Crossfit Inc. suspends use of Facebook and associated properties
crossfit.com
crossfit.com
> The voluntary CrossFit community of 15,000 affiliates and millions of individual adherents stands steadfastly and often alone against an unholy alliance of academia, government, and multinational food, beverage, and pharmaceutical companies.
There are two type of crossfitters - those who have gotten a permanent and serious injury, and those who are going to get one.
I am guessing he doesn't push himself to the limit.
I really do think it is an obviously anti-intellectual consumer cult. I know many people who have tried it and decided it was not reasonable.
Edit:
I think my comment comes across as a generalized put-down, which rubbed people the wrong way and garnered the downvotes.
The experience I shared is truthful. Every single person I know that has really fallen into the Crossfit consumer cult is as far as I can tell a person who proves themselves to be susceptible to morally bankrupt, intellectually inept ideas. All of these people legitimately lack critical thinking skills. That's my own experience.
As far as the actual regime goes, it is pretty-well established to be anti-intellectual and flagrantly dismissive of science. They advertise this.
Yes some very fit people also do it and profit off of it. Some very rich people also promote MLM, which is a consumer cult deserving of similar, but worse criticism.
Should I not be able to criticize people who fall into MLM consumer cults? I think we need to allow criticism.
What about scientology, or other religious cults? What about other anti-intellectual cult of ideas like flat earth, anti-vax or phrenology?
Tell me exactly where the line is drawn, and why.
I do think they are worth considering, but also worth criticizing when they're proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be worse than useless.
what is anyone's goal when partaking in exercise? And how about joining a club? Look at the CrossFit Games winners - do you think they've achieved nothing?
I don't partake in it, for the record. And I do acknowledge that many of the exercises seem ill-advised. But I made an account after like 6 years of lurking to point out that you're being pretty dogmatic in your criticisms of dogmas.
I do think it's blatantly obvious that Crossfit is anti-intellectual consumer cult. They advertise this themselves.
It's a bit much to say every single person who does XFit is stupid, but I was sharing my own observations honestly.
Have you met any MLM people? Would you not say the same? Crossfit intentionally dismisses science and warnings related to potential problems with health and injury. Is that not unethical?
Also, all of my negative Crossfit comments seem to have been hit with the same exact number of downvotes here. I wouldn't expect it, but also wouldn't be surprised if there is some brigaiding here.
Such luddites.
Those are probably the vocal ones. Plenty do crossfit and don't harp about it to everyone they meet -- it's just a form of exercise, like running or going for a swim.
And by bad it doesn’t mean they don’t know what they should be doing but rather cave into the demands of their clients that want quick results and to feel the pump.
Just look at how many people go straight into weight lifting with compound exercises without first spending months working on stability, flexibility and burst speed/power.
Then what happens is that they get into a worse state and hit a wall even if they now can bench press 1.5 their body weight.
You would be much better off benching only 100 lbs while being able to stand straight against a wall while keeping your lower back, shoulder blades, elbows and the back of your palm against the wall comfortably throughout a shoulder press.
I’ve literally seen people getting so stiff after “training” for 6 months that I’m not sure if even 2 years of corrective exercises could bring them back to their starting point yet alone to the point where they can start building muscles safely.
And while in the mid 20’s to mid 30’s they might not notice it once they hit their 40’s and couldn’t stand straight because their lats and delts were developed incorrectly and they have no core they sure will.
Some CrossFit gyms have more offerings than just the traditional WoDs. E.g.: your friend might have be mixing mobility training, strength, cardio workouts.
Also, your friend might have latent injuries or have to stop for a week or so due pain/soreness. It is just you are not aware of those.
Some people are anatomically more fit for certain exercises than others. I'll skip any days with dead lifts because it is an exercise I cannot compromise proper form. So, I protect myself even if for many CF coaches it is just temporary weakness I could improve.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6201188/ [2] http://bionics.seas.ucla.edu/education/Rowing/Injury_2004_01...
Judging by how those idiots abuse gym equipment I’d expect poorly, but prove me wrong.
It's much higher. Even the studies show it: https://www.strengthandconditioningresearch.com/wp-content/u...
https://www.strengthandconditioningresearch.com/2014/07/08/i...
I’m thinking an intense workout with good form and control vs. a standard CrossFit workout.
A standard CrossFit without is done with good form and control.
For instance, if you were asked to perform a workout which required handstand push-ups and you couldn't do them, you could scale to a box and do a more triangular movement, or you could grab some dumbbells and push-press. If a movement said 100kg deadlift and you can only comfortably deadlift 40kg then you would use 40kg instead.
Most coaches will talk through this and if you have questions, they'll mostly be happy to answer. Of course there are some coaches out there which aren't doing their job correctly, but most of them are really good at what they do.
That wasn't true several years ago during the Uncle Rhabdo phase, and Crossfit only changed its tune because of the overwhelming bad press about injury rates. Back then, it was about doing exercises as fast and as many times as possible.
[1] https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Fulltext/2003/05001/U_S__...
My personal injury was a pinched sciatic nerve brought on by a session of improper deadlifting. I made the mistake of rushing through a workout near when I was lifting my heaviest. Took about 3 months for the pain to go away.
But yeah I've also seen the videos on youtube of people doing heavy barbell back squats on a bosu ball and similar, to use the technical term, stupid shit that will get you hurt.
Mark Rippetoe has one of the better criticisms of CrossFit: it's just an exercise program, not a training program. Proof is that the athletes that compete in and win the Crossfit games don't actually do Crossfit to prepare, they have specific training regimens for those games.
People, specially who are new, haven’t gotten serious injuries, or just don’t understand how exercise can get you high, tend to fall in the WoD trap from my observations.
There have been a great mindset change with CrossFit in terms of sharing good knowledge, welcoming new members no matter their level and mixing everyone together but still everyday seems to be race day in CrossFit.
Specifically, this study conflicts with several other studies that found significantly higher rates of injury (and which this study acknowledges), including 2 studies which found a 20% rate of injury and 50% rate of injury for Crossfit athletes, respectively, using controlled observational samples rather than the self-reported, self-selected sample of this study.
Anecdotally, I don't know any current Crossfitters without overuse injuries--including those who go to the "safe" gyms. I also know a larger number of former Crossfitters, all of whom stopped because of injury.
Can you provide a citation?
Isn't crossfit different depending on where you go?
I believe it was invented by some European guy... who did stuff with kettlebells. And most of those exercises are good.
I think the American variant is the one that's dangerous. (Or am I misinformed here?)
In my observation, and this is at many gyms (btw I don't do Crossfit), very few people do every rep of a pull up from a true dead hang. Kipping is silly looking, but the technique does allow you to progress your way into a muscle up, kind of like a push press can help you train your strict press past what you otherwise could.
Kipping only leads you to kipping muscle ups. Go on YouTube and see examples of real muscle ups from dead hangs with no momentum. That is true strength, and a worthy goal. The sooner you stop kipping, the faster you can get there.
You're absolutely right in that you need to start somewhere, and a properly instructed kip can definitely help there. But you could also start by doing negatives of the partial exercises (start pulled/pushed up and lower yourself down in a controlled manner), which can be at the same time used to teach proper form and naturally transition into a full muscle up.
Once again, it's the classic Crossfit problem: if you do it properly and controlled, it is a nice exercise regimen. According to most anecdotal evidence, a lot of people don't, though.
Edit: retiredcoder also replied with bands etc. to support in the beginning, which is obviously also a good method and, now that I think of it, one I've often seen in my gym. In the same vein, there's usually a pull up machine somewhere in the back that will support you by using a counterweight on the way up, though here you'll have the usual discussion regarding machine/no machine.
Same goes with handstand push-up with against the wall and that kick up. That’s one of the hardest exercises in gymnastics from my experience, why do one want to do that in a HIIT is beyond me.
As for scaling, I never consider not compromising but actually reinforcing proper form even overthinking it, to prepare one for load and speed (when things tend to go awry). As tools and techniques to scale down, there are bands, eccentrics, Grease the groove, etc.
Ps: you seem to have been downvoted but your question seemed legit to me. I hear that a lot from gym mates
You have to accept that it will be a long time before you can do even one proper muscle up, and most people just aren’t willing to so they kip and tell themselves they can do “muscle ups”.
Dribbling looks hilarious too, and basketball is supposed to be a passing game[1], but dribbling isn't illegal and gives the player a competitive advantage in the same vein.
They saw it in CrossFit and suggested a quick-fix. On all the time I fitnessed, they were the only ones that saw it.
Just my 2 cents
What a weird and unnecessary rant.
Weirdly, FB banned a group advocating against 'fat makes you fat' in 2019.
> Recently, Facebook deleted without warning or explanation the Banting7DayMealPlan user group. The group has 1.65 million users who post testimonials and other information regarding the efficacy of a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet. While the site has subsequently been reinstated (also without warning or explanation), Facebook’s action should give any serious person reason to pause, especially those of us engaged in activities contrary to prevailing opinion.
I find that ysually people that use buzzwords like “antivaxxer” aren’t all that curious about the topic, and prefer to hide behind consensus opinion whilst castigating inquisitive people that look at the evidence themselves as ignorant and crazy.
If you want to make a case for your idea on any topic, put money on that topic and professors and researchers work towards making a case for it (this is less true about math and (maybe?) physics but the farther you get from those topics, the more impact money has on results and ideas).
Academia (mostly? in the US) is just yet another institution that is solely driven by money.
It's like you're right, but completely wrong at the same time... At it's core, scientific research should not have an agenda. Researchers are normally happy to do important things and they have good ideas.
Yes, the funding is a really big issue and lack of needed followups to interesting results of the initial sponsor often happens when the sponsor is not involved anymore. Researchers essentially either have to work for someone or come up with topics and then beg potentially-interested people for money. (aka research grants)
Academia being driven by money has less to do with academia and more with lack of money it needs to work on independent research.
> Researchers are normally happy to do important things and they have good ideas.
That's not how research works, however---at least not what I experienced. Usually a goal is the prerequisite of the funding. If that goal doesn't align up with the interest of the company/or the funder, there won't be any funding to begin with. That's a lie that researchers tell themselves, that they have the freedom to work on w/e they find amusing.
> Academia being driven by money has less to do with academia and more with lack of money it needs to work on independent research.
Sure. If academia was a utopia that wasn't so dependent on money (and fame), science would take over. That utopia isn't anywhere in sight, however. Try going through academic job market: a popular question you get is how you are going to bring money into the university. If you don't have a good answer, you won't get a position. As a professor, you will be spending 80%+ of your time writing grants or, as you put it, begging different companies for money. The other 20% is spent on classes and bureaucratic headaches. A good professor that I knew had a long rant on how she never gets to do research anymore (from a very well known university).
People twist words and data to make their point, get a publication, make a name for themselves, get more money, and repeat the cycle, all in the name of research and science.
My point isn't that the academic people as a whole are bad, but many of them are trying to survive and are willing to do w/e it takes to bring in money. It is very easy to abuse the bunch when people are trying to survive.
All I am suggesting is that you need to be critical when reading academic papers. Regardless of the content, topic, etc. read and decide for yourself---if it is a field that you are proficient in---or read opinions on counter points.
They don't have to be as long as others can verify their findings. At some point, mistakes and dishonesty should be treated the same way.
> Usually a goal is the prerequisite of the funding. If that goal doesn't align up with the interest of the company/or the funder, there won't be any funding to begin with.
I think we're very much in agreement. I just don't put that as academia's problem, but rather explicitly on how we fund it. A.k.a blame the game not the player.
CrossFit’s “Holy War”: The Rise And Fall Of Its Science Crusader https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/russell-b...
But if the researchers don't communicate effectively with the rest of us, or with our physicians, then why do they even bother going to work in the morning? It's not my job to read scientific journals, and the doctors are as confused by the barrage of junk science as anyone else.
Smug, uninformed tool for corrupt authority
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...
I'd like to remind everyone here, in case you are considering crossfit, that several years ago they caused a rash of cases of rhabdomyolysis. So in response they created a clown character called "Uncle Rhabdo" which they attached to propaganda that tried to convince their members that this possibly fatal condition isn't serious. Seriously:
http://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-rhabdomyolysis-...
"There is a lively online community posting selfies from hospital and who consider a rhabdo diagnosis as a badge of honour, showing their dedication to exercise."
I have several issues with CF but this idea that rhabdo is glorified is not true.
Had to sign a pretty sensible waiver upon joining.
There was a section describing the symptoms of rhabdo, letting me know in NO uncertain terms that it was a potentially fatal medical emergency. Honestly, I'd never heard of it before reading that waiver. Rather than encouraging me to experience rhabo, Crossfit gave me some crucial warnings there!
Safety's a big deal at the Crossfit gym I go to. I'm out of shape and the instructors pay special attention (and suggest reduced/modified versions of exercises) to make things work for me.
"There is a lively online community posting selfies
from hospital and who consider a rhabdo diagnosis as
a badge of honour, showing their dedication to exercise."
Imagine two violin students comparing their painful callouses. Or software engineers exchanging horror stories about late-night debugging battles with Internet Explorer 6 or talking about screwups where they accidentally deleted some live data. Or firefighters comparing all the scars they've accumulated over the years.
Athletes are no different. Shit happens, sometimes you get hurt and then you laugh about it because it's all part of the journey. That's how you get through it. Screwed up my ankle playing tennis the other week. First thing I did was share it with my fellow tennis buds. We help each other and share the pain and laugh.
I don't want to stereotype Hacker News readers, because a lot of engineer-types do enjoy sports and exercise, but I would imagine there are a lot of HN readers who would have a hard time understanding athletes laughing about their injuries since they've never been there. Just like a pro football player might not be able to understand how/why HN readers willingly spend those late nights hunched over a keyboard. For those of us who straddle both worlds, it's kind of funny, because we know the folks living in those worlds aren't nearly as different from their counterparts as they think they are.
I do not actively participate in CrossFit, but sometimes I add some CrossFit-like sets into my training.
> The voluntary CrossFit community of 15,000 affiliates and millions of individual adherents stands steadfastly and often alone against an unholy alliance of academia, government, and multinational food, beverage, and pharmaceutical companies.
has always existed in this organization.
This is plain false. Here's the article by Glassman: http://journal.crossfit.com/2005/10/crossfit-induced-rhabdo-...
It does not claim the condition is not serious. It states plainly, I quote "a potentially lethal systemic meltdown" and "It can disable, maim, and even kill.". Yes, it also has a clown picture - if one can't take a bit of dark humor along with a serious topic maybe one should limit oneself to reading young adult fiction about vampire romance for now and wait until one can.
> There is a lively online community posting selfies from hospital
I've been doing crossfit for years. I've been reading social media from people in our gym and other gyms. Not once I've even heard or know anybody who heard about anybody who was posting selfies from hospital as a badge of honor. I do not deny, maybe there are people like that - there are 350 million people in US, and whatever form of crazy you can think of, there's probably a hundred people that have it. You can probably find two or three of them if you look hard enough. But presenting it as if it's a typical occurrence and in any way characterizes what happens in a typical crossfit gym is either profoundly ignorant if one never been in one (and they why write about it?) or profoundly dishonest if one have been.
I'm not trying to propagandize anything - it works for me, but if it doesn't work for you, there's absolutely no problem with that. But heading this rhabdo baloney dug up again and again is just plain stupid. It's ok to not like any system or movement or hipster fad or whatever you call it, doesn't matter - if it's not your thing, fine, no problem at all. But one doesn't have to recycle old stupid myths again and again to do it.
As for your Rhabdo claims, I’ve was hearing this same crap when I started CrossFit in high school nearly a decade ago. In all my time doing CrossFit I never saw anybody get or try to get Rhabdo. Iirc Crossfit is a loose organization with many affiliates of varying quality. Sure some group of shitheads were shitheads, so what? One time a Burger King employee was mean to me...
First, CrossFit is sort of presenting FB as a public health threat. Obviously it is, but I don’t hear a lot of entities make that argument.
Second, CrossFit is doing a role reversal, saying that they will place FB under review, they will decide if FB is an appropriate platform for them. In a way, they’re assuming a dominating position (yes everyone knows FB is bigger/stronger, but you can still scare bears off by shouting and looking large, and even weaker players can find upper hands or shift position). That’s a strange take on receiving FB’s perceived abuse that I have not observed before.
I have friends on FB who are fanatical about CrossFit. They write and post photos about workouts, events, and achievements. They seem to have limited use for FB otherwise.
With their sizable national (and increasingly global) community of dedicated fitness enthusiasts, I suspect CrossFit has better-than-even odds of launching a wildly successful sports-and-fitness-oriented social network. They would be able to instantly attract a large member base, have a presence in every metropolitan area, and those people would recruit their friends onto the network.
Edit to add: from what I can tell, CrossFit is a social network already. Except its a real-life network with people who spend a lot of time together.
Obsessive people are gonna obsess, and some will be drawn to Crossfit, but I've seen nothing more obsessive about Crossfit than other sports I've participated in like tennis or hockey. And honestly I'm not sure any of them hold a candle to software development in terms of obsessiveness... never known anybody to exercise 60 hours a week, but I know a lot of coders and gamers who hunch over a keyboard for that long. (Including me)
> move to multi-level-marketing
I've never heard of any kind of referral-based or MLM opportunity in crossfit.
> chronic injuries usually only seen in professional sports people
Ultimately, a lot of athletes including me are making a reasoned choice. You can't really control a lot of things about your body, but you can definitely control your cardio fitness and your muscle mass to an extent. There are some risks involved with furthering your cardio and strength but also massive rewards.
> including one friend whos wife divorced him because he didnt share her love of CrossFit
I definitely understand that it can cause friction when one partner puts effort into healthier living and one doesn't. I've been on both sides of that coin. Right now my wife's taken the lead, I need to catch up.
I've watched friends die because they refused to be proactive about diet, health, and exercise in general. Never had a friend die from exercising yet. Although some of them really ought to talk a bit less about it if you ask me.
Where I started training (and I was like the definition of "out of shape") the coaches preach form > intensity every step of the way and actually forbid you to do any dynamic movement before you have not sufficently mastered the strict equivalent. That said, I have also met Crossfitters that can do ten unbroken kipping pull ups and not a single strict one, which is obviously incredibly irresponsible and stupid.
I have now moved away from doing regular CrossFit workouts for many of the reasons listed in this thread, but I can honestly say, that changing my habits from couchpotato to fit dude would have not happened if it wasn't for the community and the style of training I have encoutered there. I learned how to backsquat there, I learned how to lock in my shoulders there, I learned how to stretch there, I learned about the basics of training methodology there. This would have never happend if I would have just gone to Planet Fitness (or whatever) on my own.
"Facebook is acting in the service of food and beverage industry interests by deleting the accounts of communities that have identified the corrupted nutritional science responsible for unchecked global chronic disease."
science is responsible for disease, listen to us instead
Sure there is lots of bad advice floating around - but claiming a conspiracy requires some hard evidence be put forth.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...
This is sorta disingenuous. A layman can't tell if they're doing an exercise correctly without instruction, and you can do something correctly 99 times and still becomes seriously injured by doing it incorrectly one more time. I'm not trying to make an argument that you shouldn't exercise but it's definitely not "simple."
A layman should not do them w/out instruction and a good coach will not let laymen do regular workouts until they have mastered the basics.
A good coach also observes a new student's abilities and advises them how to scale the movement properly as they progress. A bad coach does not.
for the same reasons, you should never attempt Olympic weightlifting movements w/out a coach, i.e. snatch and clean+jerk. In fact, I feel pretty strongly you should not learn how to squat or deadlift w/out a coach or personal trainer.
Workouts with high volumes of technical movements are regularly programmed. RFT workouts with 60 snatches. High volumes of kipping pull-ups. Form goes to shit when you get tired, period, whether you are running or snatching, but being on a clock does not lend itself to slowing down, setting up right, and doing a technical movement with good form. It’s completely antithetical to it.
The coaching quality at CF gyms is widely varied and in my experience most of the folks regardless of their great intentions have no business coaching that many people doing that many complex movements.
There are much safer ways CF could be doing things. Ditch snatches and kipping pull-ups for a start. Snatches are dangerous when done improperly and kipping pull-ups are specifically bad for shoulder joints in individuals who have not built up enough strength to do several strict pullups.
i also agree that many coaches are terrible.
Says who? Links, please.
And considering that crossfit isn't anything substantially different that things available in other disciplines (weightlifting, etc...), i don't expect it to be substantially different even in the outcomes.
I agree the mud slinging in this post is pretty ridiculous, but I certainly like it when major brands refuse to do business with other brands that are harmful to society. For example, those that chose not to advertise on Fox News.
Boycotts have a long, storied history.
If I were to weigh the two companies and their potential harm that can be done to society, globally, Facebook breaks the scale.
Is it really a big surprise to see CrossFit, a company run by people, to come to similar conclusions that inspired things like #DeleteFacebook?
Addendum: I guess the flood of downvotes on this is similarly unsurprising. HN will defend to the death Facebook's private property rights, while absolutely slamming a CrossFit'ers rights to do what they want with their own body. Wait a second, I thought this place skewed Progressive politically... ...I smell a hypocrisy.
Is Crossfit a cult? At first I thought the article was a parody or something
Way to go team!
It's slightly weird to only find this an issue _after_ your Facebook page with 1.65m fans has been deleted.
The tone of this piece comes over as really off and aggressive generally.
That manifesto I just read there was pretty scary and cult-like, complete with totally off-topic jabs at socialism and uh, science?.
I'm having a hard time reconciling that with what my wife and I have experienced at our local Crossfit gym, which has been among the most supportive and pressure-free experiences I've ever had in my life.
To be honest, nobody's ever even mentioned diet to me there and I'm pretty overweight. The Crossfit diet seems to be low-carb, high-protein, high-vegetable which frankly is very sensible and not exactly extreme.
One thing I'd been warned about before doing Crossfit was that they don't always teach proper form for weighted exercises and that therefore there's an injury risk. I've been very wary about that. But the instructors at my gym are super responsive and proactive when it comes to my form. High marks there.
As others have said, Crossfit gyms are independently operated. Culture is going to vary by gym. I suspect (like anything else) the gyms that garner the most attention are the ones that are kinda on the fringe and not the majority where you go do fun/grueling workouts with a supportive community.
That's good they are disengaging from facebook. I was clueless that facebook had forums or community stuff. I always thought of forum users using fake handles, aliases, anything but their real identities. Hopefully they can bolster up their own site and provide an example for others.
Paranoid much? Or perhaps it is Crossfit that gets it wrong?
Always reflect on who you are associating yourself with, in a cult, company owned group, non-democratic group, activity that marks you as "one of them",etc... you cease to be an individual and become just the fuel behind someone else's agenda and values (neither of which you can control).
Be an individual.
Wat.