Morning Cup of What the Eff?!?!

I kind of appropriated the title from Tony Gentilcore, so hope he doesn’t mind, but seriously, I almost spit my almond milk latte all over the computer screen yesterday morning when I ran across this steaming pile of Youtubery.

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For the most part, I’m a pretty positive guy and I try to find the good in any situation. So on that note I’ll start by outlining every positive aspect in this video.

1. There’s young girls lifting weights and not scared of getting bulky.

2. ……….

So now that that’s out of the way, let’s begin.

First, I know there are some Crossfit facilities that take great pains to make sure their clients are ready to begin an exercise before throwing them into it. I know because I’ve chatted with a number of them and even worked with a few. They’ll assess their clients using some advanced techniques, gross scales, and rule out potential injuries or muscle imbalances and train them around their limitations. The downside is that there are also a lot of ass-clowns that don’t, and this is the end result (there’s a lot of personal trainers and strength coaches that fall into the same umbrella, too, so don’t think I’m just beating up on Crossfit here, they’re just advertising it).

LET ME BE CLEAR: This isn’t even Crossfit, so I’m not going to allow that concept to enter into the conversation

There was, by my count, 7 lifts showing valgus stress to the knees (where they dive in to each other during the squat phase), 7 lifts showing kyphosis during the initial pull (rounded thoracic spine), 6 lifts showing hip mobility issues (internal rotation dominance, pelvic tilt), 5 showing some form of scapular mechanical dysfunction (scap weren’t able to rotate properly to get the press, resulting in big leans back to get under the bar versus pressing it overhead), and 5  lifts showing some degree of anterior displacement of the humerus or limited control of the shoulder during the press.

Compare that to the lifts they were probably trying to do, and you’ll see some marked differences in technique.

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The bar thickness makes the deadlift grip necessary unless your hands are big enough to palm a beach ball, otherwise you’re going to wind up throwing the bar or ripping off some fingernails. My big questions isn’t if this is an effective exercise, but more why the eff are these people doing the lift in the first place?? Sure, they look all cool to each other and stuff, but when they don’t even have decent deadlift pulls from the floor, why not step it back and make sure they don’t shit their spleen through their olympic lifting shoes or Vibrams? Shouldn’t there be a baseline level of technical precision before calling someone a veteran, or is it simply the fact that they survived the first year of training and were dumb enough to come back?

This seems to be a gross oversight of a developmental hierarchy for physical preparedness. Based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, in which a baseline of physiological needs has to be met (safety, food, shelter, etc), followed by the provision of safety and security, social connection, esteem, and last by self-actualisation (following hobbies and interests).

Physical adaptation requires a degree of General Physical Preparedness, meaning the joints can move properly, the energy systems and nervous system can handle the stress, and the person isn’t going to stroke out as a result of the workload. This is followed by Specific Physical Preparedness, such as learning how to hip hinge, deadlift, and squat without a valgus stress. This is followed by sport or skill-specific preparedness, where they learn how to pull and press with a lighter weight and figure out how to get their knees in the right spot, press with both arms equally, keep the spine stable, and actually not look like a hot seizure on wheels.

This looks like the instructors decided that the only way to be “elite” would be to skip the first two steps of the pyramid and jump right into skill-based work and pumping up the emotions to make people feel like rock stars. Sure, they felt super-tuff after pulling massive (?) weights, but if you have a hypermobile teenage girl pulling weights like that, it’s only a matter of time before they’ll run into some ligamental or tendinous issues. I’ve worked with enough of them trying to re-train damaged movement patterns and dysfunctional musculoskeletal components to be able to say that confidently.

While I would prefer to take the high road on this and remain silent, I feel as a community we have to see the positives as well as the negatives of our industry to be able to recognize greatness when we see it. It’s the yin and yang of any profession: knowing greatness when you see and trying to emulate and accomplish what others have, as well as the ability to see that which is less than perfect, and understanding how to fix it.

I’m not alone in this, and I’m sure there are a lot of people out there looking to gouge out their eyes with hoodie zippers after seeing this. What are your thoughts? is this a case of training gone bad or an opportunity to learn about how good a great lift really is?