What does r/fitness not understand about CrossFit?

@richard11 Think of it like dampener on a rower. Strict pull ups = dampener at 10, a butterfly kip is dampener at 1. At dampener 1 you can move quickly and the limiter becomes your breathing and efficiency in the cycling. At dampener 10 muscle fatigue will set in very quickly.

Butterfly/kipping makes the pullup easier but requires some pretty good Gymnastics skill/technique to keep it going. Strict should always be taught first and the when they have capacity the kip can be brought in to speed it up.
 
@richard11 The thing is, it's actually harder to do a set of 10 full ROM pullups without swinging your body much.

And while the butterfly kip is kinda crazy, if you goal is to go from fully extended arms to chin over bar as fast as possible, you can do this motion faster with the butterfly kip than with the traditional swing you do with high volume pullups.

Is it a functional movement? Honestly, not really but that's debatable. I've heard that it somehow contributes to a stronger Clean.
 
@richard11 In general, most guys outside of Crossfit only care about aesthetics and strength. They don't have any concept of other dimensions of fitness (endurance, power, mobility, skill work, cardio) hence they see Crossfit as suboptimal for their 2 simple goals. To be clear, Crossfit is suboptimal if you are a bodybuilder or want to compete in Strong Man. But I think the average person would greatly benefit from broadening their definition of fitness.
 
@aaronemill12
Crossfit is suboptimal if you are a bodybuilder or want to compete in Strong Man.

This is 100% the truth, and they never really look at it from the other perspective. No, doing crossfit will never make someone into an elite powerlifter or gymnast or triathlete.

BUT a competitive crossfitter will always beat a strongman at a 5k. That same crossfitter will always beat a bodybuilder at a 1RM snatch. The same crossfitter will always beat a marathoner at a max set of pull ups (strict or otherwise). The crossfitter will always beat all of them at a capacity test like Karen. Brute Strength did a series demonstrating this with Jacob Heppner.

It's never been about being optimal at any one thing. It's about being moderately good at everything. That's how crossfit defines fitness - breadth, not depth.
 
@aaronemill12 This is a very good answer.

I'll also add that there is also a large subsection of the fitness world who only prioritize endurance (runners, triathletes, etc).
 
@scaredvvv I mean long is the relative part. But yeah I know wayyyy more people where cardiovascular endurance makes up the majority of their fitness regime.

Especially as they get older.
 
@aaronemill12 CF noob (a few years in, took a break, back now) here. What CF gave me was that varied dimension of fitness. My activities are just hiking, walking (8+ miles at a time), maybe some jogging, some biking, surfing, and SUP. When I was at my best while in CF my hiking improved, I was less winded. But paddling to surf, that changed a lot. I'd run out of steam but with CF I was able to paddle out through so much easier.
 
@aaronemill12 Maybe for the open classes but for any of the weight class strongman/women crossfit is a great complement to strongman training. Being in shape and being able to recover and working on mobility and all the other things crossfit makes you do are things strongman/women should be doing anyway.

Strongman is my main sport, and I only just started crossfit consistently nut it's only gonna benefit me and my training by training both.
 
@richard11 Pretty much anything. CF to them is just butterfly pull ups done poorly. You can’t convince them otherwise. To the average globo gym goer CF has no benefits and has a 100% rate of injury.
 
@richard11 I started going to CrossFit because for 50$ more than my gym membership I get a coach every day, and a class full of wonderful people pushing me to push myself. I found it to be a lot more engaging than being surrounded by people in headphones doing their own thing.
 
@richard11 All non (and some) CrossFit athletes associate CrossFit with crappy butterfly pull ups and shitty weight lifting techniques.

Most don’t understand that those are used mainly in competitions to gain an edge.

But if they were to go to a regular box and see a “regular class workout” they’d probably change their mind, at least that’s what happened with me. I didn’t like CrossFit because the risk of injury and those damn butterfly pull-ups. But now it’s one of my favorite things.
 
@richard11 Everyone is going to have a degree of ignorance when it comes to communities that are outside of their own.

I remember the early days of Crossfit when people used to brag about not doing bicep curls. In reality, bicep curls (for example) are a great accessory movement for people that might need that to address strength deficiencies that might exist in other movements.

I also think that most people on the subReddit are of the opinion that Crossfit is the only answer for any given person’s physical wellness. In reality, any training modality an individual chooses is perfectly fine so long as they are enjoying it and practicing it with a degree of consistency.

At the end of the day, I think it’s important to understand that the world is much bigger than the one that you live in.
 
@richard11 That the knowledge passed down from the “one weekend certified” coach is more valuable than the bullshit tribal knowledge passed down from dude bro to dude bro at every lifting gym.
 
@seattlehope I did a 3 month Cert III in fitness in Australia at TAFE (Community College) as well as my CF-1 seminar around the same time period.

Over the CF-1, we broke down the movements, practiced them and then later got to coach them.

During the Cert III course they pointed at the Gym and said have at it... When I asked what the requirements of the push-up were (range of motion/points of performance) even the teachers who were personal trainers outside of eduction just kinda shrugged.
 
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