Well stated, Outlaw.
I have been a CrossFit affiliate owner for roughly seven
years. I’m so O.G. that Greg Glassman called me the day after I affiliated, and
talked to me for hours about how to run my affiliate. Google him if you
don’t know the name, and if you’re a coach or affiliate owner—slap the shit out
of yourself if you have to. At the time I affiliated I believe we were one
of the first fifty affiliates in the world. If you do the math (which I did),
we’ve had clients perform roughly 218,400 workouts since the day we opened (100
people a day, 6 days a week, for 7 years). Yes, this is a very rough estimate,
but you get the point. Out of those 200,000ish workouts, we’ve had exactly
ZERO cases of rhabdo. Yes, I’m currently knocking on a very large piece of
wood.
His advice on how to not get rhabdo or have someone in your
gym get it:
If you’re writing workouts with no regard for rep range, or
taking into account what effect high reps will have on the localized muscle
groups which are targeted—it may be time to turn the programming duties for
your gym over to someone who has a better understanding of strength and
conditioning, like your dog.
Why, IN THE FUCK, is it necessary to write
a workout with hundreds of anything? Are 400 push-ups going to help your
clients reach the general fitness, and overall well-being they crave? Massive
amounts of pull-ups (especially with a pronounced slowing of the negative,
which is usually a result of fatigue), and push-ups, target the extensors and
contractors of the arms. These extensors and contractors are tiny in comparison
to the primary movers of the lower body, and due to the ability to recruit the
hips (I.E. Kipping), these relatively tiny muscle groups can be pushed well
beyond their fatigue threshold.
Here’s another thing you may have never
thought of… Extremely high rep workouts lead to massive amounts of DOMS. When
people are really sore, they don’t want to work out. Also, DOMS generally leads
to diminished performance. So, again, why are these workouts necessary?
At Outlaw HQ we very rarely go over 25 reps on any movement.
If we do it is generally something like Double-Unders, or Burpees (which do
utilize the arm extensors, but are a full body movement, with much longer rest
intervals between each “push-up” rep). Also, we have a time cap on every
workout, every day. It’s always twenty minutes, and every workout stops at that
point. We do this to increase overall intensity, and to make sure that people
who are not ready to do massive amounts of reps, simply don’t.
Here’s a good rule of thumb: assume everyone will get
rhabdo, and assume that you are going to give it to them. Why? Because they are
stupid and so are you. They are stupid because they will listen to coaches who
tell them to do a ridiculous amount of push-ups. You are stupid because you
think 500 push-ups will make someone “fitter”.
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