reverse C shape. It's very common for athletes to “practice finishing” by using this position, which is not seen in a good lift.
In this inefficient system, the body is not rigid because the hips have been thrust forward to help the coach or athlete maintain balance in a contrived position. The error becomes more pronounced if athletes are aggressive: The more the shoulders go back, the more the hips must go forward. If an athlete recreates this bowed position during a lift, it's likely the hips have moved horizontally during the scoop and caused the bar to be flung away from the athlete when the hips extended at the end of the second pull.
Burgener has a better way to demonstrate the proper finish position, and it involves standing with your back to a wall: “You make your body rigid-you stand at attention-and then you … step an inch, maybe and inch and a half away from the wall and fall into the wall.”
To help athletes find the position without a wall, Burgener has stood behind lifters with his hands about one inch away from their shoulders. He'll instruct them to stiffen the body and then lean back into his hands-they have to trust him, of course. From there, he adds a barbell.
“'I want you to put it at the high hang, and I want you to do a jump 1 millimeter off the ground, and I want your shoulders to finish into my hands.' So now when they jump, their hips go down and up and their shoulders have to hit my hands. I'm in the same position so they get that feel of what that position feels like under load,” he explained.
Keep in kind that the finish position looks slightly different as loads increase. Lighter loads will produce a finish position closer to vertical, while very heavy loads will produce a finish farther back from vertical. It's all about maintaining balance in the feet: Correct balance will naturally create the correct finish. That balance is first found in the set-up. If the bar-athlete system is not balanced throughout the first and second pulls, a proper finish is all but impossible due to improper weight distribution or poor bar path.
If the lifter stays precisely balanced as the bar moves from the floor, past the knees and to the mid-thigh, the athlete will naturally bring the hips to the bar in the scoop and then hit the correct finish position unconsciously. That, in turn, allows the lifter to efficiently punch under the bar at the right moment.
“You have to know what finish is. That's another position,” Burgener said. “Stance and grip are easy, but there's a million positions that you have to hit in the snatch. And you know what positions are affected by? The feet.”
About the Author: Mike Warkentin is managing editor of the CrossFit Journal and founder of CrossFit 204.
Photo credits (in order): Brian Sullivan/CrossFit Journal, Thomas Campitelli/CrossFit Journal, Matthew Townsend/CrossFit Journal, Matthew Townsend/CrossFit Journal.
When the Olympics came to London in 2012, not only did it provide the British public with an enthusiasm extravaganza rarely seen in a long and chronically reserved history, it brought one of the most prolific athletes of our time to our backyard: Usain Bolt.
Colleen Baz presents CrossFit's DeCO's program for the Girls Athletic Leadership School.
In 2014, CrossFit DeCO began its relationship with the Girls Athletic Leadership School. GALS is a unique school with its curriculum rooted in the importance of movement and the mind-body connection. Four days a week we are teaching this group of teenage girls how to move well and how to feel confident. What we couldn't have imagined was how CrossFit would impact them in self-awareness, energy level, community and pride. We have created a safe space for a group going through a notoriously awkward phase in life and helped them understand they are capable and in control of their individual CrossFit journey. -Leslie Friedman, CrossFit DeCO
We are accepting submissions throughout 2016. Selected photographers will receive US$500, and their affiliates or garage gyms will receive $500 in gear from Rogue Fitness. To submit your photo essay, read the instructions here.
As my generation of baby boomers goes not so gently into that good night, an increasing number of “seniors” have expressed interest in sports activities. The interest in my sport of weightlifting has shown considerable growth in recent years. As I've been dealing with people in this group more consistently, I wanted to share some thoughts about coaching them.
The award-winning author sat down with Andréa Maria Cecil to talk about his career, his upcoming book and the task of correcting nutrition science.
It took six years and countless reclusive hours for investigative science journalist and best-selling author Gary Taubes to finish his latest book: “The Case Against Sugar.”
He calls it “a prosecutor's argument.” The work opens by examining whether sugar should be perceived as a food or a drug. Taubes is now fact-checking the book before publication.
The 59-year-old native New Yorker who today lives in Oakland, California, also penned the oft-cited “Good Calories, Bad Calories” and “Why We Get Fat.” He's won the Science in Society Award of the National Association of Science Writers three times and was awarded an MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellowship for 1996-97.
I first talked to Taubes in August 2015 for an article focused on the folly of basing a human being's nutrition plan on the calories-in-calories-out law of thermodynamics. The very next month I talked to Taubes again, this time about the vilification of dietary fat. He was a great interview-a perpetual skeptic with an affinity for information mining and a belief that we are all making this diet thing too complicated. In this third interview, I talked to Taubes in person at a middle-school library in Capitola, California. He was the keynote speaker at the Santa Cruz County Office of Education's seventh annual Together for Kindergarten, an event that this year was focused on child nutrition-in particular, sugar. Attendees included preschool and kindergarten teachers, as well as K-12 administrators.
During his hour, Taubes focused on sugar. He called it his “buzzkill lecture” in which he alluded to sugar as an addictive drug not unlike cigarettes. Taubes is a former smoker of 20 years.
He noted that eating sugar never makes him feel full.
“There's no point at which I will say, 'I've had enough,'” he explained. “You'll stop eating it either when you feel guilty or you feel sick.”
Welcome to our brand new weekend roundup, Three of the Best! Every Sunday, we'll post up Breaking Muscle's top three articles of the week. These pieces have caught your attention throughout the last seven days. So here they are in one place for you to consume, digest, and enjoy.
CrossFit RRG helps John McPherson and P3 CrossFit set precedent by fighting off rhabdomyolysis lawsuit.
In September 2011, Adam Gottlieb walked into P3 CrossFit, John McPherson's affiliate in Houston, Texas. Under the supervision of one of P3's trainers, Gottlieb performed a free introductory workout that consisted of a 500-m row, 40 air squats, 30 sit-ups, 20 push-ups and 10 pull-ups. Gottlieb became nauseous during the session and vomited, but he finished the workout and went home.
Later that day, he was admitted to the hospital, and he was released four days later with a differential diagnosis that included “exertional rhabdomyolysis.”
Almost a year later, Gottlieb filed a lawsuit claiming McPherson of P3 CrossFit and CrossFit Inc. were guilty of gross negligence.
In many ways this is a simple story. A pair of personal-injury attorneys saw CrossFit as a ripe target, so they crafted a story of loss and hardship caused by a reckless and indifferent fitness company and its affiliate. They filed suit, the suit went to trial, and they lost.
But to anyone with a vested interest in the health of the CrossFit community, the story is much larger: This lawsuit was the first of its kind, and our anticipation of its arrival included setting up our Risk Retention Group (RRG) in 2009.
Commercial insurers might have cut costs by settling this claim rather than fighting it because they have no interest in defending the CrossFit name and program. They simply want to minimize losses, and settlements often cost less than going to trial. This approach would have set a dangerous precedent that would have opened affiliates up to attack from unscrupulous individuals who see easy money on the table.
CrossFit and the RRG were ready for the lawsuit and fought for a ruling that would preserve CrossFit's reputation and deter additional attacks. By responding immediately and vigorously, the RRG ensured that the correct precedent was set for the future.
CrossFit RRG helps John McPherson set precedent by fighting off rhabdomyolysis lawsuit.
In September 2011, Adam Gottlieb walked into P3 CrossFit, John McPherson's affiliate in Houston, Texas. Under the supervision of one of P3's trainers, Gottlieb performed a free introductory workout that consisted of a 500-m row, 40 air squats, 30 sit-ups, 20 push-ups and 10 pull-ups. Gottlieb became nauseous during the session and vomited, but he finished the workout and went home.
Later that day, he was admitted to the hospital, and he was released four days later with a differential diagnosis that included “exertional rhabdomyolysis.”
Almost a year later, Gottlieb filed a lawsuit claiming McPherson of P3 CrossFit and CrossFit Inc. were guilty of gross negligence.
In many ways this is a simple story. A pair of personal-injury attorneys saw CrossFit as a ripe target, so they crafted a story of loss and hardship caused by a reckless and indifferent fitness company and its affiliate. They filed suit, the suit went to trial, and they lost.
But to anyone with a vested interest in the health of the CrossFit community, the story is much larger: This lawsuit was the first of its kind, and our anticipation of its arrival included setting up our Risk Retention Group (RRG) in 2009.
Commercial insurers might have cut costs by settling this claim rather than fighting it because they have no interest in defending the CrossFit name and program. They simply want to minimize losses, and settlements often cost less than going to trial. This approach would have set a dangerous precedent that would have opened affiliates up to attack from unscrupulous individuals who see easy money on the table.
CrossFit and the RRG were ready for the lawsuit and fought for a ruling that would preserve CrossFit's reputation and deter additional attacks. By responding immediately and vigorously, the RRG ensured that the correct precedent was set for the future.
Follow CrossFit athlete Steve Kois as he competes in the 2015 World Long Drive Championship, in which heavy hitters ditch the putters and irons to send balls over 400 yards downfield with the driver.
Kois, who trains at Ionic CrossFit in Bonita Springs, Florida, discovered CrossFit in 2013 when he watched his dad's recording of the 2013 Reebok CrossFit Games.
“After I saw how CrossFit combines so many different disciplines to the goal of raising one's fitness as high as possible, I kind of loved it right away,” he explains.
Kois is a personal trainer at a Florida golf course and says he uses CrossFit methodology with his clients.
“There is definitely sort of a beginning of … awareness that an increased fitness-functional fitness-will help your golf game,” he says. “A lot of people in the past have done like standing cable rotations to get better at golf, and that doesn't carry over at all. I can guarantee you at the Long Drive Championship nobody does standing cable rotations. That's not a beneficial exercise.”
The CrossFit spirit also inspires Kois to achieve his goal of winning the Long Drive Championship.
“The CrossFit community, more than any other I've experienced, has that central objective of drawing together to be the best that you can be,” he says.
Video by Mike Koslap.
5min 43sec
Additional reading: “Ship Shape” by Roger King, published April 29, 2009.
Coaching and big egos are synonymous. Aside from actors and musicians, I am hard-pressed to think of another group of professionals who think as highly of themselves as we do. It's equal parts laughable and sad.
Mike Burgener offers quick tips to correct errors in the snatch and clean and jerk.
Most of us have seen the guy who can do a kettlebell swing with a 300-lb. barbell. The lift is called a clean, but it lacks the grace and speed evident when skilled lifters pulls their bodies around and under a perfectly placed bar with lizard-like speed.
While ugly, the swinging clean is impressive because the lift likely requires more raw strength than cleaning 300 lb. properly. But it's really the equivalent of using a sledgehammer to drive a finishing nail into a cabinet, and the lifter would no doubt be able to move larger loads more quickly if he or she put them in the right place with efficient mechanics.
While it's tempting to immediately attribute the error to an early scoop, Mike Burgener of CrossFit Weightlifting suggests coaches pay more attention to athlete positioning before the bar even leaves the floor.
“One reason athletes jump forward is because of their setup,” he said.
Burgener said he teaches athletes to have the balance of their weight on the mid-foot, with a subtle shift just behind mid-foot as the knees get out of the way of the bar during the first pull.
If athletes do not balance their weight properly in the setup, it's very difficult to get the bar in the correct spot. If the weight is too far back toward the heel, it can be impossible to get the knees out of the way-a fact that sometimes sends very aggressive pullers limping to the first-aid kit with trickles of blood running down their shins.
If the weight is too far forward toward the ball of the foot, the hips often shoot upward during the first pull and pressure increases in the forefoot. At that point, it's very inefficient and nearly impossible to get the weight back in the right spot, and the “lifter” is more accurately a passenger who's going to have to employ brute strength and a bit of luck to find a way under a barbell that's flung away from him or her. The bar is, in effect, pulling the athlete-not the other way around.
“When they go to jump that barbell or explode that barbell, the bar goes way out in front and they have to go jump forward to get it,” Burgener said.
To fix the error, Burgener said he makes sure the athlete has the weight centered in the middle of the foot from the setup to the end of the first pull. When the bar is at the knees, the weight is balanced from the middle of the foot to slightly back of mid-foot. That balance would ensure that a coach could neither pull nor push an athlete forward or back at the hang position.
“If … the weight is on the balls of the feet off the ground to mid-thigh and I went to pull him, he'd be automatically pulled forward. And if I wanted to push him (from behind), the same thing would take place,” Burgener explained.
The coach said some athletes need to be cued to put the weight back on the heels-an exaggeration that sometimes helps drive home the point. But it's also not uncommon for the “weight back” cue cause athletes to pull their toes off the floor and place all the weight in the heels. That error also leads to a lack of balance, and overcompensating athletes should be cued to keep the weight centered.
Finally, some athletes who get the weight in the right spot don't keep it there long enough, shifting forward when the weight should be held back just behind mid-foot.
“Now he's rolling on the balls of his feet too soon … and he's not letting that bar clear his knees. He's not staying back and he's not driving off the full foot. He's trying to go too fast, and as soon as he starts extending the hips the weight shifts too much forward, and now he's not going to be able to get that adequate finish without swinging the bar.”
Burgener has often said 90 percent of all missed lifts are attributed to the feet, but it's something that's easy to forget when athletes start moving and barbells and body parts distract the eye.
Coaches are encouraged to evaluate lifters like a builder evaluates a house: If the roof is crooked, make sure the foundation is level.
About the Author: Mike Warkentin is managing editor of the CrossFit Journal and founder of CrossFit 204.
Photo credits (in order): Shaun Cleary/CrossFit Journal, Mike Warkentin/CrossFit Journal, Thomas Campitelli/CrossFit Journal, Thomas Campitelli/CrossFit Journal.
