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Comment by ixtli | Hacker News Reader

Uh this is typical cultish reaction to being called out: accuse others of doing exactly what you yourself are doing.

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."

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Did CrossFit for 5 years and a shoulder surgery. During that time I visited about 30 gyms all over the US. At no point did I ever see rhabdo treated as anything but a serious concern. There was a gym somewhere that did that Uncle Rhabdo stuff but it’s inaccurate to act as though that is or was the prevailing attitude in CrossFit.

I have several issues with CF but this idea that rhabdo is glorified is not true.

Been doing Crossfit since December.

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."

Erm, ah, that's hard to say. While I'd certainly agree that intentionally injuring yourself is utterly insane, I'm not sure that'd be my interpretation of any of this. Like many hobbies and professions, athletes engage in shop talk that borders on gallows humor.

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 imagine some journalists may read some HN threads about mistakes people make on the job and all kinds of "rm -fr /" scenarios one has been part of, and then write an article about how IT people are so insane that they glorify wanton destruction of systems they are entrusted to maintain and how this "devops" cult is evil because of it.

> 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

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.

While many aspects of CrossFit are bad (well mainly doing weight lifting against time constraint) there is nothing special about CrossFit that causes rhabdomyolysis. As long as you listen to your body and don't start by pressing gas peddle straight to floor it is fine.

I do not actively participate in CrossFit, but sometimes I add some CrossFit-like sets into my training.

Pretending CrossFit is just a collection of exercise ignores reality. It's also a culture and that culture is what creates the conditions under which people get rhabdo.

Is there some stats on how many cases there are? Because I suspect it isn’t that high. Part of all strength sports is pushing each other, but like with every hobby there are people who take it too far

Is Crossfit unilaterally banning groups from their platform? Your first paragraph is completely incoherent.

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...

You're saying they're leaving Facebook now because of the rhabdo stuff several years ago?

Not at all. I'm trying to say that the mentality that would lead an organization to publish something that says

> 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.

The Uncle Rhabdo clown there looks scary as hell

First rule of crossfit is you always talk about crossfit.

That joke was mildly funny when I first saw it five years ago. I’m not sure why you think Hacker News is the right place to regurgitate such a hackneyed, distracting and irrelevant joke.

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