Why do people hate CrossFit?

I'm sorry, but this is is the biggest list of strawman arguments I've ever seen. People dislike CrossFit because elite CrossFitters are perfect physical human specimens and they're jealous? Huh?

Here are the real concerns with CrossFit:

1. Incredibly poor quality control across affiliates means that a lot of instructors are not well trained in teaching how to do mechanically complex lifts to participants that have never done them before.

2. Which leads directly to increased rates of injury amongst participants trying to perform too many reps of the same exercise using too much weight causing their form to break down because their instructors are not paying attention to them. The culture of CrossFit exacerbates this by encouraging you to push yourself beyond your limits...and potentially beyond what is safe.

Now, if you luck out and end up at a good CrossFit gym with good instructors you might not ever experience these problems. But that's the issue. How do you, as an untrained athlete that has never done a power clean before, determine whether or not the instructors at your gym know how to properly teach them?

I'd argue people don't hate CrossFit, they hate CrossFitters.

I don't hate Triathlon, I hate triathletes, I don't hate Apple, I hate Appholes (or fanbois or whatever you want to call them).

I've done Crossfit for about 8 months, it got me through a 3-day 4 stage mountain bike race when I hadn't been on a bike in a year. I truly feel there is no way I would have survived had I not built up my strength and endurance, and for me, Crossfit was just the ticket for that.

HOWEVER, I am always concerned when people identify so strongly with a brand/experience and feel the need to push it on everybody they meet. I've seen triathlon take over a guys life to the point where his wife left him, and took the kids (I think he may have lost his job too, but it was long ago, and I can't remember). All because it was so important to him to identify himself as an IronMan.

I've done Ironman, it was an ok event, far from the hardest thing I've done in my life, but you know what I couldn't stand about Ironman? The people. People who spent every waking moment trying to figure out how they could save 30 seconds on their time so that .... well, exactly, there is no point to it. But they'd go spend hours and hours on end trying to "improve themselves". But what are they really improving?

Now, Crossfit is a different animal, but for many people, it is still this addictive "I can be a better Crossfitter, I can be more competitive against other Crossfitters, I can talk about how much protein vs carbs I take in and how that affects my..." It's inane, it's boring, it's egotistical.

Did you regularly talk about how much you were lifting at the gym before? How many reps you could eke out at x amount of weight. If you did, that was pretty damn boring too!

There are lots of interesting things in the world, your gym habit isn't one of them.

So, put down the ego, and build something, this is HackerNews, not... well, something that none of us care about.

Videos like this are why people dislike crossfit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8up6A4QesU

Crossfit is just a very successful gimmick, but unlike the fad diets that are unlikely to cause harm, crossfit is likely to cause inexperienced people serious injury. The cult-like devotion they build in their participants, mixed with the bro-science they preach just adds fuel to the fire.

The essential defense here is that Crossfit is just a workout, so there shouldn't be anything to hate. Which raises the question, if it's just a workout, why does it need hundreds of words defending it?

Because they had a bad experience. It's as simple as that.