If you’re the kind of person who keeps abreast of fitness trends or is at all interested in rubbernecking at the absurd extremes of human behaviour, you’ve probably heard of CrossFit. CrossFit, according to the official description, is “constantly varied functional movements executed at high intensity across broad modal and time domains”. This is CrossFit speak for “running, jumping, and lifting things until you vomit or make it through to a higher astral plane based on the mind-cleansing properties of extreme pain”.

Back in the day if you wanted to get fit, all you had to do was throw on some Howard-style trackie dacks and take the dog down the park to scare some children. But since the exercise revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, we’ve seen a succession of hilarious fitness trends. These have ranged from the spiral-permed aerobics workouts that singlehandedly supported the legwarmer industry all the way through to hardcore bodybuilding, which is just one of many things that Arnie will have to answer for in the afterlife. None have been more all-encompassing and more ridiculous than Crossfit, which is famous for its extreme workouts and lax commitment to keeping participants alive.

One of the activities CrossFitters participate in is heavy barbell-based weightlifting, with an emphasis on lifts like the thruster. Throwing a loaded barbell over your own head is a technically demanding move that should be taught by an experienced professional, which is why it’s concerning that you can become a CrossFit coach in as little as two days. This limited instructor certification, combined with CrossFit’s super-macho culture, could go some way to explaining why one small study found an injury rate of 73.5%.

Sure, you might say, but lots of sports are dangerous. Old-style backyard trampolines, the kind we let kids play on, have an injury rate so high that science has yet to come up with enough numbers to keep track. And as soon as human cloning is legalised, Rugby League players will just grow themselves a back-up body from which to harvest new parts. But the captivating part of CrossFit is that the injuries and the exertion vomiting are used as a marketing tactic. The shoulder reconstruction goes with the rippling abs, like matching your shoes to your belt (pointing this out to CrossFitters produces roughly the same results as making a your mum joke to Bruce Banner).

There’s a huge crossover between CrossFitters and people who follow the paleo diet, another extreme health trend which inspires excessive devotion and constant evangelising (you’re pretty much legally required to start a lifestyle and recipe blog, too). For the dedicated CrossFit family, there are even CrossFit classes for kids.

I read paleo/CrossFit blogs like some people watch cockfights, except cockfighting was banned a while back for being cruel and unusual. A couple of years spent spectating on people’s CrossFit obsessions instead of doing something useful with my life has led me to believe that CrossFit has a lot to tell us about life in late western capitalism. People with physically demanding blue-collar jobs are not CrossFit’s primary demographic, and the online subculture, at least as far as I can see, skews heavily toward post-industrial knowledge workers. Why would you pay $200 a month to throw weights around in a garage if you already do that as a day job? The exploding popularity of CrossFit and other “xtreme exercise” trends like Tough Mudder suggests a kind of atavistic revolution, where sit-down office workers can feel the thrill of an increased heart rate and a few soft tissue injuries without having to become a bricklayer.

There are of course plenty of fit, lovely people who enjoy CrossFit, some of whom even have all their original limbs. To those people, I say: get out now! Go for a run, lift some weights, and do some pull-ups without giving your hard-earned money to a nebulous trend that manages the risk of muscle death using a decrepit-looking cartoon clown named Uncle Rhabdo.

Of course, to the hardened CrossFitter, statements like “please try not to die” and “be careful, your life is precious” are likely to elicit the same sort of reaction as a parent asking their 13-year-old to hold hands while crossing the road. And fair enough, who am I to say that a willing adult shouldn’t perform explosive weightlifting manoeuvres under questionable supervision, or promote a hairy-chested competitiveness that encourages participants to mock and shame people who engage in less strenuous forms of exercise.

It’s hard to see how popular exercise can get more extreme than CrossFit, but it’s always possible that the next fitness trend will involve throwing yourself into a volcano, or rolling down a rocky hill under a hail of live gunfire. Now – nobody steal those ideas, I’ve got them copyrighted for future entrepreneurship opportunities.

Source: Read Full Article