For the record, I am one of those who believes proper weight training can be beneficial for endurance athletes, but when this guy says he knows more about endurance training than Macca, well, I think he is off his rocker:
Until one of his tatted up sideshow athletes starts winning pro races, I’m going to remain sceptical, but he does have a few good points:
“You are quad dominant, and your hips don’t work for Christ’s sake. Learn to move correctl” -Man that used to be me, I’m working on getting my hips correct and it’s helped improve my overall fitness A TON.
“I’d also like to throw in that none of them look at their particular sport as a skill, and because of this they will never do what they love for a long time. PERIOD!” -This is also very true, if you get obsessed with results you aren’t going to do well at triathlon, but if you look at it as a skill you need to master, all of a sudden you don’t mind putting in a long time learning the nuances of proper training and racing.
So, I too could be racing 11:33 IMs if I trained the CrossFit way?
Junk.
Young. Proud of his accomplishments. Cocky.
But not able to see the forest for the trees. And not more than a passing understanding of real sports science.
11:33? And he thinks that equates to having the requisite understanding of what it takes to go sub-8 in an IM?
I like the crossfit concept as a general way for the majority of people to approach being fit. It really works toward total body fitness. But it should NOT be considered essential to success in triathlon or any other sport.
There is nothing new or worth paying attention to there.
With absolutely no research to back me up, I strongly believe that CFE (Cross Fit Endurance) can take a low to mid level athlete and make them better (faster, etc.) but to get to high levels… I don’t think it is there. There is too much evidence that points to miles and miles (or yards and yards for swimmers) to take it to the next level.
Does that mean that we know everything there is to know about endurance training… no so we can still learn but I have yet to see evidence of that type of trainig (relatively short and high intensity) taking an athlete up to “world class” performance.
This story made my morning when I read it. I laughed my ass off. This is one of the many myths that is started by the crossfit crowd that it is the dominant form of training and anyone who is not doing it doesn’t know what they are doing. I am sure his nutrition plan that he puts all his athletes on is the Zone diet which is what is pushed by crossfit. It might help him to go read some legitimate published studies and go get an understanding of bioenergetics rather than his blog/ancetotal evidence that he claims is superior. I firmly believe crossfit is a great fitness program for a lot of people who just want to get into great shape it is by no means a superior method of endurance training or other type of training for that matter.
Junk.
Young. Proud of his accomplishments. Cocky.
I like the crossfit concept as a general way for the majority of people to approach being fit. It really works toward total body fitness. But it should NOT be considered essential to success in triathlon or any other sport.
I agree with those comments. I think that CrossFit is a great way to approach fitness, but not endurance sports or triathlon. Spending 20min a day tossing around kettleballs will not make you run or swim faster.
Marketing BS, that’s all. A good way to get/stay in shape but he needs to know his limits when venturing out of his lane.
Cross fit ain’t going to keep you in the saddle for 6 hours.
http://www.crossfitendurance.com/ - Love the picture of them running in the rain with 45lb plates over their heads.
An interesting read. Some potentailly valid points.
I always note that these cutting edge fitness, diet and training “trends” always seem to start in places where a lot there are a lot of wealthy people. I note that his studio is in Newport Beach, CA - a zip code with some of the richest and wealthiest people in the U.S.( well, up until the recent real-estate/stock-market slump).
How come these cutting edge training trends never start where the top athletes are - Eldoret, Kenya; Trondheim, Norway; Flagstaff, AZ. . . .? Just wondering.
Gotta love California marketing. They’re trying to go against proven methods, and I guess that’s one way to be innovative, but no one doing CrossFit and CrossFit Endurance (caveat: unless they’re ex pro level athlete in an endurance sport competing in my age group cry like a little biatch) is going to place top 3 overall at any race. If you want to be overall fit, cool, do CF+CFE. If you want to be competitive at endurance sports you need the specificity. Crossfit Orangeville has some competitive MTB athletes but I guarantee you they’re not only doing what’s on crossfit.com and crossfitendurance.com These one size fits all plans fit only a small portion of the population and we all know that.
First hand looking at the Marine Corps, which has gotten into crossfit in a big way and has helped boost this crossfit culture, certain Marines will still be fat and slow even if they crossfit. Only crossfitting doesn’t get you an 18min 3mi unless you’re genetically gifted, and the new combat fitness test is a joke as well. A Master Gunnery Sergeant who’s been in the Marines for over 20 years once told me, “Yea, everyone’s all into this crossfit shit with the short workouts and intensity, and you know what? Marines are still going to be fat, we’ll just think we’re cool”
To echo what others have said, I think it’s important to weight train but for people looking to combine weight training and endurance, I’d point them towards Mark Twight (of Gym Jones fame) or Rob Shaul (www.mtnathlete.com or www.militaryathlete.com ). The cult of crossfit is getting out of hand, but I do appreciate what they’re doing in a way, trying to bring fitness and nutritional insight to the masses. It works…for the masses.
The other interesting point about this is that like virtually every other cutting edge, diet and training trend they emphasize lower training time. It is the 7-minute ab routine for endurance athletes. People who think training 15-20hours a week is hard are going to love the idea that they can get results in 9 hours a week.
I think Crossfit has some good ideas but I think they have jumped the shark on this one.
You can’t get an ab workout in 6 minutes… This guy’s posted IM time is not bad, but I don’t think its good enough to qualify for Kona. I wonder what Kona qualifiers would say about his workout plan.
he needs to go faster than 11:33 to prove his point.
he needs to go sub 10 at least
How come these cutting edge training trends never start where the top athletes are - Eldoret, Kenya; Trondheim, Norway; Flagstaff, AZ. . . .? Just wondering.
That is a really good point. If they only had boxes to jump up in in Kenya I guess the marathon record would be sub 2 
Guy seems like he is very fit generally. Looking good with your shirt off and going fast at IM is not the same thing. When I walk around at the practice swims in LP each year I am always amazed at how many totally ripped people there are. Even more amazed a couple days later when so few of them are faster than some kinda fat guys like me…
crossfit would make a better point if they said “by using methods like ours you can be a mediocre triathlete AND really buff and strong”
which, is a valid point
or you could just rock climb a lot
chicks are rock gyms are hot
.
“by using methods like ours you can be a mediocre triathlete AND really buff and strong”
I think a better marketing strategy would be: “Our methods will make you look really fast.”
which to be honest is more important than actually being fast to many people doing triathlons.
MacKenzie, Brian 12/17/40 29/M25-29 00:57:59 05:31:55 04:57:34 11:33:47
i died laughing when i saw his 5 hour IM run time- 11:20min/mile
crossfit fails. obviously he has talent with a 58 swim and a 5 30 bike. but his “training” is a load of crap made evident by his run time.
I’ve been in the hockey scene for a while and crossfit has recently tried to tap into that market as well. Ultimately, whether they realize it or not, its a glorified method of work capacity training. You just can’t (effectively) mix olympic lifting with energetics. These must be trained separately to obtain maximum gains in aerobic conditioning and power + rate of force development.
Now back to triathlon training. It may not be a bad choice for off season conditioning…if you’re into this kinda thing…as long as you realize its limitations and address those variables that it fails to address…regardless, time still must be spent on the roads and in the pool…(or for others, on the computrainer…right Fleck and Dev?)
Hmm…it may also be effective as a training stimulus to “mix things up” within a particular micro/mesocycle…
But ultimately, it failed the ST “sniff test”.
yeah i mean, my half IM time predicts an IM time about the same as his (of course who can reall predict that I might stop by the side of the road and cry instead)
and that was with no bike training
and im not an endurance talent
this guy shouldn’t even be writing articles about endurance yet, heh
MacKenzie, Brian 12/17/40 29/M25-29 00:57:59 05:31:55 04:57:34 11:33:47
i died laughing when i saw his 5 hour IM run time- 11:20min/mile
crossfit fails. obviously he has talent with a 58 swim and a 5 30 bike. but his “training” is a load of crap made evident by his run time.
Junk.
Young. Proud of his accomplishments. Cocky.
I like the crossfit concept as a general way for the majority of people to approach being fit. It really works toward total body fitness. But it should NOT be considered essential to success in triathlon or any other sport.
I agree with those comments. I think that CrossFit is a great way to approach fitness, but not endurance sports or triathlon. Spending 20min a day tossing around kettleballs will not make you run or swim faster. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reminds me of the hype around “high intensity training”. Does anyone remember the late Artur Jones of Nautilus/Medex fame. He was a strong proponent of weight training HIS way. 20 minutes/day every other day. Anything else was counter productive because you had to use your down time for full recovery in order to prepare yourself for thre next high intensity workout. He claimed that you not only developed strength, but also endurance from training with weights. He was anti-running and he said running would only cause injuries. There are still a lot of high intensity training people out there and they have various different names like “super slow” http://franchise.superslowzone.com/what-is-superslow-zone There is some benefit to their training, but they are closed-minded to any other form of training.