After three years of personal training, teaching CrossFit, and experimenting with many workout styles and programs, I thought it would be a good time to share some anecdotes about everything I've been through. Prepare yourself for a wall of text. I put tl;dr's at the end of each paragraph, so you can skim all you want and read whatever interests you. If there's enough interest I could do an AMA as a former CrossFit instructor To be clear, though, I am no longer a CrossFit instructor, and I'm not a big fan of it at this point I'm far from highly qualified, I only have a few years of experience, and I just wanted to share what I've learned so far.
My certifications: *CrossFit Level 1 Coach *USAW Level 1 Coach *ACE Certified Personal trainer
To start off, the CrossFit certification was a weekend seminar, and entirely useless. The thing is, their presentation is amazing, and the certification instructors are all beautiful, jacked, and hilarious. They taught us next to nothing about coaching, proper form, or linear progressions, but I'll be damned if they didn't make me want to get better at everything fitness-related. It sounds really great- work out 3 days on, 1 day off, change up your routine following these [extremely vague] guidelines, and you'll get stronger, faster, more explosive, sexier, taller, and all around awesome at everything. Let's be honest, if you could get stronger, faster, and leaner all at once, it would be fucking amazing. Too bad it doesn't really happen that way for at least 99.9% of the population. tl;dr The CrossFit cert is useless but oh so convincing in theory, but it's mostly bullshit
Here's the thing about CrossFit- every affiliate is independent and different. If you pay $1000 for the certification and $3000 or $4000 -something ridiculous- per year, you can open an affiliate. There are some affiliates that only have kettlebells and a track, whereas some are set up like a pro football strength and conditioning room, with 12 squat racks, 30 kettlebells, and all the other fun stuff. Good CrossFit affiliates do not hire instructors who are simply Level 1 certified. Almost every one I've been to has a required internship, the shortest one I've heard of being six months, during which time they take classes, shadow experienced instructors, and almost always still pay their membership fee. The owners of these affiliates, as I have noted, always have backgrounds in strength and conditioning, olympic lifting, or other very respectable areas of fitness training. They know you can't start teaching after a weekend seminar, and they make sure their instructors are knowledgeable, professional, and dedicated by putting them through this. If you want to know if your local CrossFit is any good, ask the instructor what their hiring process is. If they hire very qualified instructors with years of experience, or if they have a required internship of at least six months, they're probably pretty legit. If not, be careful. And always ask for the owner's qualifications and experience, that's the biggest factor in determining how good an affiliate is. In the end, they're the ones in control of the program. tl;dr Good CrossFit affiliates do not hire newly certified instructors, they find good ones. Do your homework if you're looking for an affiliate in your area.
Onto my actual training. I got lucky and scored a year long internship that was free, no membership dues required. For an entire year I held a full time job elsewhere, and spent my free time shadowing an experienced instructor (seven years of strength and conditioning, award winning triathlete, best trainer I've ever seen) and an even more experienced owner (ten years strength and conditioning coach, award winning swimmer, and took his business very, very seriously.) I didn't teach a single class for six months, and after that I assisted the head instructor. During this time, I did Crossfit WODs six days a week, religiously. At this point, at this affiliate, there was no linear weightlifting program, it was just metcons (high intensity, metabolic conditioning workouts) or strengthcons (high intensity, heavy lifting in metcon style). We rarely did very heavy lifting, but I did test my 1RM a few times, and my deadlift was 365lbs, squat was 325lbs, overhead press was 155lbs, and we never did bench press so I have no idea about that. For any CrossFitters, my Fran time got down to 2:58 rx'd, and my Cindy score was 27 rounds rx'd. My 500m row time was 1:30, I could run a mile in 6:15, and I could do 44 kipping pullups. However, I learned nothing about real strength training, and rarely did any of it. My strength got to that point, and plateaued. I remember testing my deadlift 1RM about four months after my first one, and it was exactly the same at 365lbs. I was also pretty scrawny- in high school I was 280lbs and managed to drop down to 200 by the time I started CrossFit. After a year of CrossFit I got down to about 190, and I was definitely not built. I was just lean and (sort of) ripped. The other thing- I never took a break, or a deload week, and I got beat up pretty bad. I never got injured more than a slight pull in my shoulder or something like that, but I felt tired constantly, always sore, and just kind of miserable by the end. Six days of metcons is a fucking terrible idea for anyone, in my opinion. tl;dr Did a year internship, got small and lean, got kind of strong but plateaued hard, and got really good at CrossFit itself.
Year Two- Teaching CrossFit, 5x5, and Wendler
After my year internship, I moved closer to a nearby city, and got a part time job at another CrossFit affiliate. There was no internship process, and the owner was clearly desperate to hire instructors, so not a great sign for clients, but great for me! I will readily admit, for the first six months, I probably wasn't the greatest instructor. I knew what constituted good for everything (and I mean actually good form, not what you see on a lot of CrossFit videos) but I wasn't very experienced in actually teaching it, just knowing what was correct. That being said, six months of teaching part time gave me great experience, and not once did I have a client injure themselves, other than one pulled hamstring during 100m sprints. My affiliate did have a linear strength setup, but it was crude: we started class with a 5x5 lift from the following list: deadlift, front squat, back squat, overhead squat, overhead press, push press, push jerk, power clean, clean, power snatch, or power snatch. Generally we would go through the list in two weeks, so everyone would get each of those lifts in once, and that was if they came every day which I really didn't recommend anyway. Despite our best efforts, most people didn't really understand the concept of adding small amounts of weight each time, which was made even more confusing by the constantly shifting lift of the day, so the majority of our clients either stayed with the same weight and never progressed, or would try to lift like 20lbs more each time and would inevitably fail, or just pull it off with terrible form despite me yelling at them to deload. I really didn't see anyone, ANYONE there gain an appreciable amount of strength in any of these lifts, except maybe some noobie gains initially. Most people quickly plateaued either due to a poor understanding of progressive loading, not enough time with a given lift, or a combination. The only people there I would have considered strong were most or less strong when they came in, and very skinny weak people who joined didn't see much strength gain. tl;dr Found part time job at new CrossFit of dubious quality, had strength progression, largely failed to make anyone strong. Skinny weaklings stayed skinny weaklings
After six months of part time, I came onboard full time. It soon became clear that CrossFit makes everything competitive, to push people and make it fun, but oftentimes it just made people sacrifice form and health to look and perform better than the guy next to them. I was on form check constantly, and even if I yelled in someone's face to tigthen up their back, showed them, had them do it correctly, and saw that they were capable of it, they would go back to bad habits the moment I turned away. Basically when people have someone coaching them, they really lose any accountability for their own performance and rely on the coach to make sure they're doing it correctly. Few people actually cared when I explained the how and why of doing a correct squat, using the posterior chain for kettlebell swings, etc. They just wanted me to tell them if they were doing it right or not. All they really cared about was speed, which made for some ugly workouts. Miraculously, we really didn't have any real injuries except for some sore lower backs from deadlifts. I credit this to the fact that most people used weights way lighter than what we actually prescribed, and pure dumb luck. I'm honestly suprised we didn't have more injuries, but most clients had a decent background in fitness, and were apparently strong enough to not hurt themselves doing bad overhead squats. tl;dr give people a coach and make them competitive, and they lose all sense and personal responsbility of learning good form. Surprisingly, no major injuries to date.
During this time, I decided I was tired of not getting stronger, and I made myself a Starting Strength-esque routine. Workout A was 3x5 high bar back squat, 3x5 bench press, 5x5 weighted pullups. Workout B was 3x5 deadlift, 3x5 overhead press, 5x5 weighted ring dips. I also threw in the occasional 5x3 power clean or snatch, and accessory work like back extensions, dumbbell push jerk, etc. and usually followed up my strength routines with a 5 to 10 minute CrossFit metcon. I added 10lbs to my deadlift and squat every week, and 5lbs to my overhead and bench press. I gained 10 pounds in four months, and my deadlift went up to 400, squat 390, overhead press 175, power clean 225, clean 255. I maintained my CrossFit metabolic ability- my Fran time actually went down to 2:52, and I finally felt strong. All of the weight in metcons felt so much lighter, and it was awesome. This was my first hint that the CrossFit model is fucking stupid, because focusing on those major lifts actually made my overhead squat, push press, push jerk, etc. better despite not doing any of them, and I was still getting better at CrossFit workouts. I even got better at things like kipping pullups and handstand pushups despite doing them less and lifting more. tl;dr finally did a basic 3x5 routine, got strong and continued to improve even by CrossFit standards
After I squeezed out the last of my linear gains, I switched to Wendler's 5/3/1. Twice a week I did Wendler and the assistance work, Squat/Bench one day and Deadlift/OHP the other. No metcons on those days. In between those days I did olympic lifts and metcons, and once or twice a week I started doing 20 minute or longer bodyweight endurance metcons. I also lowered the intensity in all my workouts, and started feeling much better in general. In two cycles: deadlift 420, squat 400, OHP 175, bench 235, clean 275 (part of that was learning better form), snatch 175, push jerk 215. I continued to progress in CrossFit workouts, despite doing them less and less. It became even more apparent that strength is really the biggest factor in CrossFit success. tl;dr Wendler is fucking awesome, 2 months of 5/3/1 and less CrossFit made me stronger, better yet at CrossFit
After two months of 5/3/1, I was stupid and pulled a 365lb deadlift without warming up (seriously, CrossFit makes everyone competitive, to a fault) while I was teaching a class, and ended up pulling my left gluteus medius. Horrible back pain and weird nerve pain down my left leg. I got it checked out, definitely not a spinal problem thank god, and saw a chiropractor who helped a lot to stretch and rehab the muscle and elimate the nerve pain. I decided to take some time off of lifting, and picked up a copy of Building the Gymnastic Body. I designed my own 4 week cycle with static holds and then slowly added in weekly cleans, snatches, and front squats after I signed up for an oly lifting competition happening soon. I also stopped doing metcons for the most part, because I was still tired as fuck all the time. The result? Way better at gymnastics, pulled a 435 deadlift recently, 405 back squat, and got my clean and jerk up to 230, and snatch up to 190, while dropping my weight down to 185 following a TKD with only pre-workout carbs, and strict keto all other times. I attribute almost all of those gains to a way stronger core thanks to all of the static holds, and so, so many handstands and handstand pushups. I no longer work at a CrossFit by my own choice, my metabolic abilities are way worse, and I really don't give a shit about my Fran time any more. I can still run 10 miles on a whim, bike 20 miles to and from work, row a 1:30 500m, and I don't feel tired all the goddamn time. I do the occasional metcon when I feel like hating myself for a while, but nothing over 10 minutes. And I like things way better these days. tl;dr gymnastics and weightlifting got me even stronger, fuck metcons
In conclusion, I'm not hating on CrossFit so much as saying the approach seems to be rather flawed. Solid strength progression with a few metcons seems to be way superior in building all around fitness, especially for people who lack a strength background altogether, and you don't need to be tired and sore all the time to get better. I like the CrossFit idea of blending multiple disciplines together for a comprehensive routine, but really it seems like blending strength training from other areas, like barbell and gymnastic strength training combined, helps a lot more than 20 minutes of kipping pullups, pushups, and air squats. Just my two cents. tl;dr combine disciplines, focus on strength, become awesome
Edit: Thanks for the responses guys, looks like we're starting some good discussions. I want to clarify that I'm not exactly anti-CrossFit at this point. I like good affiliates because the workouts are fun, you get stronger, the people are awesome, and it introduces you to a lot of really cool things you might not have found on your own. I just wanted to point out how much strength is a factor in CrossFit and how I managed to build mine within the context of metcons and GPP.