"Should Fitness Hurt? It depends."
Link to the article
This one is subject to broad interpretation, please read the article first. I look at Karen’s FB cover picture and she’s ass to ankle squatting 135 (maybe 125 if that’s a ladies bar) with chains. Scott from Extreme Fitness, employs extreme fitness as a training modality. Is MMA training or fighting painless? Is any level of conditioning risk free from injury and when combined with activities of daily living, will never result in overuse issues? People may look at this and think, well if there is any kind of pain, it must be bad for you. In fact, that concept is becoming more prevalent in the minds of many people that go to fitness facilities. We are seeing it in club surveys. The key is, what kind of pain and when?
Certainly if you vomit after or during the WOD on a regular basis, it’s over the top. Does it happen, once in a while but it is never the goal and causes are multi-factorial. Simply eating something different before moderate intensity exercise can send you to the toilet. Level of conditioning is important as well. What used to put my stomach on edge for an hour after a leg WOD on Sunday now leaves me gratified and feeling fine. Does pulling the sled backward cause pain in my quads, absolutely, a lot of pain, but it lasts about 10 seconds post exercise and I’m fine. This is very different than injury pain. In fact, my personal WODs are more painful now than at any other time in my life, but the pain is simply ischemia in the working muscle or from sucking air, not lasting joint or tendon pain/injury except for arthritis pain that I have to live with as I get older.
Should anyone be taking any movement especially a skill movement to the point of total failure with poor form? No, only an idiot trainer would let that happen but in many current facilities, it is encouraged, in fact competitions built around it. If you’re limping around the next day after a WOD from anything other than moderate but not extreme DOMS, either your trainer is an idiot or you are for not communicating with your trainer during the WOD or knowing your limitations. Is debilitating pain always a function of extreme conditioning, not always. Look at runners who believe that more low intensity miles are better, many are walking train wrecks yet their heart rates rarely exceed 75% HRmax on LSD runs.
Lastly, I think of what life throws at you. Last year on vacation I had to paddle a kayak out of a strong current with a young lad in tow who thought he could swim the Bahia Honda Channel without a vest or fins. Took me about 5 minutes of balls out paddling to get us to safety, could I have done that without the numerous times I’ve come close to hurling after C2 intervals, nope. The young lad would have likely drowned because it took the coast guard about 30 minutes to respond. The three stooges dive tour with Ocean Divers provided a similar opportunity to test the waters so to speak. Unloaded a full boat of most certainly non-CrossFitters in very strong current, before the boat crew figured it out, everyone was in total panic as they were being towed away from the boat despite their best efforts to get back. Dawn my girlfriend, a competitive Cross Fitter was the only one to get back to the boat without use of the rope. We both stayed out of the panicking mob and observed a giant grouper that was hanging out in the area watching all the humans that screw with his habitat on a regular basis come close to drowning. I’m sure the sharks weren’t far off waiting the fattest and most sedentary snorkeler to have a heart attack and drift off amongst the chaos, for their mid-afternoon snack.
Easy fit is fine if that is what rings your bell, but being ready for anything in life is my preference and it’s how I train my clients. I’m sometimes mocked by the easy fitters when I’m on the floor with my clients and that’s fine, I guess you have come up with something to justify why you do what you do, and perhaps even pay money for it. From my perspective, if you’re going to experience a negative cardiac event because of a near max effort, better it be in a facility with a defibrillator than 100 meters away from the boat in open ocean where no one is paying attention. In the end, it’s about knowing your clients’ limitations and your clients knowing their limitations, expectations, and choosing the right coach with the understanding that, s**t still happens in and most often, out of the gym.