Getting Fit, Even if It Kills You
2005-12-26 08:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
archerships[This article has a number of inaccuracies and exaggerations. For example, the article suggests that workouts are too strenuous and that crossfit enthusiasts are encouraged to value speed and weight over correct form. However, if you read the crossfit.com site, you will find that newbies are encouraged to adjust the workout-of-the-day (aka "WOD") to suit their level of fitness, and to always perform the exercises with correct form. Plus the website publishes an extensive video archive demonstrating how to do each exercise with proper form:
http://www.crossfit.com/cf-info/excercise.html
If you adjust the workout to your fitness level, the risk of rhabdomyolysis is quite low. I like the crossfit philosophy, and I recommend that anyone interested in functional fitness check them out.]
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/22/fashion/thursdaystyles/22Fitness.html?pagewanted=print
December 22, 2005
Physical Culture
Getting Fit, Even if It Kills You
By STEPHANIE COOPERMAN
WHILE many gymgoers complain that they might not survive a tough workout, Brian Anderson can speak from experience. For his first CrossFit session, he swung a 44-pound steel ball with a handle over his head and between his legs. The aim was to do 50 quick repetitions, rest and repeat. After 30 minutes, Mr. Anderson, a 38-year-old member of the special weapons and tactics team in the sheriff's office in Tacoma, Wash., left the gym with his muscles sapped and back pain so excruciating that he had to lie in the driveway to collect himself.
That night he went to the emergency room, where doctors told him he had rhabdomyolysis, which is caused when muscle fiber breaks down and is released into the bloodstream, poisoning the kidneys. He spent six days in intensive care.
Yet six months later Mr. Anderson, a former Army Ranger, was back in the gym, performing the very exercises that nearly killed him. "I see pushing my body to the point where the muscles destroy themselves as a huge benefit of CrossFit," he said.
In the last year this controversial exercise program has attracted a growing following of thousands nationwide, who log on to CrossFit.com for a daily workout, said its founder, Greg Glassman. Participants skip StairMasters and weight machines. Instead they do high-intensity workouts that mix gymnastics, track and field skills and bodybuilding, resting very little between movements.
The emphasis is on speed and weight hoisted, not technique. And the importance placed on quantifiable results has attracted hard-charging people like hedge fund managers, former Olympians and scientists. But some exercise experts are troubled by the lack of guidance for beginners, who may dive into stressful workouts as Mr. Anderson did. (He had not worked out regularly for two years.) "There's no way inexperienced people doing this are not going to hurt themselves," said Wayne Winnick, a sports medicine specialist in private practice in Manhattan, who also works for the New York City Marathon.
Other critics say that even fit people risk injury if they exercise strenuously and too quickly to give form its due, as CrossFit participants often do. For people who like to push the limits of fitness and strength - there are many police officers, firefighters and military personnel in the ranks of CrossFit athletes - the risks are worth it, because they consider it the most challenging workout around.
The short grueling sessions aren't for the weekend gym warrior. The three-days-on, one-day-rest schedule includes workouts like "Cindy": 20 minutes of as many repetitions as you can of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 squats. "Fight Gone Bad" entails rotating through five exercises, including throwing a 20-pound ball at a target 10 feet away. And only veteran CrossFit devotees even attempt, and few complete, "Murph," a timed mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats and then a second mile run. (A weighted vest is optional.)
Mr. Glassman, CrossFit's founder, does not discount his regimen's risks, even to those who are in shape and take the time to warm up their bodies before a session.
"It can kill you," he said. "I've always been completely honest about that."
But CrossFitters revel in the challenge. A common axiom among practitioners is "I met Pukey," meaning they worked out so hard they vomited. Some even own T-shirts emblazoned with a clown, Pukey. CrossFit's other mascot is Uncle Rhabdo, another clown, whose kidneys have spilled onto the floor presumably due to rhabdomyolysis.
Mr. Glassman, 49, a former gymnast from Santa Cruz, Calif., walks with a slight limp because of a knee injury, and at 5-foot-7 and 185 pounds admits he should lose weight. He began developing CrossFit more than two decades ago, but he says that he spends so much time running the business now that he no longer regularly does the routines. At first his program was a hard sell to clients who weren't keen to climb ropes or grapple with gymnastic rings.
Then in 2001 he launched CrossFit.com and began publishing a monthly journal and holding seminars at his California gym. People from around the world have come to learn Mr. Glassman's techniques. Today CrossFit has more than 50 affiliates in 21 states and 5 countries, Mr. Glassman said. And CrossFit.com has 25,000 unique visitors a week, according to WebSideStory, a Web analytics company in Seattle.
Mr. Glassman's followers call him Coach and share a cultlike devotion to his theories.
"We are all drinking the Kool-Aid," said Eugene Allen, another Tacoma SWAT team member who introduced Mr. Anderson to CrossFit last summer. "It's hard not to catch Coach's enthusiasm."
Devotees say CrossFit has enabled them to challenge their bodies in ways they never thought possible. Eva Twardokens, 40, an Olympic alpine skier in the 1992 and 1994 Games, said years of CrossFit training have enabled her to bench-press 155 pounds, 20 more than she could when she was training for the Olympics.
Tariq Kassum, 31, a research analyst in New York, found both the workout community and the variety of difficult exercises he was looking for. Online, where some participants record their workout progress, people cheered him on as his upper-body strength increased. When he started CrossFit, Mr. Kassum was unable to do a handstand, but after a year with the program he can do push-ups from that position. CrossFit exercises can be made more or less intense based on a person's abilities, but the workouts are the same for everyone, from marines to senior citizens. And some critics say that is a big part of what's wrong.
"My concern is that one cookie-cutter program doesn't apply to everyone," said Fabio Comana, an exercise physiologist at the American Council on Exercise. He said people in their 60's who have osteoporosis, for example, may not be able to do an overhead press, pushing a barbell over one's head.
CrossFit enthusiasts are also criticized for being cavalier about the injuries they sustain, including chronic soreness, pulled muscles and even some separated shoulders. Norma Loehr, 37, a vice president for a financial services company in New York, was sidelined for a week after she strained her back doing "Three Bars of Death," 10 sets of 3 lifts using barbells that weigh up to one and a half times as much as the person using them. She realized the barbells were too heavy, but she didn't want to waste the seconds it would have taken to change plates.
Mr. Glassman said that he has never been sued by an injured client and that paramedics have never had to treat one of his clients in his gym. But he acknowledged that as many as six CrossFit participants have suffered rhabdomyolysis, which often sets in more than a day after excessive exercise.
After they complete the workout of the day, hundreds of people post their times and the amount they have lifted on the Web site, making CrossFit a competitive online sport.
"When I first started the program, I could barely do a pull-up, so I was embarrassed to post," Mr. Kassum said. "Now that I can do 20 or 30, I'm on there every day. People on there are animals."
Those people include Kelly Moore, a 42-year-old Wisconsin police dispatcher and former powerlifter who is 5 feet tall and 117 pounds and has eight-pack abs. Her self-reported statistics have become the stuff of legend on CrossFit.com, inspiring both praise ("Pull-ups with a broken hand? You rock!") and amazement that she beats most men on the site. ("I'll be chasing Kelly until I die. At this rate, literally.")
CrossFit has an especially large number of police, firefighter and military participants. Members of Navy Seals, Air Force Pararescue and Special Forces groups also do workouts. And though it is not recognized as an official military regimen, CrossFit has drawn the attention of people in charge of military preparation. Capt. Timothy Joyce teaches CrossFit to marines in the Fleet Support Division in Barstow, Calif. And Capt. J. T. Williams, the chief standards officer at the Canadian Infantry School, where officers are trained, helped run a six-week trial where half of the participants followed the school's fitness program and half did CrossFit workouts. He declared CrossFit "very effective."
In recent months a group of New York CrossFit athletes have tried unsuccessfully to find a home gym. Joshua Newman, the group's organizer, said gym managers expressed concerns that they took up too much space, or even that their fast and furious pull-ups would break the apparatus.
"They used too many pieces of equipment at one time, and we got a lot of complaints from trainers who didn't like being on the floor with them," said Eric Slayton, the owner of New York Underground Fitness, a Midtown gym that Crossfit New York called home for a few weeks. "They put too much emphasis on getting things done in a certain amount of time and not enough on form."
But for Mr. Glassman, dismissals of his extreme workouts merely help him weed out people he considers weak-willed. "If you find the notion of falling off the rings and breaking your neck so foreign to you, then we don't want you in our ranks," he said.
http://www.crossfit.com/cf-info/excercise.html
If you adjust the workout to your fitness level, the risk of rhabdomyolysis is quite low. I like the crossfit philosophy, and I recommend that anyone interested in functional fitness check them out.]
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/22/fashion/thursdaystyles/22Fitness.html?pagewanted=print
December 22, 2005
Physical Culture
Getting Fit, Even if It Kills You
By STEPHANIE COOPERMAN
WHILE many gymgoers complain that they might not survive a tough workout, Brian Anderson can speak from experience. For his first CrossFit session, he swung a 44-pound steel ball with a handle over his head and between his legs. The aim was to do 50 quick repetitions, rest and repeat. After 30 minutes, Mr. Anderson, a 38-year-old member of the special weapons and tactics team in the sheriff's office in Tacoma, Wash., left the gym with his muscles sapped and back pain so excruciating that he had to lie in the driveway to collect himself.
That night he went to the emergency room, where doctors told him he had rhabdomyolysis, which is caused when muscle fiber breaks down and is released into the bloodstream, poisoning the kidneys. He spent six days in intensive care.
Yet six months later Mr. Anderson, a former Army Ranger, was back in the gym, performing the very exercises that nearly killed him. "I see pushing my body to the point where the muscles destroy themselves as a huge benefit of CrossFit," he said.
In the last year this controversial exercise program has attracted a growing following of thousands nationwide, who log on to CrossFit.com for a daily workout, said its founder, Greg Glassman. Participants skip StairMasters and weight machines. Instead they do high-intensity workouts that mix gymnastics, track and field skills and bodybuilding, resting very little between movements.
The emphasis is on speed and weight hoisted, not technique. And the importance placed on quantifiable results has attracted hard-charging people like hedge fund managers, former Olympians and scientists. But some exercise experts are troubled by the lack of guidance for beginners, who may dive into stressful workouts as Mr. Anderson did. (He had not worked out regularly for two years.) "There's no way inexperienced people doing this are not going to hurt themselves," said Wayne Winnick, a sports medicine specialist in private practice in Manhattan, who also works for the New York City Marathon.
Other critics say that even fit people risk injury if they exercise strenuously and too quickly to give form its due, as CrossFit participants often do. For people who like to push the limits of fitness and strength - there are many police officers, firefighters and military personnel in the ranks of CrossFit athletes - the risks are worth it, because they consider it the most challenging workout around.
The short grueling sessions aren't for the weekend gym warrior. The three-days-on, one-day-rest schedule includes workouts like "Cindy": 20 minutes of as many repetitions as you can of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 squats. "Fight Gone Bad" entails rotating through five exercises, including throwing a 20-pound ball at a target 10 feet away. And only veteran CrossFit devotees even attempt, and few complete, "Murph," a timed mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats and then a second mile run. (A weighted vest is optional.)
Mr. Glassman, CrossFit's founder, does not discount his regimen's risks, even to those who are in shape and take the time to warm up their bodies before a session.
"It can kill you," he said. "I've always been completely honest about that."
But CrossFitters revel in the challenge. A common axiom among practitioners is "I met Pukey," meaning they worked out so hard they vomited. Some even own T-shirts emblazoned with a clown, Pukey. CrossFit's other mascot is Uncle Rhabdo, another clown, whose kidneys have spilled onto the floor presumably due to rhabdomyolysis.
Mr. Glassman, 49, a former gymnast from Santa Cruz, Calif., walks with a slight limp because of a knee injury, and at 5-foot-7 and 185 pounds admits he should lose weight. He began developing CrossFit more than two decades ago, but he says that he spends so much time running the business now that he no longer regularly does the routines. At first his program was a hard sell to clients who weren't keen to climb ropes or grapple with gymnastic rings.
Then in 2001 he launched CrossFit.com and began publishing a monthly journal and holding seminars at his California gym. People from around the world have come to learn Mr. Glassman's techniques. Today CrossFit has more than 50 affiliates in 21 states and 5 countries, Mr. Glassman said. And CrossFit.com has 25,000 unique visitors a week, according to WebSideStory, a Web analytics company in Seattle.
Mr. Glassman's followers call him Coach and share a cultlike devotion to his theories.
"We are all drinking the Kool-Aid," said Eugene Allen, another Tacoma SWAT team member who introduced Mr. Anderson to CrossFit last summer. "It's hard not to catch Coach's enthusiasm."
Devotees say CrossFit has enabled them to challenge their bodies in ways they never thought possible. Eva Twardokens, 40, an Olympic alpine skier in the 1992 and 1994 Games, said years of CrossFit training have enabled her to bench-press 155 pounds, 20 more than she could when she was training for the Olympics.
Tariq Kassum, 31, a research analyst in New York, found both the workout community and the variety of difficult exercises he was looking for. Online, where some participants record their workout progress, people cheered him on as his upper-body strength increased. When he started CrossFit, Mr. Kassum was unable to do a handstand, but after a year with the program he can do push-ups from that position. CrossFit exercises can be made more or less intense based on a person's abilities, but the workouts are the same for everyone, from marines to senior citizens. And some critics say that is a big part of what's wrong.
"My concern is that one cookie-cutter program doesn't apply to everyone," said Fabio Comana, an exercise physiologist at the American Council on Exercise. He said people in their 60's who have osteoporosis, for example, may not be able to do an overhead press, pushing a barbell over one's head.
CrossFit enthusiasts are also criticized for being cavalier about the injuries they sustain, including chronic soreness, pulled muscles and even some separated shoulders. Norma Loehr, 37, a vice president for a financial services company in New York, was sidelined for a week after she strained her back doing "Three Bars of Death," 10 sets of 3 lifts using barbells that weigh up to one and a half times as much as the person using them. She realized the barbells were too heavy, but she didn't want to waste the seconds it would have taken to change plates.
Mr. Glassman said that he has never been sued by an injured client and that paramedics have never had to treat one of his clients in his gym. But he acknowledged that as many as six CrossFit participants have suffered rhabdomyolysis, which often sets in more than a day after excessive exercise.
After they complete the workout of the day, hundreds of people post their times and the amount they have lifted on the Web site, making CrossFit a competitive online sport.
"When I first started the program, I could barely do a pull-up, so I was embarrassed to post," Mr. Kassum said. "Now that I can do 20 or 30, I'm on there every day. People on there are animals."
Those people include Kelly Moore, a 42-year-old Wisconsin police dispatcher and former powerlifter who is 5 feet tall and 117 pounds and has eight-pack abs. Her self-reported statistics have become the stuff of legend on CrossFit.com, inspiring both praise ("Pull-ups with a broken hand? You rock!") and amazement that she beats most men on the site. ("I'll be chasing Kelly until I die. At this rate, literally.")
CrossFit has an especially large number of police, firefighter and military participants. Members of Navy Seals, Air Force Pararescue and Special Forces groups also do workouts. And though it is not recognized as an official military regimen, CrossFit has drawn the attention of people in charge of military preparation. Capt. Timothy Joyce teaches CrossFit to marines in the Fleet Support Division in Barstow, Calif. And Capt. J. T. Williams, the chief standards officer at the Canadian Infantry School, where officers are trained, helped run a six-week trial where half of the participants followed the school's fitness program and half did CrossFit workouts. He declared CrossFit "very effective."
In recent months a group of New York CrossFit athletes have tried unsuccessfully to find a home gym. Joshua Newman, the group's organizer, said gym managers expressed concerns that they took up too much space, or even that their fast and furious pull-ups would break the apparatus.
"They used too many pieces of equipment at one time, and we got a lot of complaints from trainers who didn't like being on the floor with them," said Eric Slayton, the owner of New York Underground Fitness, a Midtown gym that Crossfit New York called home for a few weeks. "They put too much emphasis on getting things done in a certain amount of time and not enough on form."
But for Mr. Glassman, dismissals of his extreme workouts merely help him weed out people he considers weak-willed. "If you find the notion of falling off the rings and breaking your neck so foreign to you, then we don't want you in our ranks," he said.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-27 01:37 am (UTC)How long you been doing Crossfit? Do you post to the site?
no subject
Date: 2005-12-27 01:44 am (UTC)BTW, have you seen these sites? I think they might be of interest to you:
http://www.stumptuous.com/
http://www.agelesstraining.com/indexx.htm
http://www.ettaclarkphotography.com/
http://www.cbass.com/
no subject
Date: 2005-12-27 01:47 am (UTC)Been doing it since August, though taking a break right now due to my ankle injury. My photo was on the WOD page a few weeks back.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-27 01:51 am (UTC)My photo was on the WOD page a few weeks back.
Sweet! The same one as your icon?
no subject
Date: 2005-12-27 01:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-27 02:17 am (UTC)BTW, gorgeous Cambodia photos. You probably have addressed this already, but I haven't seen it yet -- what prompted you to go? What's your opinion on the risks of motorcycling in general?
no subject
Date: 2005-12-27 03:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-27 03:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-27 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-27 03:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-27 03:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-27 03:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-27 04:26 am (UTC)Straight from the site:
Date: 2005-12-27 05:14 am (UTC)Only one or two days off to recover per week is not enough for a body to recover from the kind of workouts that are flirting with kidney poisoning. CrossFit has all the earmarks of yet another fitness or diet fad that takes an idea and pushes it way too far. Fortunately I don't think most of the people who do it will keep up with it for more than a few years. But if they do, I suspect they'll be about as healthy as old marathoners or body builders. ie. Wrecked.
Re: Straight from the site:
Date: 2005-12-27 05:19 am (UTC)As for flirting with kidney poisoning, again you're taking that from that horribly written article.
The only thing worse that fitness or diet fads are people who dismiss everything before trying them or at least doing a bit more research.
Re: Straight from the site:
Date: 2005-12-27 06:13 am (UTC)Give it time. See if they're keeping up that pace into their 50s. And I'd be willing to bet that for every one of those there are already ten more who've quit due to injury or fatigue. Twenty.
Look, human physiology is not rocket science. There are hard limits on what you can do without tempting injury. There are hard limits on how fast muscle tissue grows. Even if they're not literally flirting with kidney poisoning, any decent workout will take more than 1 day a week to heal from. There's no magic workout plan that's going to change that, and it looks like CrossFit lacks anything that even claims to be magic. It's just plain old calisthenics done often, with high intensity. There's nothing wrong with the exercises - I might incorporate some of them myself - but you could get the same benefits with less pain taking 2-3 days off between workouts. Anything more than that is just unnecessary stress.
Re: Straight from the site:
Date: 2005-12-27 06:22 am (UTC)It's not just calisthenics. Weight lifting, especially compound movements with free weights (squats, snatch, etc), is an integral part of the crossfit regimen.
Re: Straight from the site:
Date: 2005-12-27 06:30 am (UTC)Re: Straight from the site:
Date: 2005-12-27 02:46 pm (UTC)Let me add this...
Date: 2005-12-27 02:50 pm (UTC)"Pukey" t-shirts seem pretty stupid to me, too. I've worked out to the point of feeling nauseous, because I was on a low-carb diet that day, but to *want* to work out to the point of vomiting just to prove a point would be stupid.
I have no idea whether that is an accurate view of Crossfit, either, since I'm just basing it on this article. I do wish that
Re: Let me add this...
Date: 2005-12-27 03:00 pm (UTC)Sure I do. The ability to recover from that kind of workout-to-failure near instantaneously would be downright superhuman. And this is the real world. If these superhumans existed, they'd be objects of study, and their workout regimens wouldn't be a good idea for the general public. But they don't exist. I know this the same way I know that everything on earth is under 9.8 m/s2 of downward acceleration. Biological constants are constant too. If someone tells you they're breaking the rules, they're either mistaken or lying.
Re: Straight from the site:
Date: 2005-12-27 05:58 am (UTC)My understanding is that the optimal time between workouts depends on a variety of factors: workout intensity, volume, age, level of fitness, genetics, steroid consumption, illness/injury, and probably others. So the optimal recovery time will vary from individual to individual.
No doubt some crossfit enthusiasts are overtraining. However, this is a common problem among participants in any sport, not just crossfit. I don't think that overtraining is a necessary part of crossfit. In fact, among other things, a part of the crossfit philosophy is to perform a variety of both aerobic and anaerobic exercises from workout to workout. The interval between repeats of a given WOD are long.
This tends to mitigate against overtraining, as you're taxing different muscle groups in different ways, rather than taxing the same muscle group in the same way (which tends to cause or exacerbate overtraining injuries).
In any case, if you think you're overtraining you can always cut back your workout to levels you believe to be healthier. One of the nice things about the crossfit culture is that you're expected to take responsibility for your own health, to experiment, and to adapt the workouts to your own fitness goals.
But if they do, I suspect they'll be about as healthy as old marathoners or body builders. ie. Wrecked.
Wrecked? Do you have any cites regarding the health of old bodybuilders? My reading of the scientific literature suggests that weight training protects against a variety of age-related diseases, especially muscle loss (sarcopenia). And anecdotally, a number of older bodybuilders (who have been lifting since their teens) have physiques that many 30 year olds would envy.
Re: Straight from the site:
Date: 2005-12-27 06:25 am (UTC)A little. Not much. The amount of workout required to reach failure will vary a lot, but once you're there, everyone's muscles rebuild at about the same rate, modulo steroids. Nobody recovers overnight. Standard rotation for HIT is a week between muscle groups, and that kind of isolation just isn't possible with the kind of full-body calisthenics that CrossFit promotes.
True, but "The other kids are doing it!" has never been a good excuse, and overtraining isn't just an incidental feature of CrossFit, the culture actively encourages it. CrossFit:Fitness::Pro-Ana:Weightloss.
"One of the nice things about the pro-ana culture is that you're expected tot ake responsibility for your own health..."
Yeah, uh-uh. You can't go idolizing taking it too far and then disclaim all responsibility when people naturally take it too far.
Woah. Weight training is not equivalent to body building. Nor is running marathons merely aerobic exercise. Both are examples of good ideas taken to extremes.
Re: Straight from the site:
Date: 2005-12-27 08:08 am (UTC)Yes, I've read that as well. Clarence Bass, for example, advocates working out only 2 times/week. However, I think that the research on the optimal training schedule is less clear-cut than you imply:
(1)
For example, there is evidence that frequent training works at least for the bench press in laboratory conditions:
(2)
Quoting the paragraph from which the excerpt above was taken:
(2)
So we have evidence that working out 5 days a week is superior to working out less frequently, and evidence that it is no better (but no worse) than working out 3 days/week. I bet I could also find studies which suggested that working out 5 days/week was harmful. Which do we believe?
This is what I meant when I said that you have to take responsibility for your own health. It may be that the 5-6 day regimen is too much for most people. But there's evidence to believe that more frequent workouts can be successful as well. You have to decide which studies you believe, and you have to carefully monitor your progress and change your program if it isn't working for you.
I also think that you underestimate the variability between people. For example, a mutation in the myostatin gene can cause great differences in the level of muscle mass a person can achieve. I suspect that there is similar variability in people's ability to recover from exercise.
1) http://www.physsportsmed.com/issues/2001/05_01/uusitalo.htm
2) http://www.physsportsmed.com/issues/1997/02feb/pollock.htm
Weight training is not equivalent to body building.
Okay, do you have any cites for old body builders?
Re: Straight from the site:
Date: 2005-12-27 02:54 pm (UTC)Re: Straight from the site:
Date: 2005-12-27 03:08 pm (UTC)What I don't accept is that you can push yourself right to the edge of injury every day without time to heal. And while there may be minor variations, nobody on the planet is a 24-hour fast healer. And even supposing these superhumans existed, their workout regimen wouldn't be generally applicable, and there's no known way to quantitatively measure recovery time, and so no way to determine who is and isn't one of those superhumans who'd benefit from it.
Which makes the whole thing pointless.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-27 02:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-27 04:25 pm (UTC)Video of the exercises are here:
http://www.crossfit.com/cf-info/excercise.html
The best source of official information is the crossfit journal. A free sample, which explains the basic philosophy, is available here:
http://www.crossfit.com/cf-download/CFJ-trial.pdf
Also check out their Foundations article:
http://www.crossfit.com/cf-download/Foundations.pdf
Lot's of information can be found in the forums:
http://www.crossfit.com/discus/messages/board-topics.html
no subject
Date: 2005-12-27 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-27 04:44 pm (UTC)http://www.powerathletesmag.com/archives/Girevik/Five/interviewglassman.htm