Hey guys.
First thing. I must say this has been a great thread in that none of the dialogue has descended into name calling, sarcasm or personal attacks. I wanted to post to address some of the most common issues we here about CrossFit and CrossFit Endurance and their role in endurance sports. I thought I'd join the discussion as there were a bunch of issues that were addressed that I think I can help clarify or chime in on.
Full disclosure, I am one of 5 CFE head coaches and ran about a dozen certs last year. Additionally, I have a background in marathon swimming, marathon running, Ironman triathlon and collegiate swimming and run an endurance training business (
www.gotrimax.com).
I've seen several themes come up in different places, so I'm going to try and capture a bunch of common issues and hit them one at a time. Please bear with me as I try to go through the topics I noted and please let me know if I've missed anything.
"A shortcut to fitness"... I think much of the cornerstone of CF and CFE lie in the time/result ratio. That is, the status quo of fitness is very much defined by how much someone trains (i.e. a 5 mile run per day, 60 mins on a stairmaster, etc). I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of the public believes that "6 pack abs" and other elements of visual fitness demand great amounts of time. I think anyone reading this thread knows this is not the case for general physical preparedness. As for the endurance community, the same traditional thought process is very much alive. That is, if one researches any "beginner" or even "intermediate" training plans via beginner triathlete.com or cool running.com one would find a periodized training plan that features a 10% increase in volume for about 3 weeks followed by a 1 week reduction of volume of about 15% for recovery. This overall concept is repeated until the athlete peaks with a 20-24 mile run 3 weeks before a marathon or a 6-8 hour brick in the case of an Ironman triathlon. So, much of the dialogue around CFE is centered around the "absurdity" of drastic reductions in volume vs. the status quo and a great premium put on intensity.
"Disastrous for an elite"... I think this quote was pulled from a post on another thread noting the downside of an elite endurance athlete taking on CF/CFE. I am unaware of a professional endurance athlete taking on this protocol, but I am not omniscient. Additionally, I will note that the #2 professional American Ironman triathlete Andy Potts had never run more than 15 miles or ridden more than 60 miles at one time in his life before his first ever Ironman triathlon in Kona where he (if memory serves) 5th overall and a 2:53 marathon. No, I'm not suggesting that Andy Potts is a CrossFitter. All I'm noting here is that volume in training does not need to be achieved for elite results. Also of note, Potts was a world class swimmer at Michigan and a professional triathlete at the Olympic distance for years before jumping into Ironman. As for you guys already screaming "previous aerobic base", hold your horses....I'll get to it!
"Years of base"... This is the beginning of the "Catch 22" of CFE and goal of trying to empirically substantiate its value from a scientific perspective. The "advertised" CF/CFE protocol calls for 4-6 CF workouts of the day WODs per week with an additional 2 WODs per sport of specificity. Hence, a triathlete would do 4-6 CF WODs per week and then 6 additional WODs, 1 time trial and 1 interval of each discipline. I spell this out as this protocol (as described above) has only existed as such for just over 2 years. This puts the protocol in a tight spot to draw upon success or failure. Here's where it gets dicey. In only 2 years of existence, who has used such a protocol? Well, the majority of the users that I am aware of came from an LSD (long, slow, distance) background. What this means is that the majority of those claiming success may, in fact, be "tainted" as many critics will cite the years of an aerobic base as the root cause of their success and not the protocol. Some will cite over training, lack of taper knowledge, etc to "explain" such athletes' performances--because they "know" it can't be the protocol!!! (couldn't help myself). Of course the other side of this issue is the newbie. "Yeah, such and such used CFE and was successful 'cause he had X years of aerobic base, what about somebody with no base!?" When such athletes are put forth, they, too are criticized as having no base and any beginner will automatically improve doing something they weren't doing before. The point here is that trying to establish a pure starting point with definitive, clear correlation to specific adaptations in the training can be very, very difficult.
"Who has qualified for Kona (triathlon) or Boston (running)"... In other threads people will note earlier that "thousands" of people qualify for Kona each year. For those out there interested in better qualifying such an accomplishment, here's some quick math. There are about 28 sanctioned Ironman events each year with a rough average of about 2400 entrants at each. This puts the worldwide total of such athletes (not accounting for people doing multiple IMs) at just over 67,000. So, if only 1600 people qualify for Kona each year, you are looking at a 2% of the Ironman triathlon population making the cut. Hence, anyone using CF/CFE principles to qualify for such an event would be representative of less than two percent of the triathlon population. As for qualifying for Boston, I can't even begin to tally the number of entrants for Boston qualifier marathons or the participants as they are in the dozens of millions and I think Boston has less than 25,000 runners. Point being, both standards are high and while I do not know of anyone using CF/CFE to qualify for Kona, I know of at least a dozen who have qualified for Boston.
"What is the logic of no long S/B/R in CFE?"... Many people scoff at the notion that we rarely (if ever) program activity longer than 90-120 minutes for any of our published "ultra" protocols. When we respond by saying that we have not found a reason to go longer than this (as high intensity work at this time domain can be overly damaging and result in multiple days off post effort) critics will respond "Well, if you don't need to, then where are your Kona/Boston qualifiers?" The free protocols that are published daily on CFE are not designed to be used verbatim by athletes of all backgrounds and capabilities. Just as the CF main site publishes WODs for the masses (80-90% of us?) those athletes competing at the CrossFit Games (again, less than 1% of global Crossfitters) don't necessarily follow that protocol. In fact, I know many will train multiple times per day. However, I know that Chris Spealer does not train multiple times per day, all year. He will only do multiple day WODs several months before the Games or the qualifiers. What does this mean to us? It means two things. First, the protocols published via CFE are published for a broad and inclusive endurance community--say 98% of endurance athletes. Second, the CFE protocol is based in strength which is to say that should an athlete be able to handle more volume (across ALL modalities--not just sport specific ones) additional volume is prescribed. In fact, CFE highly advocates longer efforts past 90 minutes to test one's nutrition and pacing protocols. We just don't believe going long without intensity is as beneficial as doing so with intensity to build stamina (remember Andy Potts?).
I am hopeful this post will shed some light on the issue of CFE and its place in endurance activity. For those of you interested in viewing the training blogs of some of our athletes who have chronicled their journeys to Ironman events using CF/CFE, here is a listing:
http://martinstrainingblog.blogspot.com/ http://www.danbtrainingblog.blogspot.com/ http://00stake.blogspot.com/ http://trimamma23.blogspot.com/ http://alegassa.blogspot.com/ http://cwunderle.blogspot.com/ http://janetrijourney.blogspot.com/ http://grigs-lpim2010.blogspot.com/ http://www.itri2.blogspot.com/ Max
www.gotrimax.com