christian gotcher
07-24-2008, 01:00 PM
I posted this on the Crossfit forum, but it was recommended that I post it here because a lot of people ask the question: where is the science? Why is Crossfit better for me or for anyone else wanting to be a SEAL?
The question seems to be where Glassman can make the claim that Crossfit is a system of "Evidence-Based Fitness." The challenge, then, is to establish what constitutes viable evidence and where Crossfit has it. Just because I love the format (and because it worked so well for Plato), I'm going to do this in a dialogue. (I'm looking back at this post and realizing it's pretty long- brace yourself)
Challenger: All Crossfit has to its name is testimonial and testimonials are not valid as scientific evidence.
CJG: What is it that makes testimonials invalid as scientific measurements? It is their subjectivity. I have been doing Half-Angies as a supplement to my other training (check my workout journal on this forum for specifics) and every day for this past week and a half, I have felt like I was working harder and harder to get through these exercises. However, my times were going down dramatically (from 8+ minutes to 6:06 two days ago). Were someone to ask me whether the "Half-Angie program" made me any stronger, without the times as data points, my answer would be "No- in fact, I feel weaker." This is what takes Crossfit members' experiences and advances them from the realm of testimonial to the realm of useful data- the times/rounds/weights involved in benchmarking exercises. Collect enough of these data points and you have observable, repeatable data that can be compared to the results of other programs.
Challenger: But where are the controls?
CJG: Controls are great, but the role of a scientist is to make research results viable to the average consumer. It is almost impossible to perfectly control all the components of improved fitness (diet, stretching, exercise, and recovery- which includes stress, meaning it includes everything) in any target group for the length of time necessary to make a legitimate statement about long-term fitness. This is true of many types of experiments involving complex organisms. How do we deal with the inability to control our environment? It's called statistics. Try it.
By increasing the sample size in the experiment. If you only have 2 people in a test of two different squat periodizations, the results are worthless because of the variables of life. One person might have a better diet or genetic predisposition. Get 200,000 randomly selected (very key) people in the same test and chance takes care of the variables. Does subject A on Program X have a poor diet? Odds are, there is a subject B on a great diet, and with that many data points, the numbers will even out. The popularity of Crossfit creates the vast sample size.
Challenger: But Crossfitters are self-selecting. They're not random.
CJG: True, but they're self-selecting out of the group that counts- people who want to be fit. If we wanted to do effects of interval training on mammals, we could bring dogs and cows into the experiment, too, but I wouldn't care about the results because it doesn't relate to me. Anyone who's interested in fitness and looking at various options can make use of Crossfit's data because it's selected out of other people in that same category- people looking for effective fitness.
Challenger: But... but... what about Program X? It allows for more rest between workouts, so it must be a better program than Crossfit.
CJG: This is where the evidence really kicks in (and here's where a grad student in kinesiology or physical sciences could make a great final project). Let's test that claim. Does Program X (A bodybuilding split program, Hybrid HIIT, SS, your company's fitness plan) have the same goals as Crossfit? If it does, and it can agree on the same test of performance as being valid, then get me two groups, each at recorded starting performance levels on the predetermined test, and set them on each program for a given period of time, measuring periodically... oh wait... that's exactly what Crossfit did with the Canadian military PT program, and Crossfit exercises provided a significantly better result on all but one element (pullups, and only lost marginally, if I remember correctly) with greater customer satisfaction and less injuries. I'd call that "Evidence-Based-Fitness"... wouldn't you?
Up to this point, I could have been taken as a Crossfit evangelical, so here is where some people might get touchy. In terms of evidence-based-fitness, Crossfit has two incredible, systemic problems in its ability to challenge other doctrines for effectiveness. 1) Glassman's purported enemy, the "Globogym" and that mindset, is a straw-man easily beaten that doesn't record its results for data points or use the same exercises. 2) Glassman does not (and, to his credit, probably can't) encourage blackbox experiments outside of the tested protocols to see if any of them are better than what we've tried. Has any ever blackboxed the South-Beach Diet on the Crossfit training protocol? How about Bally's, Jenny-Craig? Okay, that was sarcastic. But seriously, what about the "Warrior Diet?" Its users claim great increases in performance towards elite athletics: how does it blackbox in comparison to The Zone? What about the programming of Gym Jones, Mountain-Athlete, and others? Sure, they drew some of their ideas from Crossfit, but what if the tweaks in their programming that contrast with the Crossfit model, or the equipment they had that most Crossfitters don't (IE: sleds), make them more effective on average at crushing Crossfit's own tests?
This is the problem people have with the "science of Crossfit." The science is valid, and Crossfit can create phenomenal results. Could those results be more phenomenal with continuing experimentation? Perhaps. When people complain that Crossfit is like a cult, what they're really finding is that many of its members are resistant to change, making Crossfit its own mainstream. What happens when a trainer in this 'open-source' forum finds a modification of Crossfit that works better than the main-source, numbers and all? If Crossfit was truly "evidence-based," HQ would adapt to assimilate the new idea just like Glassman says it would. I think some people question the truth of that.
This is where we come in. It's our job as conscientious consumers (and fanatically devoted cultists) to keep an eye out for these better programs, conduct our own small-scale tests of their efficacy, and if they work, submit them and our numbers both to the public and Crossfit HQ to blackbox on a large-scale. Every affiliate who's curious about someone else's claim should have a program like this. If people were to do that instead of complaining about Crossfit's 'lack of science,' ordinary affiliates could bless us all with proof, once and for all, that the "who-knows-where-it-came-from-counter-body-1-day-on-2-days-off-man-muscle-split"
is the bull**** we all think it is.
I have a Half-Angie to do.
The question seems to be where Glassman can make the claim that Crossfit is a system of "Evidence-Based Fitness." The challenge, then, is to establish what constitutes viable evidence and where Crossfit has it. Just because I love the format (and because it worked so well for Plato), I'm going to do this in a dialogue. (I'm looking back at this post and realizing it's pretty long- brace yourself)
Challenger: All Crossfit has to its name is testimonial and testimonials are not valid as scientific evidence.
CJG: What is it that makes testimonials invalid as scientific measurements? It is their subjectivity. I have been doing Half-Angies as a supplement to my other training (check my workout journal on this forum for specifics) and every day for this past week and a half, I have felt like I was working harder and harder to get through these exercises. However, my times were going down dramatically (from 8+ minutes to 6:06 two days ago). Were someone to ask me whether the "Half-Angie program" made me any stronger, without the times as data points, my answer would be "No- in fact, I feel weaker." This is what takes Crossfit members' experiences and advances them from the realm of testimonial to the realm of useful data- the times/rounds/weights involved in benchmarking exercises. Collect enough of these data points and you have observable, repeatable data that can be compared to the results of other programs.
Challenger: But where are the controls?
CJG: Controls are great, but the role of a scientist is to make research results viable to the average consumer. It is almost impossible to perfectly control all the components of improved fitness (diet, stretching, exercise, and recovery- which includes stress, meaning it includes everything) in any target group for the length of time necessary to make a legitimate statement about long-term fitness. This is true of many types of experiments involving complex organisms. How do we deal with the inability to control our environment? It's called statistics. Try it.
By increasing the sample size in the experiment. If you only have 2 people in a test of two different squat periodizations, the results are worthless because of the variables of life. One person might have a better diet or genetic predisposition. Get 200,000 randomly selected (very key) people in the same test and chance takes care of the variables. Does subject A on Program X have a poor diet? Odds are, there is a subject B on a great diet, and with that many data points, the numbers will even out. The popularity of Crossfit creates the vast sample size.
Challenger: But Crossfitters are self-selecting. They're not random.
CJG: True, but they're self-selecting out of the group that counts- people who want to be fit. If we wanted to do effects of interval training on mammals, we could bring dogs and cows into the experiment, too, but I wouldn't care about the results because it doesn't relate to me. Anyone who's interested in fitness and looking at various options can make use of Crossfit's data because it's selected out of other people in that same category- people looking for effective fitness.
Challenger: But... but... what about Program X? It allows for more rest between workouts, so it must be a better program than Crossfit.
CJG: This is where the evidence really kicks in (and here's where a grad student in kinesiology or physical sciences could make a great final project). Let's test that claim. Does Program X (A bodybuilding split program, Hybrid HIIT, SS, your company's fitness plan) have the same goals as Crossfit? If it does, and it can agree on the same test of performance as being valid, then get me two groups, each at recorded starting performance levels on the predetermined test, and set them on each program for a given period of time, measuring periodically... oh wait... that's exactly what Crossfit did with the Canadian military PT program, and Crossfit exercises provided a significantly better result on all but one element (pullups, and only lost marginally, if I remember correctly) with greater customer satisfaction and less injuries. I'd call that "Evidence-Based-Fitness"... wouldn't you?
Up to this point, I could have been taken as a Crossfit evangelical, so here is where some people might get touchy. In terms of evidence-based-fitness, Crossfit has two incredible, systemic problems in its ability to challenge other doctrines for effectiveness. 1) Glassman's purported enemy, the "Globogym" and that mindset, is a straw-man easily beaten that doesn't record its results for data points or use the same exercises. 2) Glassman does not (and, to his credit, probably can't) encourage blackbox experiments outside of the tested protocols to see if any of them are better than what we've tried. Has any ever blackboxed the South-Beach Diet on the Crossfit training protocol? How about Bally's, Jenny-Craig? Okay, that was sarcastic. But seriously, what about the "Warrior Diet?" Its users claim great increases in performance towards elite athletics: how does it blackbox in comparison to The Zone? What about the programming of Gym Jones, Mountain-Athlete, and others? Sure, they drew some of their ideas from Crossfit, but what if the tweaks in their programming that contrast with the Crossfit model, or the equipment they had that most Crossfitters don't (IE: sleds), make them more effective on average at crushing Crossfit's own tests?
This is the problem people have with the "science of Crossfit." The science is valid, and Crossfit can create phenomenal results. Could those results be more phenomenal with continuing experimentation? Perhaps. When people complain that Crossfit is like a cult, what they're really finding is that many of its members are resistant to change, making Crossfit its own mainstream. What happens when a trainer in this 'open-source' forum finds a modification of Crossfit that works better than the main-source, numbers and all? If Crossfit was truly "evidence-based," HQ would adapt to assimilate the new idea just like Glassman says it would. I think some people question the truth of that.
This is where we come in. It's our job as conscientious consumers (and fanatically devoted cultists) to keep an eye out for these better programs, conduct our own small-scale tests of their efficacy, and if they work, submit them and our numbers both to the public and Crossfit HQ to blackbox on a large-scale. Every affiliate who's curious about someone else's claim should have a program like this. If people were to do that instead of complaining about Crossfit's 'lack of science,' ordinary affiliates could bless us all with proof, once and for all, that the "who-knows-where-it-came-from-counter-body-1-day-on-2-days-off-man-muscle-split"
is the bull**** we all think it is.
I have a Half-Angie to do.