Just didn’t realize it was going to be so soon…
Some may call it a freak accident, however I honestly believe its just the first of many life debilitating injuries that are to come for crossfitters. I’ve always viewed Crossfit as a fad, with a “just do it” mentality (as in just do it, with poor form/technique, whatever…). Couple that with poorly trained “coaches” and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
Hope this guy makes it through as best he can.
I don’t think you can really attribute his injury to crossfit any more than you can attribute other weightlifting injuries suffered by guys with much better technique. There are some decent ideas in cross fit(though certainly not unique to it,) the only thing I really take issue with is kipping which strikes me as seriously wrong. That and the “tribe” mentality that’s so prevalent amongst the paleo folks as well.
I will say there’s nothing right about that snatch he was doing in the video and I’m not surprised that he injured himself. Literally severing the spine is insane though.
Snatch should look like you see at 4:25 in this video. http://youtu.be/9LLbOsKkofc ETA:Not a dirty link I promise…though upon reading the sentence perhaps it should have been.
I too hope he recovers fully.
While of course any type of weightlifting can lead to injury, the Crossfit culture and mode of exercise increases that potential exponentially. Their “coaches” (and we’re using that word very loosely) are the pay to play type that could have been working out for decades, or two weeks. They get a two day seminar, pay a few hundred bucks, and bam they are coaches??? Ya right.
Doing Olympic lifts to failure (or close to) is asking for disaster, then add in that most are performed with terrible form and then its just a matter of time before you tear a rotator, blow a disc, ect, ect.
They should probably SLOW DOWN a bit, and stress DOING IT RIGHT EVERYTIME, instead of “just get it done” (mean these folks are paying a ton of money, you might as well coach them a little). Lol maybe Ol’ beer belly Glassman could show them a thing or two…lol.
You just don’t want to hear of more people injuring themselves as severely as this poor guy did.
There is a cross fit gym near me that sometimes does their classes outdoors near a road I drive past.
I noticed one time that people were lifting tractor tires and not using their legs…really bad form for lifting something that heavy. Coach is not correcting anyone. Some of the women could barely lift the tires and were bending their backs badly.
I see tons of examples of really bad form with little correction by the class instructors.
Scary if that is how they run these classes.
Count me out…I’ll just lift dumb bells and ride my mt bike, thank you.
-brickboy240