oh my god, i've ran on that trail. i've also gotten lost there. this has nothing to do with crossfit.
oh my god, i've ran on that trail. i've also gotten lost there. this has nothing to do with crossfit.
Dont worry boys. When the CF guys are done gathering up every good looking woman in the area they won't mind at all if you unsuccessfully try to move on the homely ones. Just keep jacking off about your 5k times and playing your video games, you're the coolest group of guys on the planet.
113 wrote:
These folks are weightlifters. That's great. Pretending that they are these amazing all-around athletes is both disingenuous and frankly a little dangerous.
Precious Roy wrote:
+1
What is even more disingenuous is that there are no weight classes, even though weight lifting is a major aspect of the comptetition. It is almost impossible for anyone (male) under 175 lbs to get past the weight lifting in this competition. All the guys are huge. Thus, the crossfit games are not about finding who is the best all-around athletes. It is about creating a sport for big jocks who stink at endurance sports.
Huge? Only a distance runner would consider these guys huge.
Last year's winner, 5'10" 195
http://games.crossfit.com/athlete/114352010 winner, 5'11" 190
http://games.crossfit.com/athlete/114512009 winner, 5'9" 176
Guy that has been top 10 several times:
5'5" 151
http://games.crossfit.com/athlete/27065It's okay, it will all work ou wrote:
Dont worry boys. When the CF guys are done gathering up every good looking woman in the area they won't mind at all if you unsuccessfully try to move on the homely ones. Just keep jacking off about your 5k times and playing your video games, you're the coolest group of guys on the planet.
Do they pick up these ladies before or after they are hospitalized due to the effort expended on a 7-mile run?
tttttt wrote:
what about the principal of specificity? there's nothing in a football player's or a triathlete's training that would prepare them for a bunch of burpees
Burpees, pullups, dead lifts, rope climbing, etc. THOSE ARE ALL SPECIFIC EXERCISES. That's the funny thing: you visit the web pages for the hot shots and they all have posted times for the same workouts. Isn't that against the stated purpose of the crossfit? Training for a random assortment of the same 25 exercises isn't much different than training for the multitude of body movements one might have to make in any other competition.
Would someone please tell these guys the decathlon already exists?
Here’s my bit, I’m a runner turned Crossfitter(SP??). To get to the “Games” one has to participate in the “Open” which consists of 5 Workout Of the Day (WOD’s) over 5 weeks. Athletes are given WOD’s that are to be completed at home or in their Box (CF speak for gym) and then reported to a website; much like qualifying for NCAA T&F Nationals. The top sixty athletes are invited to Regionals which has the same geographic boundaries as the Open and is an in-person event. The top 1 to 3 finishers at Regionals, depending on the region, go to the Games.
There is NO running in the Open and there were only short sprints this year at Regionals. CF has shifted to lifting heavy objects many times so the layman can view and say, “F, that’s a lot of weight.” The problem is in the fact that Crossfit Head Quarters (HQ) claims to crown the “Fittest on Earth.” I love CF and I love running but if one was to analyze the programming for Games qualifying it’s easy to identify that this WOD was destined for failure. HQ has not placed value on endurance and now has placed their top 120 athletes on national television participating in disciplines that a majority of the Nation can relate to. By doing this a person with basic knowledge of running can conclude that the “Fittest on Earth” just ran 4:22:00 marathon pace for 11k. 13,721 people ran equal to or faster than 4:22:00 at the 2011 Chicago Marathon.
So, is this embarrassing for CF? Most definitely. HQ should have programmed more endurance into the qualifying rounds to avoid such a predictable failure. But I will say this: watch the rest of the games. These athletes are far from endurance hobby joggers but they are phenomenal overall athletes. There will be events that happen this weekend that many of us would never be able to attempt. CF gets people off of their couch and in shape while also giving you the valid question of, “Why isn’t this aired on Comedy Central?”
At least they have full coverage, solid announcing and no cutaways for stupid interest stories.
distance guy wrote:
You can just sit on a Ski-doo whenever you need a break? It's only 750 meters, people.
Plus they're all wearing swim fins!
The funny thing about the Crossfit games is that none of the top Crossfitters actually follow the program. These are people who do training on their own and then compete at the Xfit games, which as far as I can tell is a worthless assortment of high volume lifts.
I'm much, much more impressed by the World's Strongest Man competitions.
UsedToBeKnowItAll wrote:
113 wrote:These folks are weightlifters. That's great. Pretending that they are these amazing all-around athletes is both disingenuous and frankly a little dangerous.
Precious Roy wrote:
+1
What is even more disingenuous is that there are no weight classes, even though weight lifting is a major aspect of the comptetition. It is almost impossible for anyone (male) under 175 lbs to get past the weight lifting in this competition. All the guys are huge. Thus, the crossfit games are not about finding who is the best all-around athletes. It is about creating a sport for big jocks who stink at endurance sports.
Huge? Only a distance runner would consider these guys huge.
Last year's winner, 5'10" 195
http://games.crossfit.com/athlete/114352010 winner, 5'11" 190
http://games.crossfit.com/athlete/114512009 winner, 5'9" 176
Guy that has been top 10 several times:
5'5" 151
http://games.crossfit.com/athlete/27065
You idenitified one guy under 175 lbs (because he is very short). The rest of the guys you identified prove my point. 5'10"-11 190-195 lbs is huge compared to a runner/triathlete (135-150). Anyone who is that height and weight is carrying too much weight to be decent at endurance events. So, they basically come up with their own competition to fit their body type. If they weight classed like Olympic weightlifting and let smaller guys lift less, they would be humiliated by those guys on the endurance events.
Precious Roy wrote:
What is even more disingenuous is that there are no weight classes, even though weight lifting is a major aspect of the comptetition. It is almost impossible for anyone (male) under 175 lbs to get past the weight lifting in this competition. All the guys are huge.
Breaking news: life isn't always fair. Why should you have to lift less weight just because you're tiny? 500lbs is 500lbs is 500lbs.
Take a clue from evolution: only the strong survive.
XFIT 4 LIFE
friendz wrote:
Blowing.Rock Master wrote:Check a topo map for Camp Pendelton. Most of the peaks near the ocean are in the 250' to 500' range. Here's a photo of Microwave Mountain:
http://peak360fitness.com/wod-the-unknownI doubt the top of that even makes it to 500'.
Flattop Mountain in Blowing Rock, NC, where I do the 11 mile run, is 900' higher than the start at Bass Lake.
900' at the start. Ok, but what is the greatest CHANGE in elevation WHILE you are running?
Read my post again. The elevation gain is 900'. Bass Lake is at 3,200'. The top of Flattop Mountain is 4,100'.
UsedToBeKnowItAll wrote:
Blowing.Rock Master wrote:Watch the video again, the 2:00 time was for the run portion only. They gave a separate time for the swim/run. Then the clock reset to zero.
They had a scoring checkpoint after the bike, but the two-hour time was for the whole thing.
No, they stated that the time shown on the clock was for the "run". Do you really think the lead guy walked 7 miles over a small mountain in 1:10? I doubt those guys were doing 10 minute miles when they were running, there's no way in hell they were walking that fast. Did you watch the video? They were walking when they went DOWNHILL!
Wow Precious Roy, what an insight, people gravitate toward what suits their skills! Do you think small, frail young boys all grow up dreaming of running cross country? No, they do it when they realize football isn't their sport. They take up the sport of running because that's what their body allows them to be good at. And good for them, it's what they should do. So why is the opposite frowned upon as a secondary athlete? You can stick your head in the sand all you want, these are real athletes with a lot of skill. The fact that they can't run distance for s**t only matters to a tiny group of people.
Fins for a 700m swim? I think I'd be halfway to the finish in the time it took them to put on the fins.
"Finman" was probably the RD.
Oh the humanatee.
No one should have to endure a competition as daunting as this. Not even the fittest on Earth.
Camelbacks on the bike/run? Seriously? Fins on the swim? Hanging out on the back of a jet-ski and not DQ'd?
The contestants in this deal were seriously undertrained if they were going to do it in a competitive way. Just by looking at those guys you can tell they spend most of their training time lifting rather than swimming, biking, or running. Any decent triathletes would have smoked them.
It's just bizarre to me to train people to be weightlifters but then make them compete in a semi-triathlon. You would never decide who the best triathlete is by making them do deadlifts and kipping.
113 wrote:
The more I think about this, the more I think it's kind of the ultimate refutation of Crossfit's own slogan ("The Fittest on Earth") and hopefully a kind of wake-up call to the organizers of the event.
You can tell that when this course was put together the organizers had visions of their elite squads of athletes battling each other through water, sand, and mountain, providing some drama for the cameras. The believed their own hype-- hey, these people are really good at lifting weights and climbing ropes, so an open water swim and a mountain run should be no problem, right? Instead, they got conclusive proof of the limitations of their approach. First of all, none of these athletes, 90+ of the best crossfitters in the world, can swim. The leader (by a solid margin) came through the 700-meter swim in 13:30. If you give him 16:00 for an 800-meter swim, he's mid-pack at any decent-sized sprint triathlon. Most of the other athletes weren't close-- one guy couldn't finish, another had to rest on a jetski, get taken back to shore, rest more, and then go back out to finish the swim. Two women couldn't finish the swim-- so now they're out for the entire competition.
I don't know what to say about the single-speed bike over sand except that it's just fundamentally stupid and doesn't really test anything other than the ability to go slow on a bike.
The run is where I feel like this event veered almost into dangerous territory. To put it simply, most athletes of that size and limited running experience have no business attempting a run like that in those conditions. The second place finisher was taken to the hospital after he crossed the finish line. One of the pre-race finishers spent a lot of his time stopped, stretching, and screaming in pain. Three people were on IVs afterwards. Only 9 of the men were able to beat the group of 3 lead women over the run portion. One of the women was out there for over three hours-- for an 11k! That's a slow walk.
They even had to cancel one of the ensuing events, the broad jump. That's how much they brutalized their own athletes-- they couldn't even do a damn jump anymore.
Watch this recap video:
http://games.crossfit.com/video/crossfit-games-update-july-11-2012Most of the "highlights" are about people struggling, and then they spend five minutes trying to figure out why the defending champs and pre-event favorites struggled so much. I think I know why: because they can't swim or run. You destroyed your best athletes by beginning the competition with events that they CAN'T DO, no matter how good they are at climbing ropes and throwing tires.
These folks are weightlifters. That's great. Pretending that they are these amazing all-around athletes is both disingenuous and frankly a little dangerous.
You mean they weren't really "ready for anything?" Even 50 degree roads like the commentator said. That's an incredible 119% grade. Mind boggling show of fitness and athletic ability if you ask me.
Gee golly I love this thread.