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Comment by omegaham | Hacker News Reader

High intensity work is nothing new. Anyone who played sports in high school will tell you that practices are all about doing as much volume as you can in the limited time you have after school.

If it works for high school athletes, it works for people who are ten years older, too.

Personally, I look at results. If you can be motivated by Richard Simmons, go for it - the guy is 15 years older than my dad and is still in damn good shape. If you can be motivated by Crossfit, go for it, as long as you aren't getting scoliosis for time. If you can be motivated by the standard bro-split, that's great. Everyone is different.

All I can say is that when I show up to the gym, I'm lifting heavy, and I'm lifting to get freaking tired. It's worked for me. If flouncing on the elliptical for half an hour and doing 3 reps of 10 to success isn't doing anything, you might want to consider changing it up.

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Yeah it's basically just conditioning work rebranded. Nothing new that boxers, rugby players, an so on, didn't do before. It's a little bit a "response" to the strength and size centered lifting, or simple endurance cardio.

I think the problem and criticism is that many of those programs aren't programs at all, and they aren't based on anything, not even personal experience. If you look at any elite crossfitter his training is more likely to look like traditional strength training with proper form lifting, plus maybe WOD for the conditioning part, than pure crossfit WOD centered training. Centering the training in whatever weaknesses he may have, and so on. And of course whatever exercise they are planning to compete on.

Of course if your trainer is a good trainer you are going to get that, in a normal gym or in a crossfit gym. The problem is that as a program the base crossfit program doesn't offer much to a novice, except for the community and the encouragement that comes with it to pursue high intensity training. But outside of that the program itself won't offer any proper guiding unless you have a trainer that provides that guiding outside the program.

I think that a lot of people play sports in high school, were in reasonable shape then, and then find themselves in their 20's/30's/etc. in worse shape and uninspired by the routes they can take to get fit.

I remember hating running suicides on the basketball court, but I got into better shape running those than I do running on the treadmill, which I find largely tedious and am constantly finding ways to keep my mind entertained/distracted.

There is also the team aspect. When we did conditioning, we had coaches sharing the same experience. I don't get that running, lifting by myself, doing P90x, or other solitary workouts.

I've never done Crossfit, largely because I find their power lifting routines dangerous, but I can certainly understand why more extreme group exercise is really increasing in popularity. I think a lot of people grew up exercising in similar conditions, know that it worked for them then, and want to find something similar later in life.

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