What's On My Mind - March 2024

What’s On My Mind

What’s On My Mind
The Negative Influences of Exercise Sports

This Month’s Health Challenge
Create a Daily At-Home Mobility Habit

What’s On My Mind

The Heavy Negative Influences of Exercise Sports on Everyday People’s Workouts

Let’s start with defining an exercise sport. Unlike more classic sports like soccer, volleyball, baseball, football, track and field, etc., exercise sports are a subset that center more around performance in exercises:

Powerlifters have the sole purpose of 1 rep max back squats, bench presses, and deadlifts on specific days.
Olympic-style weightlifters have the sole purpose of 1 rep max snatches and clean & jerks on specific days.
Bodybuilders have the sole purpose of maximum muscle and minimum body fat on specific days.
Marathoner and sprinter have the sole purpose of a specific running performance on specific days.
CrossFitters have the sole purpose of maximum performance in the specific types of exercise tests that are most common in the sport of CrossFit.

The list can go on and on, but you get the idea. People who compete in exercise sports typically have the sole goal of performance within the specific rules, standards, gear, etc. for that style of competition. Unfortunately, the fitness industry is highly influenced by the standards and practices that athletes within these exercise sports implement.

Strength training, especially the techniques, are designed for powerlifting, not real life.
Snatch and Clean & Jerk training is designed for Olympic-style weightlifting and CrossFit competitions, no to directly transfer into improving the jump and land pattern with reasonable risk.
Nutrition and the use of isolation exercises stem from the requirements of bodybuilding competitions and not health and functionality.
Running programs neglect other aspects of fitness.
CrossFitters can be self-deceiving in the effectiveness and efficiency of their efforts towards their real lives as their performance in the sport of CrossFit improves.

We should be learning from the training methods of all of these types of athletes, but we should not be blindly following exactly how they do things without understanding their specific contexts.

In my opinion, goals that balance functional performance, body composition, tissue and joint health, and overall health and wellness, will have the most benefit and value to everyday people. By everyday people, I mean people like me (and likely you) - people who are not trying to be professional athletes, who may work full time, balance friends and family and other social relationships, are proactive with their health and fitness, and just want to be active and have an amazing life.

The path our fitness journey takes is highly dependent on the goals we set and the culture in which we surround ourselves. If we workout within an exercise sport culture, then our training decisions will be directed at what is best for that style of competition - the exercises, the exercise standards, the challenges, the gear, and other rules. Everyday people following workout programs designed for performance in exercise sports take on more injury risk and can easily be fooled by their increasing performance in that sport into thinking they are making significant progress towards their actual goals.

If you have chosen running because you want to lose weight, your progress in running performance may distract you from your lack of progress on your deeper, more important for your life, goals. If you have chosen CrossFit to improve your body composition because of its all-around fitness, your body composition may actually stall out before you reach your goals while your performance in the sport of CrossFit may continue on for years and years. It is easy to get distracted by sport-specific performance gains and for you to minimize the plateau of results in other areas - functional performance, body composition, tissue and joint health, and overall health and wellness.

Before I continue with the negative influences I think these exercise sports have on everyday people, I do want to give props, specifically to the Sport of CrossFit, on what it has done to revolutionize how everyday people workout and its ability to be a stepping stone into an incredibly healthy and lifelong exercise habit. Although it is far from the only thing that matters, the value of real, holistic cross-training for the lives of everyday people probably cannot be overemphasised. It wasn’t that long ago that one-dimensional, exercise-sport-specific programs in globo gyms and bootcamp-style and their indoor counterparts were the only popular options. CrossFit broke the status quo and got people actually training all aspects of their fitness. CrossFit broadened the scope of narrow powerlifting, weightlifting, bodybuilding, and running programs while adding actual, extremely important strength work that bootcamps and their very popular indoor counterparts claim to do, but don’t actually deliver on.

But, if a primary motivator of your workouts each day is scores in CrossFit workouts, and even if it seems like the exercise sport has direct carry-over (like the Sport of CrossFit being centered around “functional exercises”), constantly shooting for the best score in a CrossFit workout is a detriment to what could be achieved if real world functional performance was a priority, not to mention the other goals everyday people have. How well does working out in weightlifting shoes, knee sleeves, weight belts, wrist wraps, and choosing techniques and workout strategies that prioritize scores transfer to our real lives?

I still believe that out of all the big workout brands, CrossFit affiliates are delivering the best fitness for people’s lives, by a long shot. But, I believe that within these programs, there is a lot being left on the table and once more and more gyms, coaches, and everyday people understand the difference and massive benefits that come from working out in a way directed at their actual goals vs working out in a way directed at performance in an exercise sport, their results will skyrocket. It doesn’t take a massive shift in methods either! Just a shift in mindset.

The main upgrade to the open source model that is CrossFit training that I highly suggest making, is to remove treating daily workouts like mini competitions. When every workouts is scored, everyday people make decisions that optimize for that day’s score as opposed to making decisions that optimize for 1) long-term development and 2) better stimuli. Old-school CrossFitters (I know because I was one and thought this way), think that without taking scores, they will lose the intensity needed. I can tell you that after making this change personally and within my gym, intensity only falls to the level of people’s technique thresholds (which is where it should be) and it actually brings up more opportunity for higher intensities. With no scores, if I’m supposed to sprint, I sprint and don’t save anything for later. If adding max power to an exercise is ideal, scores will likely make me reduce power per rep as I pace myself to get the best score.

Scores are also a detriment to technique development which ironically causes lower scores over time. Let’s use a simple volleyball example. Imagine you are volleyball player who needs to work on your footwork and how you approach the net to jump for a spike. Let’s say though that you never practice and simply play games all the time, prioritizing doing what it takes to play your best and get the best score in each individual game (equivalent to taking scores in every workout). To work on a new run-up in a game would likely make you play worse in the short-term, which tends to make people just stick with what they are currently best at as opposed to integrating skills that will make them much better in the future. Now, instead, let’s say you are playing a game, but you create a rule for yourself. Yes, you are still trying to win and do your best in that game, but you are only allowed to use your new run-up and are not allowed to revert back to your old one, no matter how well the game is going. This is an amazing compromise of mixing practicing and playing the game would elevate your volleyball skills dramatically. Before you know it, your new run-up will be just what you do, your game will be improved and you’ll move on to something else to improve. But, what would have happened to that commitment if I was going to write on a whiteboard the score of each game for everyone to see that day? You’d probably not commit to the new run-up, revert back, and make choices that get you the best scores today.

So, what seems to be constantly on my mind is the negative influences exercise sports have on the choices everyday people are making. Following an exercise sport can be better than what most people are currently doing, but by making a few simple tweaks, we can participate within these exercise sports that interest us in a way that best fits the actual results we are after. I don’t squat like an Olympic weightlifter, powerlifter, or a CrossFitter because those exercise sports are not my end goal. I squat in the way that has the most transfer to the life that I live and the rec sports and activities I participate in.

These are my personal tweaks to a more classical CrossFit affiliate that provides RX weights, reps, and exercises and records scores every day that I feel transfers my workouts into to the life I want to live way better:

Instead of working out scores (For Time, For Reps, or For Load), I workout For Intent, Intensity, and Technique (F.I.I.T.). This allows me to continuously make decisions in my workouts that best fit my real goals as opposed to adopting the daily goals of best score.
I incorporate workouts that specifically target Lactate Zone 2 Cardio. This has had an enormous impact on my performance. If you try and put a score on Lactate Zone 2 and compare it with the rest of the gym, it will push people into Zone 3 or higher, which defeats the whole purpose.
Instead basing my reps and weights on “RX” competition standards, I choose reps and weights that will give me the best stimuli for my workout. Article: More is not Better
- Here’s how we help people do this with the MovementLink workout program:
Instead of doing all exercises included in the sport of CrossFit, I remove exercises in which I feel carry more risk without reward. Even though I used to do them all the time, I have removed heavy barbell snatches and kipping handstand push-ups and still perform, but limit my exposure to kipping pull-ups and kipping toes-to-bars. Article: Should You Perform Heavy Barbell Snatches?
I have replaced rep maxes with technical rep maxes - only lifting to the max that my technique can handle.
I wear zero drop shoes to workout and don’t use any gym gear like weightlifting shoes, knee or elbow sleeves, wrist wraps, and weight belts. Article: Why We Don’t Wear Supportive Gear
I still use barbells for strength work, but do way more dumbbell work than I used to as I feel dumbbells are more challenging and create a much better all around stimulus for most things outside of strength work.
My workout benchmarks are more focused on what functionality and fitness real life requires and not on what may show up in a CrossFit competition…although there is some overlap between these.

As of writing this, I am 39 years old, but the fittest I have ever been. Ironically, I am actually better at the Sport of CrossFit than I have ever been too, even though that is not at all a goal of mine. I feel great, spend only 3-6 hours a week working out, and love my life.