The CrossFit Methodology

This was a post I made concerning my thoughts on CrossFit.

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CF has been growing stateside quite a bit lately, and it becomes pertinent when they attempt to spread into the world of Parkour and also indoctrinate Parkour into their system and set of beliefs. I wouldn't mind hearing what people think about CrossFit, because I know there are bound to be hundreds of viewpoints going every which way. I think some who are outright against it, some who are all for it, and others don't care so much or have no opinion whatsoever.

When assessing any fitness methodology, we have to be very diligent in our own research and be well aware of what we ourselves believe at the core. Parkour is a deeply personal thing, and when something like this becomes affiliated with Parkour corporations (APK) and then begin to seed into local Parkour communities, teaching Parkour with little to no experience, we start to have some serious issues. And we need to decide, for ourselves, whether this is the right way to go or not. Danno used to harp on to us about Methode Naturelle, stating, "MN isn't going to be the saviour that everyone seems to want it to be." In a lot of ways, that's going to apply to CF, as well. But it is up to you to decide.

In my own mind, CF presents both positives and negatives to Parkour... But whereas the positives can be accessed by another means or through another system, the negatives reside elsewhere. Strictly in its methodology, CF provides no immediate or long-term damage to its practitioners. It does, in fact, prevent them due to such strict conditioning. However, a large problem arises when CF-certified coaches go out to one or two meets or Parkour classes, and then believe themselves certified to coach Parkour based on their gymnastics experience. This presented itself as a problem when a CrossFit "Parkour instruction" video showed up on their website last year... It displayed an extremely unsafe manner to roll that would almost certainly ensure a snapped clavicle when performed outdoors at height. In addition to this, they only appeared to be hybridizing gymnastics and martial arts rolls, with no consideration of landing. The problem of CF-certified coachings believing they are qualified at coaching Parkour has already erupted across the US.

But as far as the training methodology itself goes, I believe the end result is ultimately the same as any other.. Strong, powerful levels of fitness and improved endurance. However, this "mix and match" ideology seems counter-intuitive, and in a lot of ways just reminds me of MMA. You might walk away with the FUNCTIONAL aspects of this or that, but you are removing its heart and its soul to do so. Ultimately, when CrossFit indoctrinates Parkour, it will care about only one thing, and that one thing is exactly what CrossFit's mission statement is: finding functional manners of fitness. The idea of being useful, of reclaiming human movement, of reclaiming the urban environment, and of every minutia of Parkour's philosophy and Parkour's spirit.. will die with CrossFit. We can already see it happening where CrossFit and Parkour are being hybridized.

In addition to this, the manner of conditioning that occurs in Parkour lacks in human movement. While CF strives to avoid isolation, it also lacks the dynamism of conventional "Parkour" conditioning (not that there is necessarily a tradition there). X reps of Y sets is a methodology that was sought to be eliminated by Parkour... And CrossFit, as well, because it didn't serve as being functional. However, what resulted was that CrossFit kept this manner of counting and measuring, and simply combined multiple exercises together to avoid "isolation." In the end, what you have is a series of full-bodied exercises that link togetehr chains of muscles, yet still lacks the dynamic quality of pure human movement. The numbers game is effective and useful, but only so far. Movement is what matters, and while I'm not suggesting that we all go out and practice Parkour every day (thus damaging our bodies in the long run), but find ways of conditioning that are made up of movement and continually asks the brain and the body to work together to navigate different terrain in different manners. But even when CrossFit assimilates this methodology, as well, it will still forego the mental aspects of Parkour in favour of being purely minded upon fitness.

The Sunday Sessions' Downfall

This consists of two posts: the first is a rant about what has become of the Sunday gym sessions, and the second is what I actually did at the gym tonight.

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This is basically jsut a rant, but I don't want to post it up on PKTO.. I went to Sunday's gym meet in Burlington tonight, which I haven't gone to in weeks partly because of trickers invading the place and partyl because of my own reasons.. I was pretty much disgusted by what I saw there. It wasn't about Parkour, it wasn't even freerunning or tricking (well, the trickers did tricking).. Those who came for "Parkour/freerunning" did what I could only describe to you as stunts. The four original traceurs of Hamilton other than myself went straight to the trampoline to goof off. Okay, that's their right, and I know they know what Parkour is... Then there was a group I didn't recognize at all. They set up a huge block (about 5.5 feet up) and began to vault over it. Well, they couldn't make it, so they set up a springboard. After watching this for a while, I pulled aside one of the guys I did recognize, one of the guys who regularly attends the Thursdays with me, and I asked him, "Neil, do you think your shin muscles are strong enough to take that? I mean, I know that guy's aren't, but I know you can tell me about you. Are you strong enough?"

"For the drop...?" "Yeah.." "Uh.. Probably not. I have really weak legs." "Then why are you doing it?" "I'll go put a mat down." "..."

Okay, whatever.. I wasn't going to nag them because I know where that leads. So I did my own thing, watching them occasionally.. I wondered what Neil was getting out of it.. a person who considers himself a traceur.. How does a springboard help you outside? What was the purpose of this for him? Well, the springboard made it so that they could get over it with ease, so they stacked it up higher. The vault was now around 7 feet high.. Too high for the springboard.. What did they do? They used a mini-tramp instead. Oh, but the mat that was placed down to protect them from the impact suddenly wasn't enough.. so they stacked another mat on top of that. When the kongs got too easy, they decided to just jump, flip, handspring, etc. over it, and then moved the minitramp further and furhter away just to "test their limits." It.. destroyed my hope for this scene.

It wasn't until, an hour and a half in, that I set up a circuit that I saw anyone doing anything that could've been useful outdoors. It was mostly just, "Look at me, look at what I can do, and look at how high/far/stupid I can jump." This was really disheartening that it degraded into that.

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Today, I went to the gym. I went in with the goal of completing 15 muscle-ups throughout the course of the two hours. Though copious breaks had to be taken, I did complete the 15. I did a variety of exercises here and there, though I spent a lot of time just watching the evolution of the Sunday sessions. Towards the end, I set up a quick circuit which consisted of a short run into a vault, QMing across a mat, rolling off the mat, and executing another vault. After running this a few times, as quickly as possible, I separated the two blocks of the last vault and had a precision jump at the end. Upon occasion, I would execute a reverse on landing the precision, or would immediately hop off and roll.

Later, I pulled up another mat and doubled the distance of the QMing. After a few runs of this, I ran the circuit backwards. Unsatisfied with this, I decided to do the entire thing backwards in QM. I ran up to the first short block QM-style, vaulted it, landed and vaulted the next block, QM'd across the mats, and did a frog-leap up to the stacked blocks that I used to vault before, landing on all fours and executing the reverse-descent and QM-ran to the starting point. This was the most taxing variation of the circuit, and I had no choice but to collapse and rest after this (and the several run-throughs beforehand).

All in all, this was the best part of the night, running these circuits. And I'm rather proud of myself for completing the 15 MUs, even if they were chinsy MUs.

Week 6

Dan led the class this week. He started off with some neurological training which consisted of a lot of balance and coordination. My vertigo led to a collapse, so I sat out. He then led a few circuits of upper body/back exercises, which were all very cool. I got everything recorded down in my notebook. He also taught us a very nice progression toward the muscle-up, which consisted of getting one elbow up and swinging the other arm into the proper position. Which led me to getting one step closer to reaching my muscle-up goal. I WILL have it by the end of the month.

These circuits pretty much killed everyone today, but they were very effective and I was happy to see everyone dead and done and spent. It looked like the most fun stuff ever.

I gotta go, so food log tomorrow.

Week 5 - Vault Continuity

Reece leading the warm-ups was rather interesting today, and more intensive than I would have done. It led me to understand just how poor my muscle endurance actually is, because my quads started to give out on me pretty early on and rather frequently, even. Still, not as terrible as what Dan leads and more of this will be good for me. As well, it'll be good for everyone else, if even they have better endurance than I do.

Jordan led the stretching, which was all good and well. And then came my drills. The first thing I had people do was just vault without use of momentum. I'm still trying really hard to get the whole SJ mentality out of everyone. I actually hate seeing it, because it's so unnecessary. Regardless... We began to move to getting people to long jump immediately upon landing a vault, and then vault to precisions. All fun stuff. We did a lot with catgrabs, vaulting into it and then jumping off to a precision from the cat, among other things. It was all very impromptu, but ultimately, it did all follow a theme.. that being the ability to continue movements and execute precise techniques immediately following a vault.

The close of the class was free time, which led to some conditioning and some light technique work. Overall, a very good class and I think it's better off that Reece lead the warm-up because more gets done and more people will feel it the next day.