Obligatory Disclaimer: I’m a rookie trainer and as such my comments shouldn’t be construed as what I believe to be gospel. They are just observations and opinion, hopefully supported by experiential evidence or the reference/experience of other trainers and coaches who actually know what the fuck they are talking about. With that…

It’s been a month or so since the CrossFit L1 certification weekend, and the high I got from that experience has been replaced with an even stronger motivating force: reality. In the weeks since, I’ve spent a lot of time digging in and around the CrossFit community, working with other local coaches (who are vastly more knowledgeable than I), and essentially reminding myself that I don’t know what I don’t know. It’s a healthy place to be, I think, and it is forcing me to examine where I am and who I want to be as an athlete, a trainer, and eventually a coach and affiliate.

I love what CrossFit has done for me. It changed the way I look at training and, more importantly, how I integrated (or didn’t) fitness into my lifestyle. I don’t say that to sound cultish, but I’ll give credit where it’s due. I spent my time with traditional athletics and fitness programs, but CrossFit energized me so much that I only wanted more. I fell in with the masses for a bit; CrossFit was all I needed. And for a long while, that remained true…

A lot of the negativity surrounding CrossFit (the program) relates to what many perceive as a lack of intelligent programming (I know there are other problems, but those aren’t the focus of this post). I’ve witnessed this very issue and I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been guilty of it in the past when training my garage buddies. This is indirectly caused by HQ’s hands-off approach to affiliation, but more directly by the laziness of those trainers taking the easy way out. My own efforts to correct this aside, it’s prevalent in the community and in my opinion it’s only going to get worse before it gets better. CrossFit HQ (the brand) will have to step up their efforts at quality control, but prior to that (in lieu of that?) the community as a whole can affect change. We as athletes need to expect more from our trainers and coaches than a couple of hot-or-not web photos and main site programming. If your gym isn’t asking you what your goals are, or they’ve asked and never helped you understand the application of your training to those goals, you need to find a new gym. Likewise, if your trainers poo-poo other programs or make them sound irrelevant in light of CrossFit, you need to find a new trainer. The GPP (general physical preparedness) emphasis works well for a lot of people, but at some point in time, there needs to be a narrowed focus on an individual athlete’s training efforts. This would fill the holes that generalized programming leaves within that individual and make them a better athlete overall. Should a gym throw away the CrossFit paradigm? No. Should they take into consideration other perspectives and learn to apply those perspectives to individual situations? Um, YES!

CrossFit is a fantastic starting place for many people, and for some it might be all they will ever need. But that doesn’t excuse the athlete or the coach from regularly setting, reviewing, and tracking goals as he/she progresses. It also doesn’t excuse them from taking a different approach if and when it’s called for. CrossFit’s lack of specificity is great until specificity is needed. Specificity isn’t the enemy; it’s simply another tool in the shed of a good coach. Likewise, CrossFit’s generalization doesn’t make it bad; it’s just a different approach with a broader set of goals that needs to be used appropriately.