Why Crossfit Failed

I know there are a lot of people who have looked under every rock and bush as far as why CF got derailed/failed or otherwise became another fad fitness approach. There are many, many complicated answers here but I want to explore what I feel was the most critical flaw. This is not to say that CF failed completely. Did they make some big mistakes.....yup. However, they nearly single handedly brought barbell lifting culturally back from the dead in the United States and many other forms of barbell training benefitted from that influence. With that said though there wasn't enough forethought to keep people engaged in a way that did not also cause injury. Which is what I believe was the fatal flaw from the beginning.

Now if you want to start the blame game somewhere we have to start with Glassman. Being the creator of the brand and the CF model carries with it a lot of weight. The fact that he pretty much took a lot of historically and empirically sound athletic training practices flipped them on their heads and then expected to change fitness around the world is pretty crazy by itself. The fact that it nearly worked is even more amazing!

With that said you have to start with the basic level of programming and general methodology. Any time there is a fundamental problem with how the training is being implemented and there are risk/reward problems built into the training program then there will be consequences from long term engagement. You either bulletproof the programming from the beginning in order to keep the process of training as favorable as possible in terms of injury prevention or you are just ok with problems showing up. I don't know about you but if I am going to a restaurant to eat I want to know that my chef knows how to slice and dice the pufferfish before I order it from the menu.

In this particular case the specific pufferfish was the WOD or Workout of the Day. The big, big, big, problem was that there was no long term periodization that showed up in the grand scheme over years of time. You could do 1RM back squats on Monday and come back on Tuesday with 100 wall balls to do. No intentional or unintentional programming was to be seen here. The random nature of this kind of program was one of the promoted benefits. This way you could train to be ready for anything and everything! Except that you can't actually lateralize adaptations from a nucleus of chaotic programming. So that was never going to work either!

Did they get better at scaling the WOD's over time.....yeah they had to....because not scaling these WOD's is what got people hurt in the first place! You can't expect people who are incredibly limited with the range of motion of their body to be able to hold up with barbell movements, gymastic movements and questionable conditioning exercises over long periods of time without asking for problems along the way. Similarly since the WOD format was always facilitated within a group class setting there was never enough coaches on staff to correct mechanics, guide the members who were struggling or teach the exercises well.

All of this added up to be an unsustainable approach. Some people were going to be able to hang with this kind of approach for 1-2 years. Some others would be able to hang for 3-6 months and some could hang for 4-6 years. Fundamentally though this was not an approach that was going to stand the test of time. Which at the end of the day was the fatal flaw in all of this. The hallmark of any good training program is how sustainable, thoughtful and repeatable it is. If you have evergreen training and programming progressions built into your aproach then the sustainability of your training will not be problematic.

The real tragedy of CF(besides the deaths, paralysis and injuries) is that they could have run the table for a long time as a brand and business. Instead they made a splash in the ocean of time. Which is more than can be said for many different attempts at improving the fitness landcsape. While they did make an impact on the physical culture and create some positive changes within the fitness industry they did not create a system built on sustainable principles. If there is anything that is certain that we can learn about training from the fitness industry it is that we can have too much of a good thing from a stress perspective really quick. Had CF thought beyond how to smoke people with WODS and deliver a more holistic approach with sustainable long term programming built in then the outcome might have been very different. Since that was not the case the legacy will forever be marred by a lack of wise training methods as well as the aftermath of good intentions.