Metric, I would advise you to not take that bet.  I have seen, with my own eyes, Rippetoe touch his toes.  Also, when powerlifters do accessory work like RDLs, the bar is coming pretty much to the deck with their legs short of locking out to stiffness because they need to do some fairly strenuous stretch-reflex training on their hamstrings.

I’m fairly certain Konstantinovs (the PL’er in Cramz’ linked video) would disprove a lot of assumptions people are making in this thread.

Having watched how many lifters at powerlifting meets need help to put their shoes on I reckon the odds are pretty good that I won’t lose money by hitting a Rippetoe or a Konstantinov.

I still feel that CF is the best thing for me out there but to imply that being the winner at CF games makes one the best general athlete in the world is a little too much “drinking the kool-aid”.  There are plenty of athletes that might get stomped in a specialized field like CF games that would still walk all over those same competitors in other arenas.  No matter what, CF is specialized because muscle memory involved in CF workouts makes you better at those workouts.  Your parallel skills might become somewhat better, but training CF is not going to make you a better fighter, marathoner, and jumper.  It will make you better at CF.  I know that plenty of people add to their CF workouts because CF is not enough on it’s own to attain a level of fitness for Special Forces training or similar stuff.  That was all I was inferring.  No system is perfect.

Garddawg - 20 January 2010 10:08 AM

My post will probably send the thread sideways, and Hocus, I don’t know you so none of this is personal or directed at you.  A couple of things of note.  First I judged in the first CF Games where the CFT was one of the events.  The event was scored on amount lifted regardless of the weight of the competitor.  The formulae posted is one that is used in lifting competitions, to determine the overall winner of the competition.  They generally award winners in each weight division and then calculate an overall winner. 

I posted this 2.5 years ago after a spate of AHole big guys in the gym.  Now it might be my self defense background, but I get my back up when I see the little guy picked on or belittled.  In 6.5 years of running a CF affiliate I have never seen a 150# man gloat and belittle a 250# mans effort on Angie.  In fact almost universally the little guys are cheering on the big guys and telling them what a great effort they made.  On the other side, the big folks tend to gloat over really miniscule victories over their smaller counter parts.  It is grating to hear week after week some 250 pound guy who deadlifts 330 tell a 150 pound guy who deadlifts 320 that he was crushed.

i guess i came from the other side of that conversation, although i was never that big. i had a military buddy who when i’d beat him in lifting and i’d get “proportionally i can lift more!” beat him in the 2 mile and i got, “only cause ur legs are longer! proportionally i run faster!” and on and on… but i do find it impressive what some people can do proportionally. it’s cool that weight lifting actually awards them for the effort too. i’m still more of a work done type person. thanks for the response and sorry for causing a ruckus!

I wasn’t really trying to generalize to the point of proposing that no powerlifter would be able to perform those feats… just that that guy is out there, and dispite his physical limitations he is considered a pretty good powerlifter.

You cannot deny that as a population, competative powerlifters are not going to have the best speed, flexibility, or skill in body weight movements when compared to other athletes.

jester33 - 20 January 2010 01:52 PM

but training CF is not going to make you a better fighter, marathoner, and jumper.  It will make you better at CF. 

Getting stronger is always a good foundation from which to advance your technique with skill and drill work.  There are probably some MMA fighters that would disagree with your assumption.  Similarly, there are a couple CFKids that have proven your comment inaccurate on the marathon and high jump examples.  6mo of CF with longest runs of 800m coming up a few times a month leading to a 3:20-something marathon with a first mile that was sub-5min… from a 16 year old?  A high school high jumper only CFing in the off season coming back to *practice* at the previous year’s PR height.  Really neat stuff.

No, no program is ever perfect… but CF states the parameters within which it strives for perfection and has then succeeded showing improvement in those areas.  As for muscle memory… good thing all the Games competitors practiced driving stakes into the ground with a sledge hammer for months so they could complete that WOD…

jester33 - 20 January 2010 01:52 PM

I still feel that CF is the best thing for me out there but to imply that being the winner at CF games makes one the best general athlete in the world is a little too much “drinking the kool-aid”.  There are plenty of athletes that might get stomped in a specialized field like CF games that would still walk all over those same competitors in other arenas.  No matter what, CF is specialized because muscle memory involved in CF workouts makes you better at those workouts.  Your parallel skills might become somewhat better, but training CF is not going to make you a better fighter, marathoner, and jumper.  It will make you better at CF.  I know that plenty of people add to their CF workouts because CF is not enough on it’s own to attain a level of fitness for Special Forces training or similar stuff.  That was all I was inferring.  No system is perfect.

There are two things we are really discussing here:

1. Definition of Fitness
If you accept that fitness is defined as “work capacity across broad time and modal domains” then your argument that a CF athlete would be beat at a marathon by a marathoner is not what we are concerned with.  What we mean is that if you can beat a CF athlete handily in a marathon, that CF athlete will very likely out perform you in a sprint, a deadlift, and rowing a boat.  And in doing so, that CF athlete proves that he/she is more fit.

In a lot of ways, the adaptations of CrossFit that you mention are not created in an effort to make someone more generally fit, but to actually adapt CrossFit to specialized programs such that athletes specializing as their sport/profession demands, can also reap the benefits of more generalized fitness.  Special Forces, for example, often require a bit of specialization in endurance due to the demands of operating.  That specialization will come with a cost in strength and would thus hurt their overall fitness.

If you don’t agree with this idea of fitness, then our discussion is mostly moot because we haven’t defined our terms to start with.

2. CrossFit Methodology
The other concern you raise is whether following Crossfit Methodology will make you more fit than other methods.  Here I think you are confusing a specific application of the CrossFit Methodology (the MainPage WOD) with the methodology as a whole.  I would not claim that doing only the Crossfit Mainpage will make you the fittest person on the planet… that has yet to be shown and to me seems impractical.  A program designed to help a wide spectrum of athletes will never be as effective as personalized programming.  The MainPage is only one possible way in which CrossFit can be implemented.  The argument we are making is that to be the fittest person on the planet (as defined above) you will have to be following the CrossFit prescription for training, not necessarily the most widely known application of that methodology (ie. mainPage WOD).

What that means is that whoever wins the CrossFit Games, which we assert best assesses fitness, will have been training in a manner that resembles CrossFit.  Which means that they are training at high intensity over broad time and modal domains and in general moving large loads long distances quickly.  This may not look like the mainsite, it might look like CrossFit Strength Bias, CrossFit FootBall, MEBB, OPT’s programming, or the stuff you alluded to that special forces guys are doing with CrossFit.  But what we are asserting is that you won’t ever find a dude that wins the CF Games by sitting on the couch 6 days a week and taking his bike for a LSD ride on Sundays.  Or by performing a high intensity body building program with LSD runs added in for conditioning.

We aren’t trying to claim that any specific CrossFit Programming is perfect, far from it.  We are willing to throw out programming at a moment’s notice if something is found to be more effective.  What I think people misunderstand, or perhaps a lot of CrossFitters misrepresent, is that the MainPage is not the be all and end all for elite fitness.

The idea that should truely be taken away, and the one that CrossFitters should strive to put forth, is that training with the CrossFit methodology properly applied to programing that adequately addresses an athlete’s weaknesses and goals will be the most effective way to meet our definition of fitness.

Well said, BathMatt.

Metric - 20 January 2010 12:23 PM

cramz - 20 January 2010 12:06 PM

if you can deadlift, you can touch your toes .

Oooh I’m going to make money on this!
How much?

Powerlifters need enough flexibility to grab the bar in the deadlift with bent legs and that’s it. The sport has no requirement to be able to reach further than that and definitely not with straight legs.
Many have to “dive” to reach the bar even without a suit on and then use the bar to pull their hips down

Flexibility is so not a requirement for powerlfiting, they use the weight to push them down and do everything they can to reduce ROM to the bare minimum required to make a legal lift.

You need flexibility for a good arch.  “diving down” is just so they can have a tight setup.  If your butt dips down and your back rounds when you squat its from lack of flexibility.  If that happens when you have 800 lbs on your back you might be on some serious trouble.

cramz - 20 January 2010 03:28 PM

On a side note, the only requirement to be considered powerlifter is to compete in a meet.  Anyone and everyone can be a powerlifter.

The discussion is concerning specialization.
I was referring to an athlete who has specialized in powerlifting (hence the 800 pound squat), not an athlete that has 10 years of endurance training under his/her belt who decides to enter a powerlifting competition. 

My fault for not defining my own terms.

*Edit*
Whoops, you removed that part of your response.

Just a couple points.

1. When I started CF I could not even come close to touching my toes with my legs extended but I could easily dead lift.

2. Outside of CF what I have seen is most shorter guys when around me (an unusually large guy) feel they have something to prove so they will be more physical or more demanding, something like this. Again this is outside of crossfit and almost always with people I dont know well if at all. Once people get to know me they usually see I have no business in proving myself or listening to them prove themselves. We all do what we can do and strive to do what we cant. Nothing more, nothing less.

As far as the argument as to crossfit specializes, well read foundations by greg glassman. This is one of the first published online articles in the journal. I believe it is also free. Crossfit specializes in not specializing. As BM has stated the man who can compete in a specific domain and win is usually not the same man that can compete in a different domain and win. The games this year consisted of alot of movements that are normally seen in crossfit, you are arguing that these are crossfit movements. What you dont realize is there are NO crossfit originated movements. Crossfit compilated movements from weight training (olympic lifting), gymnastics (any body weight movement), and “cardio”. Crossfit didnt invent anything all they did mainly greg glassman was say we should be doing all of this, then we should be able to repeat this all, observe this all, and most importantly measure this all, which was unbelievably genious, as you can tell by the success of his company. Understanding that an athletes abilities are limited in quantity not in specification is vital in this argument. Think of ability as a measuring cup. Some athletes fill up their cup with strength, others pure endurance, others body control, etc, etc. What crossfit aims to accomplish is equal parts endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy. If an athelete accomplishes this then decides he or she wants to be stronger they must do so with the understanding that it will put the other 9 domains of fitness in jeopardy. Again the games were designed to cover any and all fitness domains. The same people who ran a 7k through the woods were also the same people who deadlifted 500+ pounds, and then snatched 200 #‘s and then perfomed couplets and triplets of random exercises. Granted they didnt play basketball, then football, then baseball, then ran a marathon, then moved dirt, chopped wood, etc., but all of the movemments they performed resembled the functional movements they would have done while performing these activities.

CrossFit does not use this formula, at all.
Not sure where the analogies lost that.

Worried about the viewpoint that CF does not help with sport ? Is that a joke ?
This Forum exists because it helps with darn near everything in the physical realm.

mastroj - 20 January 2010 03:39 PM

Granted they didnt play basketball, then football, then baseball, then ran a marathon, then moved dirt, chopped wood, etc., but all of the movemments they performed resembled the functional movements they would have done while performing these activities.

That’s a good point.
The claim isn’t actually that they are the “best athlete”, but the “fittest athlete”.  I would be super surprised if the fittest athlete on earth also happened to be the guy who was most skillful across a bunch of sports.  If so, that guy would be a god.

CrossFit and sport:
Keegans soccer team
Non crossfitting 2 wins last place in county
Crossfitting 17th in the state undefeated

Dave S.
CrossFit training only not running more than 800 M in WODs
4:43 Mile
3:26 Marathon

Would you like me to continue?

Again I would like to point to the original intent.  If I had a group of small bodyweight metcon monsters walking around the gym belittling bigger folks I would have posted a thread discussing the merits of bigger folks moving their heavier mass.

Oh ya forgot to state another point, thanks GD for reminding me.

I was doing judo before I started CF. There was one guy at the dojo that I could not beat. I tore my meniscus in my right knee so had to stop doing judo. I picked up crossfit when I started rehabing my knee. A few months later I went back one day. That day I fought the same guy I coudlnt beat and beat him, then beat him again, and again. So there were like 4 months that I did no judo, while he did judo three days a week. All i did was crossfit and improved dramatically at fighting.