IGX

Yes I Have Balls wrote:Teh Couch is back and better than ever. This time he's got science and "very sophisticated mathematics with him!"

http://journal.crossfit.com/2010/11/gla ... l#comments

While I can't see the video, the comments are good and promise some violent HQ push back.

Pudding wrote:David Smith is wrong. We don't need to create a hypothesis before mining the data. I suspect he is a high school or college student who has been given a simplistic view of academic science. We are working with experts in data analysis and chaos theory. They have decades of experience finding meaningful correlations. We needn't have foregone conclusions about what we'll find at all.

Hi Tony-

Thanks for the reply. Your comment makes me quite nervous, it seems to have this "we're going to do what we're going to do and we're already right, neener neener neener" tone to it. I doubt that's how you intended it, but IMO that really is how it comes off. I have no doubt you mean well, and I really am interested in finding out more about this study, but I've got no interest in throwing stones here. Just trying to help.

Some points:


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"We're not asking anyone to perform differently than they are, just tracking what they're doing. The result should eventually be a robust and accurate picture of hundreds of thousands of people's diet and exercise over decades with the resulting impact on performance and health metrics. Very little downside here and tons of upside."
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I agree on the upside, and I think such data would be really cool to have, but remember what I said about the population. If you pull only from affiliates and their members, your entire population is affiliates and their members. And I do agree with your implied point that if we learn what works best for crossfitters we can help make crossfitters into better crossfitters. All I meant in my original post was to not claim you were any more than that unless you had the right population. Clearly you've got something bigger in mind than just a single survey and I'd love to see the methodology; I could well be reading too much into the video.


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"David Smith is wrong. We don't need to create a hypothesis before mining the data....I suspect he is a high school or college student who has been given a simplistic view of academic science".
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If you decide ahead of time what you're looking for in a massive pile of data, you're going to find it. There are all sorts of tricks one can play when looking for an answer they already have; most of the hard part of studies like you're talking about comes from avoiding those biases.

Some of the more science-oriented Crossfit stuff has been accused of having a confirmation bias, and when you say things like "we don't need a hypothesis, you must be uneducated" you only further that impression. Please remember that the crossfit demographic includes lots of people with significant education in all sorts of science, logic, philosophy, law, physiology, etc (a side effect of box membership costing $100-$200+/month). Not everyone who disagrees with you is by necessity dumber than you are.

It may well be that you need less of a formal hypothesis for data mining than you do before starting drug trials (for example). I'm not a data mining expert. But to claim that people who don't understand or agree with your point are 'simplistic' or undereducated is awfully defensive. Look, the people commenting here are CFJ subscribers, which means we're all devoted (devout?) crossfitters. We're all on your side.


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Furthermore, these notions of peer review are hilarious. Peer review and/or consensus have nothing to do with science. Every major flawed study has been peer reviewed. Something is either right, wrong, valid or bunk no matter who agrees, disagrees, understands or doesn't.
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I suppose the fact that thousands of mathematicians/physicans/statisticians/etc over hundreds of years have submitted to and participated in peer review carries no weight with you? Crossfit has this free market approach to things, which I agree with, but if peer review was on balance more bad than good, wouldn't the free market have choked it out by now? Surely the fact that it existed and continues to exist is an indicator of its fitness in the realm of academia?

I also think you hold different beliefs about peer review than I do. Peer review is intended to verify whether your work shows what it purports to show. It's like having someone check your figures when you do your taxes. If you don't want to undergo review by people who have no vested interest in your success it just looks like you're hiding something. "Fermat's Last Theorem" by Simon Singh is worth reading if you want to see how important peer review is even in mathematics, which is perhaps the hardest of the hard sciences. And I'm not asking for you to hand your data over to someone who actively dislikes Crossfit in order to ask them what's wrong with it. But if your want to assert that you're doing science, you need to be willing to take comments on your work.



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Science is outside the realm of opinion.
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Nowhere in my first comment did I say 'opinion'. That's your word, not mine, and I tend to agree with you. But peer review serves more purposes than opinion, as I said above. I've heard Crossfit described as "open source fitness", and I think that's a wonderful phrase. But if you're really going to be open source you have to be open to constructive criticism and sceptical input from supporters. To do otherwise is to do your end goal a disservice.


Anyways, I don't want this to be the start of a flamewar; that wasn't my intent in my original posting and it's not the intent in my reply. All I mean to put forth is constructive criticism, take it as you like.

Fat Cat wrote:This is what elite fitness looks like.

Fat Cat wrote:This is what elite fitness looks like.

Dan Martin wrote:First, it was the so-called after school learning centers because the little shitheads weren't getting enough math and reading in school. Now, you have to send your kid somewhere to get physical education. WTF?

syaigh wrote:When I coached at an affiliate, sometimes kids would join in the workouts. And I did NOT like seeing kids younger than 12 or 13 (depending on their development) doing timed workouts. They can generally move faster than adults and are very flexible so even if you get full range of motion, they are all over the place (as you can see by some of the squats in the videos). When we did CF kids, it was all about playing games and having fun. If we did a race or anything timed, it was an obstacle course or a foot race. Having them race through a regular WOD is just scary to behold. I've pulled kids out of WODs, even when their parents were cheering them on and gave them something else to do. The parents don't know that what the kids are doing is bad. The trainers should know better and act accordingly.

There are lots of ways to implement this stuff without it being a race and still make it fun. I understand this may have been an occasional competition, but I would not have had those young kids racing to do squats and situps and the kettlebell swings were a bit scary as well. The rowing machine was horrible to watch. Young kids repeatly jerking their shoulders and elbows against resistance is just bad. I'd rather see them play on the monkey bars, but that's just me.

I also have a real problem with parents who have their young kids playing 2-3 different sports at the same time. I run into the "he wants to do it" excuse a lot and it makes me wonder who the parent is. My son would eat sugar all day and stay up all night if he could. Doesn't mean I should let him.

I work with a lot of kids now, and I even teach the basics of weightlifting to kids as young as 6 or 8, but we use appropriate weight and focus primarily on form. Joints are precious, we should treat them as such.

Regarding PE, my kids have it once a week, but every day after school, they spend at least an hour outside playing and if they have no friends to play with, my husband or I play tag, baseball, kickball, or go for a bike ride. Sometimes, we just race each other around the house.