Crossfit (Page 3)

I'll make a blanket statement that I believe to be true: the average triathlete does not have the volume in their week where adding a strength workout wouldn't be a substitution of a sport specific workout.

No rebuttal to this?

No rebuttal to this?

Originally posted by bcagle25

Originally posted by msteiner

Originally posted by msteiner

Originally posted by bcagle25

Originally posted by BradyFinney I'm trying cross fit in addition to my triathlon training. Any thought, suggestions, and/or warnings?

If you are going to ask about CrossFit do not listen to anyone that has never done CrossFit, many misconceptions and myths out there that I am seeing repeated in this thread, lots of blanket statements being thrown around here. If anything, you should go along the line of using CrossFit or any strength work as an ENHANCEMENT to your training, not a SUBSTITUTION. Also be very careful and mindful in checking out a CrossFit gym, some are good, some are bad, its the same concept as finding a coaching. Drill them with question, learn their thoughts, background, how will they get YOU to become more DEVELOPED.

I'll make a blanket statement that I believe to be true: the average triathlete does not have the volume in their week where adding a strength workout wouldn't be a substitution of a sport specific workout.

No rebuttal to this?

Not sure where you are going with that one

The average triathlete does not have the volume in their week where adding a strength workout wouldn't be a substitution of a sport specific workout.

In the case of the average triathlete, crossfit would be a substitution for a sport specific workout.  Not sure how much clearer I can make it.

I'm not really a CF fan but what seems to never get asked in these threads is "what's your end goal?". If it's weight loss, overall health, having fun, etc then why not strength train even if at *gasp* the cost of a tri specific workout. Now if you just want to crush souls on the race course then you're probably (possibly) better served spending all your available time swimming, biking, running and resting and being ok with looking like a twig. 

Where I end up a bit torn is the case of the athlete that really is left with extra time at the end of the day, after maxing out their sport specific work. Is it then worth it for that person assuming it's not at the cost of something like sleep? Or as Ben put it, supplementing instead of replacing.

Let's move out of the CF realm since it will hopefully remove some bias and just use general weight training—hell, it could be yoga/pilates/barre whatever. Athlete rides 10 hours a week, swims 5-6 days a week and runs 40 miles per week, lots of quality in there and limited junk miles. At the end of the day athlete, who has no family at home, limited responsibilities, maybe they're even socially distant for some reason, still has a couple hours to kill and would rather be active than not. Does adding some other cross training help? Or more importantly, does it hurt? What would you tell Salazar about putting Rupp through strength training?

Such an athlete is going to be rather worn down from all the activity. Any additional work should refer back to the supplement or complimenting part. Just throwing in any old whatever workouts of CF or weight training can interfere with the athlete's recovery and energy level for the sbr sessions, so any additional work should be rather targeted at complimenting sbr. Not just being non-sbr workouts for the sake of adding more working out. The cost/benefit goes down when doing these other non-sbr activities, so you really want to make sure they'll develop something helpful. A question asking about CF or weight training is really not a good question as it's so ridiculously vague. The amount of exercises in them is enormous and many will do nothing to help, possibly interring as explained above. You want to get much more specific as to what the exercises should be developing instead of just throwing in some program or concept that is so vague or diverse.

Undoubtedly PED's involved.

This other note could be quite helpful and goes right along with what I've been saying (or trying to) as it starts to do something besides talk in such vague notions since it identifies something we're likely to see. Would the "bunch of closed hip exercises" near the end includes sbr? Suggestions on improving this? I know it'd be ridiculous to try listing out everything to work on, but from such an example it's very possible to help start learning about identifying areas of concern and what to do about them.

I'm pretty sure your hips are open when you swim..

I'm pretty sure your hips are open when you swim..

I'm not really sure of the necessity of a statement like this here. Kind of adds to the vagueness I mentioned before and really seems like a marketing statement. I know enough now to keep making improvements on less volume than I used to do without any strength training at all. A good coach should know more able be able to make even more advancements. On here I think it would be more informational to look at what was done before to see how well needs were met or not met and how the newer program addressed things better. How was the new program better as opposed to the black/white of was strength training included.

Yes, there are exercises that  "can be" good for recovery just as there are many which can interfere. It's not an all or nothing either way given how vague or broad the concepts being discussed are, which I thought I had said before, perhaps not clearly enough? I understand the "million" is hyperbole (or exaggeration), but i don't know if that many believe it takes loads of exercises to do. Probably depends on who we've asked though as some do think that. Sampling could be all over the map. Anyway, more important is the "goal oriented" part. That is absolutely true, but from what I've seen think the difficulty comes in understanding what the goals should be. Not necessarily *too* different from understanding principles of s/b/r training when you think about it. Everyone wants to get faster or go farther, but can have trouble identifying what to do to achieve this.

This other note could be quite helpful and goes right along with what I've been saying (or trying to) as it starts to do something besides talk in such vague notions since it identifies something we're likely to see. Would the "bunch of closed hip exercises" near the end includes sbr? Suggestions on improving this? I know it'd be ridiculous to try listing out everything to work on, but from such an example it's very possible to help start learning about identifying areas of concern and what to do about them.

Originally posted by bcagle25

Originally posted by msteiner

Originally posted by brigby1

Originally posted by bcagle25  

On another note and not to anyone in particular but everyone is on the sport-specific focus with training. If you do that route, be mindful that doing a repetitive motion over and over and over and over again, and only doing this very sport specific movements will lead to some great imbalances. You need to counteract those movements as well to develop the most efficiency you can. Doing a bunch of closed hip exercises will only tighten your hip flexors (triathletes are notorious for this) and impinge your performance overall.

This other note could be quite helpful and goes right along with what I've been saying (or trying to) as it starts to do something besides talk in such vague notions since it identifies something we're likely to see. Would the "bunch of closed hip exercises" near the end includes sbr? Suggestions on improving this? I know it'd be ridiculous to try listing out everything to work on, but from such an example it's very possible to help start learning about identifying areas of concern and what to do about them.

I'm pretty sure your hips are open when you swim..

Correct, unfortunately the average triathlete doesn't swim much and abandons it mostly during the winter, again just speaking about the averages.

Well that goes back to my "the average triathlete doesn't have enough volume for crossfit" argument

AND it supplements LB's "triathletes need to swim a lot more" argument.