The couch thread

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Shafpocalypse Now
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Re: The couch thread

Post by Shafpocalypse Now »

The details will be interesting if he posts them.

You can't just instantly attribute this death to exercise, although that's how my post reads.


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Re: The couch thread

Post by TerryB »

Shafpocalypse Now wrote:The details will be interesting if he posts them.

You can't just instantly attribute this death to exercise, although that's how my post reads.
True, but it would seem you can fairly safely attribute it to terrible coaching as in, no preworkout health assessment, no carefully administered "dose" of exercise, and probably a rather high-intensity workout out of the gate.

Of course, more facts are needed but the above assumption isn't radical, especially considering the nature and mentality of Crossfit and their barely qualified "trainers."
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Re: The couch thread

Post by Spider Monkey »

Shafpocalypse Now wrote:The details will be interesting if he posts them.

You can't just instantly attribute this death to exercise, although that's how my post reads.
If the coronary arteries were blocked the MI was going to happen. It is more likely to occur with excertion, but it would have happened eventually without it. It will be interesting to see if there was a pre-workout screen, or a scaled workout, but a man that young can drop dead of an MI without any previous symptoms, and was more than likely asystole, in which case, any amount of intervention couldn't have prevented death.
It still sucks and may he RIP and his family and friends find comfort.
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Re: The couch thread

Post by Mountebank »

What's the bet that no pre-participation screening was done in this case?
http://journal.crossfit.com/2009/06/pre ... eening.tpl
Mike Ray, MD from CrossFit Flagstaff, is a presenter at various CrossFit Level 1 seminars. He’s also an ER doc. This lecture on pre-participation screening is from the Science of Exercise seminar on April 26th, 2009 in Fort Worth, TX. The video is from CrossFit Again Faster.

Pre-participation screening of athletes is an honorable venture. The sudden death of an athlete is a tragedy in every sense of the term. The attempt to avoid or eliminate tragedy by pre-screening those athletes susceptible to it is natural and fully understandable.

Dr. Ray looks at some of the statistics associated with screening and sudden death. The conclusions are dramatic, and put the practice of pre-screening in a different light.

According to one source, 1 in 200,000 athletes under 35 years old are at significant risk of dying during athletic activity. If we were to develop a pre-screening test that was 99% accurate (though in reality, we don’t have anything nearly that good), 99.95% of all the positive test results would be false positives (the explanation of this is in part 2).

The first of two primary conclusions of Dr. Ray’s lecture is that as much as we would like to prevent tragedy, the statistical reality is that we don’t have a reasonable means of doing so with pre-participation screening.

The second primary conclusion is that as tragic as sudden death is, these tests are significantly more likely to stop safe athletes from healthy activity than they are to prevent unsafe athletes from harm. This is unfortunate and preventable with clear thinking.
Reeb@k is really stepping into a landmine with this partnership.

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Re: The couch thread

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Quackmire wrote:What's the bet that no pre-participation screening was done in this case?
http://journal.crossfit.com/2009/06/pre ... eening.tpl
Mike Ray, MD from CrossFit Flagstaff, is a presenter at various CrossFit Level 1 seminars. He’s also an ER doc. This lecture on pre-participation screening is from the Science of Exercise seminar on April 26th, 2009 in Fort Worth, TX. The video is from CrossFit Again Faster.

Pre-participation screening of athletes is an honorable venture. The sudden death of an athlete is a tragedy in every sense of the term. The attempt to avoid or eliminate tragedy by pre-screening those athletes susceptible to it is natural and fully understandable.

Dr. Ray looks at some of the statistics associated with screening and sudden death. The conclusions are dramatic, and put the practice of pre-screening in a different light.

According to one source, 1 in 200,000 athletes under 35 years old are at significant risk of dying during athletic activity. If we were to develop a pre-screening test that was 99% accurate (though in reality, we don’t have anything nearly that good), 99.95% of all the positive test results would be false positives (the explanation of this is in part 2).

The first of two primary conclusions of Dr. Ray’s lecture is that as much as we would like to prevent tragedy, the statistical reality is that we don’t have a reasonable means of doing so with pre-participation screening.

The second primary conclusion is that as tragic as sudden death is, these tests are significantly more likely to stop safe athletes from healthy activity than they are to prevent unsafe athletes from harm. This is unfortunate and preventable with clear thinking.
Reeb@k is really stepping into a landmine with this partnership.

so what these morons are saying is that why bother doing pre-screening to find out what any health issues are because its almost worthless?

I guess not asking your client if he/she has injuries, health problems, etc. that would prevent he/she from working out in the manner you want to get them to.

Hell I have a client who has had TWO back surgeries and came to me to prevent a third. I take good care of her doing all bodyweight movements, simple core strengthening exercises and a lot of upper back/mid back work to strengthen her postural problems. By not doing a pre-screening and asking questions I may not have known she has these issues and she may get injured again.

Doing a simple pre-screening is not only smart as you are aware of pre-existing conditions and what to do to work around them or fix them, its also a liability issue that way if they do get hurt working out for any reason you have the documentation that you did do assessments in case of a lawsuit. That is a worst case scenario and doing no pre-screening can, and will, make that worst case scenario come into play.

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Re: The couch thread

Post by syaigh »

Ash Uber Alles wrote: so what these morons are saying is that why bother doing pre-screening to find out what any health issues are because its almost worthless?

I guess not asking your client if he/she has injuries, health problems, etc. that would prevent he/she from working out in the manner you want to get them to.

Hell I have a client who has had TWO back surgeries and came to me to prevent a third. I take good care of her doing all bodyweight movements, simple core strengthening exercises and a lot of upper back/mid back work to strengthen her postural problems. By not doing a pre-screening and asking questions I may not have known she has these issues and she may get injured again.

Doing a simple pre-screening is not only smart as you are aware of pre-existing conditions and what to do to work around them or fix them, its also a liability issue that way if they do get hurt working out for any reason you have the documentation that you did do assessments in case of a lawsuit. That is a worst case scenario and doing no pre-screening can, and will, make that worst case scenario come into play.
I agree whole-heartedly and is part of the reason I got de-culted. I couldn't, in good conscience, prescribe CF workouts for rank beginners, some of whom did little other than walk to their car and back before coming in to the gym. The owners, on the other hand, thought nothing of having a "just walked in off the street" individual do power snatches or cleans their first day in, with no prior experience or coaching. (No, they weren't pretty.) I got reprimanded on many occasions for not having my groups do the prescribed workouts.
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Re: The couch thread

Post by Danny John »

It has been a long time, since 1977, since I took any kind of law class, but one thing still screams out to me from, I believe, Business Law class: in a court case with a jury, Common Sense trumps even expert testimony...if I remember right. So, Reebok can put this ER medic up there and say that this will all be "false positives," but then the family of the firefighter can simply put anyone (and really just about anyone) on the stand and walk through what we just read and "common sense" would tell us that a gradual approach, maybe a check up, "something" would be in order.

I'm sorry to hear this. It also hurt me to hear that he died alone.

Someone close to me asked me if she should help open a crossfit affiliate in a small town with a globo gym and a couple of private studios. Her idea was to "get certified" and then buy all the equipment and start teaching. She doesn't know the difference between an Olympic bar and a dumbbell and she will be teaching snatches in a few weeks...


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Re: The couch thread

Post by TerryB »

So maybe you can't catch some underlying medical issues without a true, fullscale medical workup, but shouldn't you at least fucking ask, "When was the last time you did a high intensity workout, what kind of loads did you use and precisely what did you do? What kind of activity do you do on a regular basis?"

If the guy was playing hockey every week, you can assume he's in decent shape.

But if "used to be" a stud but hasn't busted his ass in years, you might want to take it a little easy.

But what do I know. Perhaps it's better to randomly administer random high intensity activity to random people who sign the cafeteria sign up sheet.
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Re: The couch thread

Post by Yes, I'm drunk »

At the very, very least you should be asked if you have any pre-existing medical conditions such as diabetes, heart-disease, kidney problems, back issues etc, and in the event that you confirm you do then it's a case of getting a doctor's note saying that you are fit to undertake an exercise regimen. You don't even need to screen or test to cover your ass in most cases. Just ask.

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Re: The couch thread

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Yes, I'm drunk wrote:At the very, very least you should be asked if you have any pre-existing medical conditions such as diabetes, heart-disease, kidney problems, back issues etc, and in the event that you confirm you do then it's a case of getting a doctor's note saying that you are fit to undertake an exercise regimen. You don't even need to screen or test to cover your ass in most cases. Just ask.
According to our lawyer (we just had all of our contracts and forms reviewed, laws change and your shit needs to be current) you need to be very careful about asking about specific conditions, because the one you don't ask about will will be the one the client's atty will hammer home.

While I whole heartedly agree you should do some type of screening and gain background knowledge to best help your clients, at least in our case on our paperwork, it is the clients responsibility to list their conditions, rather than us pose a question and the client check off "yes" or "no". Your State may very.

While not perfect, you can still "discover" other limiting factors in physical assessments and screens.

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Re: The couch thread

Post by msr2112 »

When someone is somewhat de-conditioned it can be very surprising how light of a workout they can do and still get some benefit. Particularly if they have never done the type of activity they are doing during the workout. People can get sore with just one or two sets of 8-10 bodyweight squats. Sometimes they'll get worn out with just a good dynamic warm-up. I always stop someone extremely well short of failure when I first start training them. How is driving someone into the ground so that they're sore for a week helping them and encouraging them to live a healthy life? Whatever happened to consistent progression?
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Re: The couch thread

Post by Yes I Have Balls »

Poor fellow hasn't been around long:
Just remember, Coach isn't going to sell out, HQ isn't going to sign anything that would affect Crossfit negatively. If anything, it would make more sense that Crossfit will have a large impact on Reebok and their future product line.
http://www.board.crossfit.com/showpost. ... stcount=40

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Re: The couch thread

Post by WildGorillaMan »

YIHB, you do that guy a disservice by excerpting. His entire post was awesome.
Just jumping back on the original post, I think it's awesome that Reebok was ACCEPTED by Crossfit. I think a lot of people are coming to certain assumptions without understanding exactly what Coach wants to have happen with Crossfit and the sponsoring capabilities. I'm not getting into that, but it's all over his videos.

Just remember, Coach isn't going to sell out, HQ isn't going to sign anything that would affect Crossfit negatively. If anything, it would make more sense that Crossfit will have a large impact on Reebok and their future product line.

I'm looking forward to see how the Reebok brand mutates in order to confirm with the Crossfit norm. Reebok will undoubtedly start introducing products that target the Crossfit community, imagine being a company of their magnitude with the opportunity to commercially distribute a complete line of sporting goods for a new, untouched, upcoming craze such as Crossfit. I'd be loving it if I were on the Reebok staff...(stock tip!)
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Re: The couch thread

Post by The Ginger Beard Man »

WildGorillaMan wrote:YIHB, you do that guy a disservice by excerpting. His entire post was awesome.
Just jumping back on the original post, I think it's awesome that Reebok was ACCEPTED by Crossfit. I think a lot of people are coming to certain assumptions without understanding exactly what Coach wants to have happen with Crossfit and the sponsoring capabilities. I'm not getting into that, but it's all over his videos.

Just remember, Coach isn't going to sell out, HQ isn't going to sign anything that would affect Crossfit negatively. If anything, it would make more sense that Crossfit will have a large impact on Reebok and their future product line.

I'm looking forward to see how the Reebok brand mutates in order to confirm with the Crossfit norm. Reebok will undoubtedly start introducing products that target the Crossfit community, imagine being a company of their magnitude with the opportunity to commercially distribute a complete line of sporting goods for a new, untouched, upcoming craze such as Crossfit. I'd be loving it if I were on the Reebok staff...(stock tip!)
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Re: The couch thread

Post by friedquads »

In other news, seems that Couch Crassmen's Facebook profile is back.
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Re: The couch thread

Post by Yes I Have Balls »

WildGorillaMan wrote:YIHB, you do that guy a disservice by excerpting. His entire post was awesome.
Just jumping back on the original post, I think it's awesome that Reebok was ACCEPTED by Crossfit. I think a lot of people are coming to certain assumptions without understanding exactly what Coach wants to have happen with Crossfit and the sponsoring capabilities. I'm not getting into that, but it's all over his videos.

Just remember, Coach isn't going to sell out, HQ isn't going to sign anything that would affect Crossfit negatively. If anything, it would make more sense that Crossfit will have a large impact on Reebok and their future product line.

I'm looking forward to see how the Reebok brand mutates in order to confirm with the Crossfit norm. Reebok will undoubtedly start introducing products that target the Crossfit community, imagine being a company of their magnitude with the opportunity to commercially distribute a complete line of sporting goods for a new, untouched, upcoming craze such as Crossfit. I'd be loving it if I were on the Reebok staff...(stock tip!)
Yeah, this is solid gold Jerry!
I'm looking forward to see how the Reebok brand mutates in order to CONFORM with the Crossfit norm.

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Re: The couch thread

Post by WildGorillaMan »

Scott Moore.
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Reebox "mutating" to conform to Crossfit!? REALLY?!? It's that exact ****ing arrogant attitude that explains why everybody ****ing hates crossfitters.

Do yourself a favor and drop a barbell on your head. It might knock some sense into you.
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Re: The couch thread

Post by Jay »

Scott Moore is another koolaid drinker who is slowly seeing the light, good for him.

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WildGorillaMan
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Re: The couch thread

Post by WildGorillaMan »

friedquads wrote:In other news, seems that Couch Crassmen's Facebook profile is back.

This has definitely been a busy day.
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Re: The couch thread

Post by Yes I Have Balls »

WildGorillaMan wrote:
friedquads wrote:In other news, seems that Couch Crassmen's Facebook profile is back.

This has definitely been a busy day.
It has indeed:
Is there any data out there on shoulder injuries in crossfit. It seems they are quite a common event.

Greg Glassman speaks of science studies of crossfit methods in relation to effectiveness of its training programs. Have there been or are there planed any studies of injury rates in crossfit athletes. I feel that kind of a study would be even more important for the growth and safety of crossfit. Other established sports have scientific studies on injury rates in age groups of athletes.

There seems to be a lot written about rabhdo but not much written/studied/data on shoulder and other joint injuries in crossfiters.

My main point--
Why not take some of the cash from all the new sponsors and millions in cert revenue to study injuries in the crossfit community. Establish better protocol for prevention education and treatment.

my 2 cents.
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Hebrew Hammer
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Re: The couch thread

Post by Hebrew Hammer »

Danny John wrote:It has been a long time, since 1977, since I took any kind of law class, but one thing still screams out to me from, I believe, Business Law class: in a court case with a jury, Common Sense trumps even expert testimony...if I remember right. So, Reebok can put this ER medic up there and say that this will all be "false positives," but then the family of the firefighter can simply put anyone (and really just about anyone) on the stand and walk through what we just read and "common sense" would tell us that a gradual approach, maybe a check up, "something" would be in order.

I'm sorry to hear this. It also hurt me to hear that he died alone.

Someone close to me asked me if she should help open a crossfit affiliate in a small town with a globo gym and a couple of private studios. Her idea was to "get certified" and then buy all the equipment and start teaching. She doesn't know the difference between an Olympic bar and a dumbbell and she will be teaching snatches in a few weeks...
Not legal advice, but by way of explanation:

Technically the way it works is that a plaintiff needs to find an expert medical professional to opine something like it's more likely than not that the negligence of the instructor caused or partially caused the death. That requires looking at questions like if the trainer had done a screen, would the trainer have noted problems that would have led him to change the workout? Should a crossfit trainer require a physician's green light before starting a newbie on a crossfit workout? Absent the crossfit workout, or that extreme of a workout, would he have died anyday?

Without an expert opinion, you don't get to the jury; your case is dismissed.

Presumably the defendant would then obtain an expert with a different conclusion. The jury then applies its common sense in figuring out which opinion to believe.

(Another issue might be whether the trainer warned the guy that the workout would be extreme, and that the guy should be in good enough shape to deal with an extreme workout. Given the history and the jokes regarding rhabdo, pukie, and injuries, a trainer should do that and my hunch is that a trainer might legally be required to do so to argue that the guy knowingly assumed the risk.)
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Re: The couch thread

Post by The man in black »

It would seriously suck to be someone affiliated with shitfit in a lawsuit that resulted from an injury. Now matter how proffesional you are, the lawyer is going to drag out Uncle Rahbdo and Pukey the clown and countless Glassman quotes to highlight the culture that you as a trainer am immersed in.

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Re: The couch thread

Post by Yes I Have Balls »

The man in black wrote:It would seriously suck to be someone affiliated with shitfit in a lawsuit that resulted from an injury. Now matter how proffesional you are, the lawyer is going to drag out Uncle Rahbdo and Pukey the clown and countless Glassman quotes to highlight the culture that you as a trainer am immersed in.
Um.... that's what the RRG is for....

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Re: The couch thread

Post by Gin Master »

Shapecharge wrote:Okay, so maybe this is worth a small chuckle. I had a New Year's Eve party at my house. Around 15-18 people. My neighbors are there and one of the neighbor wives is a personal trainer...I put her around late 30's maybe early 40's. Pretty, and she's in shape as far as her appearance is concerned. She'll come out and push the prowler and pull the sled when I have it out in the street. So it's around 3:00 in the morning and things are winding down and she wants to talk about @Fit. I really didn't see this coming and didn't even think about the possibility of her getting into it but I'm pretty fucked up at this point. So I was trying to be cool but I did tell her to not get totally consumed, to think about the programming etc. Anyway it gets mentioned how much stronger she's gotten. So I say, show me. So we go into my power center and I put 135 on the bar and ask her to deadlift it. As she approaches the bar to pick it up I realize that she doesn't know how to deadlift even though she says she does. After a very brief technique review she picks it up somewhat slowly. She wants more so I bump it up to 165...no go. My other neighbor's wife, who's 58, with a giant fake rack, totally trashed, who walks for exercise on occasion and nothing else wants to try it. I'm trying to be somewhat responsible and mention that this isn't you so just be trying to try but she insists...kicks off her heels, I demo a conventional deadlift, she reaches down grabs the bar, looks up, and stands up with it. Never done one in her life. Slight drama afterwards.
And?

Which one of em got a dickin'?

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Shafpocalypse Now
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Re: The couch thread

Post by Shafpocalypse Now »

Follow up from the OP of the fatality:
I have no doubt my friend had a pre-existing heart issue. While he was carrying extra weight, he wasn't a smoker and lived an active life. As well as hockey, he also was big into skiing and snowboarding.

so, I can't imagine him dying of a heart attack based on the crossfit workout alone, at age 51.

My issue with crossfit in this instance is, as many others hear have mentioned, he should not been put through that difficult a workout his first time out. As Shaf suggested, perhaps some type of "ramp-up" could have avoided this.

As much as I disagree with the guys who put him through the workout and would have loved a reason for an "I told you so"......this is not the one I was hoping fore.

They are all good people and also friends of mine. At the moment they are all blaming themselves and suffering pretty bad emotionally. This is one of those complete no-win situations. I'm sure it will be the nail in the coffin for crossfit and physical fitness training for our department...........but oh, what a price.

as I get more information I'll post it.

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