The couch thread

[Shafpocalypse Now]

Reape was one.
Spells the other, IIRC. Maybe Danny J.

He did take a few shots at Cotter being out of shape for running, but I don't think he's doing that now, just back when Steve checked out a cert way back when.

Hahaha. My Fran time is SURELY in the high teens, maybe low 20s.

GREG! Let get together for some beers next time you're in Ann Arbor or Michigan, for real. First round is on me. I've talked enough shit about you that I figure I owe you some face time. Convince me! Or not, I'm sure it'll be refreshing not to have your ass kissed so much it's chapped.

[Gary John]

Just when this thread was starting to lose a little steam......



OTO, you are annoying, the semi-male Allyison NYC.

[kitosho]

I'm with Shaf. Next time you are in the detroit area, the gin is on me.

[___________]

...

[Trebuchet]

Performing a crazy back lift with one inch of motion and 6000 pounds .

Has this been documented ever?

[nafod]

We need to beat down "work capacity across broad time and modal domains."

This is classic Glassmanian pseudoscience. It sounds like a good, rigorous measure, but really, it doesn't mean anything and you can't measure it anyway.

Why not?

Calculating mechanical work for exercise movements is notoriously tough -- it varies for each person and you can't compare different types of exercises against each other. I've mentioned this before, but deadlifting 500x1 is not the same as deadlifting 100x5 really fast. Performing a crazy back lift with one inch of motion and 6000 pounds is not the same as pulling 100 pounds to a height of 60 inches. Also, some useful exercises, like gymnastic holds, don't even translate into mechanical work, because you aren't moving anything when you do them.

Yea, on an absolute scale hard to calculate. But in a relative scale it's easy. There are tons of exercises and activities where you can go head to head. Maybe you can't calculate the actual watts or watt-hrs of a static hold, but if one guys holds the plate longer than the other guy, you know he's done more work. And for comparing yesterday's workout with today's, if you do the same in less time, you've upped the power. Easy.

"Broad time and modal domains" sounds good, but nobody knows what the hell it means. Glassman's definition of "broad" time seems to stop at about 20 minutes, since that's the max length of most CrossFit workouts.

Lots of different exercises and activities ranging from 1RM to 20 minutes is how I read it. I don't agree with the approach, crossfit wore me down more than built me up, but I know what he's saying and he's consistent in his approach. Time is a component of almost every WOD but the 1RMs, which tells you there is a continual singular focus on power output. If you do the same workout in a shorter time you have upped the power.

[Gin Master]

Couch responds.

http://www.board.crossfit.com/showpost. ... tcount=515

He must have posted this before he started drinking. It's clear, straightforward, and void of personal attacks. It also lacks the characteristic braggadocio. If Couch had posted this in a vacuum, it would've seemed pretty reasonable.

---

I thought Couch wasn't racist.

Every athlete we’ve worked with, from Olympic medalists, to UFC legends, has some glaring chink in his/her GPP

[TerryB]

Couch responds.

http://www.board.crossfit.com/showpost. ... tcount=515

WTF is he TALKING about???

• GPP is the most underdeveloped and neglected aspect of athletic training, especially in elite athletes.

Do they need more?

• CrossFit produces an unmatched GPP in novice, intermediate, and advanced athletes regardless of their prior training and sport.

See above.

• Every athlete we’ve worked with, from Olympic medalists, to UFC legends, has some glaring chink in his/her GPP, and it takes, at most two hours, two sessions, on average to find these chinks.

By "chink," you mean, they can't get a fast Fran time? Or can't do muscleups? If they're at the top of their sport despite these "glaring chinks," doesn't that say something?

• Fixing these chinks, these deficiencies, has immediate benefit within your sport and very often in ways not quite obvious mechanically and perhaps metabolically.

Has ANY of this been tested or proven, or is he just throwing this shit out??

• There’s greater margin for improving performance in elite athletes, where the margins of victory are very tight, improving GPP with CrossFit than can be garnered through additional sport specific training.

WHAT??

• CrossFit, will for many sports reduce the total training volume, reduce training injuries, and allow more time for vital sport specific skills and drills.

Absolute bullshit.

• CrossFit is more fun and seems more athletic to experienced athletes than does traditional GPP.

Irrelevant.

• CrossFit has athletes improving their fitness for years beyond, to levels significantly beyond, traditional GPP.

WHAT?? Perhaps Couch has some "evidence-based" model to prove this statement?

• Sport training and physiology are not so well understood that highly specialized strength and conditioning routines are optimally effective.

More Absolut horseshit. Or is it Beefeater horseshit?

[stosh]

Like the deadlifting numbers, more elusive metrics:

We got two times the results in half the time by a handful of easy and critical metrics.

And fo' rizzle, who are the Olympic medalists (and gold medalists specifcally, as he noted yesterday) he works with?

[Shaun B. O'Murnecan]

• Sport training and physiology are not so well understood that highly specialized strength and conditioning routines are optimally effective.

More Absolut horseshit. Or is it Beefeater horseshit?

Goose shit.

[nafod]

• Sport training and physiology are not so well understood that highly specialized strength and conditioning routines are optimally effective.

More Absolut horseshit. Or is it Beefeater horseshit?

I'd agree with him on this. Sports Science is still mostly in the business of explaining, not predicting.

[The Real Rant]

We need to beat down "work capacity across broad time and modal domains."

This is classic Glassmanian pseudoscience. It sounds like a good, rigorous measure, but really, it doesn't mean anything and you can't measure it anyway.

Calculating mechanical work for exercise movements is notoriously tough -- it varies for each person and you can't compare different types of exercises against each other. I've mentioned this before, but deadlifting 500x1 is not the same as deadlifting 100x5 really fast. Performing a crazy back lift with one inch of motion and 6000 pounds is not the same as pulling 100 pounds to a height of 60 inches. Also, some useful exercises, like gymnastic holds, don't even translate into mechanical work, because you aren't moving anything when you do them.

"Broad time and modal domains" sounds good, but nobody knows what the hell it means. Glassman's definition of "broad" time seems to stop at about 20 minutes, since that's the max length of most CrossFit workouts. They might occasionally go longer, but never into the multi-hour range. I don't think we'll see a 20 mile forced march come out of the hopper at the next CrossFit Games.

Ultimately, if you want to measure a person's fitness in a rigorous, repeatable way, you have to come up with some standard tests that you can apply over and over again. You can pick whatever you want: lifting, sprinting, jumping, endurance, or circuit-type stuff, it doesn't matter: the fittest person by your test will be a naturally talented athlete that trains specifically for your particular collection of events.

Finally, for all his talk about "evidence based fitness," I've never seen Glassman come out with any actual evidence. As far as I know, there are no plots of "work capacity across broad time and modal domains." Glassman has talked about area under the curve on a work vs. time plot as being the ultimate metric, but I've never seen these numbers calculated for anyone, CrossFit or not.

All this talk about evidence is just marketing. Glassman is totally dismissive of exercise science -- since when has he cared what the labcoats say? CrossFit is all about anecdote. Show some pictures of ripped up chicks and bros. Show some Marines doing a WoD -- aren't they hardcore? Like Rant has said, it's all about getting a certain look, or fitting in with a certain crowd.

Nobody that does CrossFit honestly cares about "work capacity across broad time and modal domains," and that includes Glassman.

Excellent post.

[The Real Rant]

And fo' rizzle, who are the Olympic medalists (and gold medalists specifcally, as he noted yesterday) he works with?

They don't exist. From the get go I was asking who all these elites were.

[The Real Rant]

Speaking on trannys. It appears that Nicole's T levels are way out of whack. Is she shaving yet?

[Shafpocalypse Now]

This is why Greg is so readable. This post is so full of subtle awesome passive-aggressive comments.

I think that’s very good, Jared.

I’ve never heard anyone say that CrossFit is a substitute for training in your sport. This is a strawman. I’d be embarrassed to utter it, and Poliquin ought to be embarrassed to present it. It’s dishonest. It’s unfair. We teased Mark Twight for floating this strawman on these very pages with the observation that “Mark Twight has discovered that you have to do your sport to get good at it.”

Has Poliquin still not gotten over the Yanks coming to his Canada and taking the soldiers at the Canadian Infantry School from him? We got two times the results in half the time by a handful of easy and critical metrics. Now he’s pretending to have advanced understanding of endocrinology. I wonder if he’s given up on his baking soda and vomiting regimen? That’s what he had the Canadian soldiers doing. It’s sad to see a guy, once a reasonably good coach, get older and hungry, fearful, I guess, of eating dog food in retirement, start scamming the public with pseudo science and supplements. Damn that’s ugly. As a strong and reliable rule, good coaches are selling their knowledge neither pills nor contraptions.

For the record: If you want to get at snowboarding, you’ll have to snowboard. If you want to get good at tennis, you’ll have to play tennis. If you want to get good at Jiu-jitsu, you’ll have to do jiu-jitsu. If you want to get good at baseball you’ll have to play baseball. If you want to get good at swimming, you’ll have to swim. If you want to be good at playing the violin, you’ll have to play the violin. If you want to get good at chess, you’ll have to play chess. If you want to get good at physics, you’ll have to do physics. If you want to get good at X, you’ll have to do X. I sincerely hope a pattern has emerged here that the likes of Poliquin can wrap themselves around.

Here’s what we know about CrossFit, GPP, sport training, and athletic development:

• GPP is the most underdeveloped and neglected aspect of athletic training, especially in elite athletes.

• CrossFit produces an unmatched GPP in novice, intermediate, and advanced athletes regardless of their prior training and sport.

• Every athlete we’ve worked with, from Olympic medalists, to UFC legends, has some glaring chink in his/her GPP, and it takes, at most two hours, two sessions, on average to find these chinks.

• Fixing these chinks, these deficiencies, has immediate benefit within your sport and very often in ways not quite obvious mechanically and perhaps metabolically. For instance, more pull-ups makes for better skiing and skiers. Upper body pushing-movements makes for better rowing and rowers. Anaerobic training is a boon to endurance athletes.

• There’s greater margin for improving performance in elite athletes, where the margins of victory are very tight, improving GPP with CrossFit than can be garnered through additional sport specific training.

• “CrossFit produces a “ready-state” from which more advanced or sport specific training becomes very efficient.” – Mark Twight

• CrossFit, will for many sports reduce the total training volume, reduce training injuries, and allow more time for vital sport specific skills and drills.

• CrossFit is more fun and seems more athletic to experienced athletes than does traditional GPP.

• CrossFit has athletes improving their fitness for years beyond, to levels significantly beyond, traditional GPP.

• Sport training and physiology are not so well understood that highly specialized strength and conditioning routines are optimally effective.

I love it.

[kitosho]

crossfit is gay

[kitosho]

there i said it

[newguy]

My two absolute - all time favorite posters

1. Garm
2. Coach.

I could see a showdown between these two being a serious pay per view event.

[T200]

Performing a crazy back lift with one inch of motion and 6000 pounds .

Has this been documented ever?

If this is a serious question I was under the impression that Louis Cyr is the best backlifter ever with 4300lbs. Surely any such info could have been filtered through a carny PR release though.

[TerryB]

The question isn't how many Olympians/gold medalists perform CF WOD's. The question is how many Olympians/gold medalists were CREATED by CF WOD's.

[Gin Master]

The question isn't how many Olympians/gold medalists perform CF WOD's. The question is how many Olympians/gold medalists were CREATED by CF WOD's.

Nobody can ever answer that as it discounts genetics and every other program, set, and rep that has led them to that point. It's disingenuous for Charlie Pelican to claim he "developed" elite athletes when he got them after they were already elite.

AFAIK, Erin Cafaro, who won a gold for rowing this summer, is the only athlete that used CF as any significant portion of her training before winning a medal. She trains out of San Fran. Kelly Starrett and Adrian Bozman are a little more thoughtful and strength-focused than the other kool-aid drinkers.

Some good motor-boating about to happen here:

[Shaun B. O'Murnecan]

Every athlete we’ve worked with, from Olympic medalists, to UFC legends, has some glaring chink in his/her GPP

The chinaman is not the issue here.

[stosh]

Hmm. I didn't know rowers had butts like that.

[powerlifter54]

From TC's article today "Why You Suck"

"...All of the kids had started playing when they were 5 years old, but what divided them, aside from ability, was simply how many hours each had spent practicing. The really good ones had totaled 10,000 hours of practice, while the good ones had only managed to squeak away on the catgut for 8,000 hours or so.

The underachievers? Just 4,000 hours of practice.

The most surprising thing was that they really couldn't find any "naturals." Nor could they find any grinders, people who just worked harder than everybody else but just didn't have the talent to become elite.

The thing that distinguished one from another was simply hard work, nothing else.

But the weird thing is that 10,000 hours — roughly the amount of practice a truly committed devotee could accrue over 10 year — keeps popping up in different fields. Whether you're a writer, a concert pianist, a basketball player, computer programmer, or chess master, true greatness seems to pivot on that magic number.

Gladwell notes only one exception: Chess player Bobby Fisher, who took only nine years to achieve Chess Master status.

The Beatles are an old-fogey rock band anachronism to most modern music lovers, but few would probably deny their influence on the world's music. Interestingly, the Beatles were afforded certain circumstances that allowed them to become great.

Early in their career, before anybody had heard of them, they got the opportunity to fly from their England homes to Hamburg, Germany, where a strip club owner had gotten the idea to have bands play non-stop music while sexy Sadie did a little helter skelter on stage.

And play non-stop the Beatles did, for seven days a week, eight hours a night. They made five trips to Hamburg between 1960 and 1962. By the time they had their initial taste of success, they'd performed live approximately 1200 times, which is extraordinary in that most bands never play live 1200 times over their entire careers.

Writer Philip Norman, who wrote the Beatles' biography Shout, explained in this way:

"They learned not only stamina. They had to learn an enormous amount of numbers — cover versions of everything you can think of, not just rock and roll, a bit of jazz too. But when they came back, they sounded like no one else. It was the making of them."

There it was again, hours of practice accrued equates to success. Nothing magical. The more psychologists in Gladwell's book looked at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play.

Those hockey, baseball, and soccer players who weren't good enough to make it? They might have been too young to compete with older, more physically mature players, so they weren't picked to all-star teams, didn't get the extra coaching, never got close to hitting 10,000 hours of practice by the time the professional teams came around looking for players."

Didn't exactly approach things this way but basically more than half way to 10 years with my son. Who BTW we didn't push into school a year early. He does no cultfit BTW.

[Sofa King]

This sums up my feelings on the @fit Message Board:

"Why do the heathens rage behind the firehouse
Where Peewee sits upon the wall to preach
This boy and girl that gather pearls
Of wisdom falling from his mouth"