Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 203: Crossfit is...AWESOME? (7 things crossfit gets right!)

Episode Date: June 29, 2022

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Welcome in everybody to another episode of the dynamic dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host Danny Matranga. And in this episode, we are going to outline seven things that the CrossFit community and the CrossFit exercise modality more generally here gets right in the fitness space. It's very, very popular popular and it's very, very common to see personal trainers, strength coaches, strength and conditioning coaches, fat loss coaches, you name it, bash CrossFit because it is a very, very tight knit cult-like community, as is the case with many fitness communities, that definitely has room for improvement and is far from perfect.

Sometimes CrossFit is a little bit silly and it's easy to poke holes in. And quite frankly, I think that that meme has been played out. I don't think all CrossFit's bad. I certainly don't think it's all perfect. And quite frankly, I believe a lot of the community gets a lot of stuff right. So today what we're going to do is we are going to go over seven things that CrossFit gets right that you can use to enhance your health, your fitness, your physique, or do a better job working with your clients if you work in the health and fitness space. Now, I'm not going to say that you can easily inject all of these things into whatever it

is that you're doing, but these are the seven things that I believe that CrossFit community and that CrossFit exercise modality more generally gets right that can help the most people in the most effective way. So let's go ahead and get into this right now. So the first thing that the CrossFit community gets right is, are you ready for it? Drum roll. Community. Community holds people accountable. It pushes them to reach new levels through collaboration and competitive drive. And it can really help support adherence and commitment to the program, to the action of going to the gym, right? When you only have yourself to rely on and you only have yourself to let down, it's very, very easy to skip workouts, to let the day kind

of get ahead of you and fall behind, to come up with excuses and reasons why you can't get there today or stick to the routine more generally. And one thing I absolutely love about CrossFit, to the routine more generally. And one thing I absolutely love about CrossFit, I hate it and I love it, is that people who do CrossFit love sharing CrossFit. They love inviting their friends to join them to do CrossFit. They love to build a community of CrossFit. And I think that that is something that many other exercise camps or modalities get wrong. Now, I think being exclusionary in any capacity as it pertains to health and fitness is absolutely ridiculous, right? Like shaming somebody, making the gym feel like it's not an okay place for somebody, being hyper exclusionary, like that shit is not helping

anybody. And we are facing a very real health crisis of sedentary behavior, people being under-muscled, people having too much body fat, adipose tissue, you know, and these are problems that exclusionary click like, you know, join my tribe or you're not in my tribe behavior is not helping. And I think the CrossFit community does a really good job of welcoming people in, spreading what it is that they love to do. And this drives adherence. People love to go to their CrossFit box. A box is generally what CrossFit gyms are referred to as, especially the licensed ones. But to see their friends, to see their coaches, their comrades, right? To enjoy and kind of revel in the community. It really is a huge piece of it. Like, yes,

it drives competition because they have the open where people attempt the same workouts as the people who do basically CrossFit professionally. If you do well, you can qualify for the games. Some people do it really high level, but at the most foundational and basic level, having people in your gym that are excited for you to be there is really, really exciting. It's really, really encouraging. It's really, really encouraging. It really, really motivates you. And like I said, people will quit on themselves before they quit on their partners, before they quit on their team. And that is just something that I think CrossFit

does a phenomenal job of. Just speaking more broadly and more generally about relationships and about friendships, like Some of my best friends and the people who I enjoy spending my time with the most are friends who I've made in the gym, right? Because whether they're other trainers or just friends who go to the gym, we have that one thing in common. And we are a social organism. Human beings are social. We thrive when we are with people who are of like mind. We are very tribal to a fault often. Sometimes we get stuck so much, you know, really leaning into these tribal behaviors that it causes a lot of problems and it causes a lot of issues. you to eat well, generally encourages you to push your body physically and to really kind of go for it. I think there's absolutely nothing, nothing wrong with that. And I think that it is quite possibly the best thing CrossFit has going for it. It's that huge community piece. So if you're

a trainer, try to create community with your clients, try to create community in the gym. If you're new to the gym, try to find a couple friends. I know it can be a very, very intimidating place and a very, very intimidating space, but do the best you can to make one or two friends, to make a few relationships, to interact with people in that space because I'm telling you what, it will make the biggest difference in your adherence and getting a trainer, getting a coach, getting a workout partner are all very, very acceptable ways to build community in the gym. So the second thing CrossFit gets right, and this actually shows up in a lot of how I program, and certainly it's not exclusive to CrossFit, but it is a central focus

on compound lifts. Now, one of the gripes I have with CrossFit is the fetishization of the Olympic lifts and programming them to fatigue, meaning cleans, snatches, jerks, push jerks, overhead presses, front squats, analogs of the Olympic lifts that are quite challenging and that I don't necessarily believe should be done to fatigue or for time. So that's a gripe I have. But I think speaking more broadly, CrossFit really does focus on various forms of compound movement. So they get a ton of pressing in overhead, right? Those pushing movements. They get a ton of pulling, whether it's on Those pushing movements, they get a ton of pulling, whether it's on the row machine, which is more horizontal, whether it's barbell rowing,

various forms of deadlift analogs, like maybe even pendlay rows, of course, pull-ups and kipping pull-ups, lots of squatting, lots of hinging, lots of lunging. The bulk of the programming is built on the back of compound movements. And while I don't necessarily think you need to rely exclusively on barbells for compound movements, for example, I think that the hack squat might be better than the barbell squat for a bodybuilder looking to find a compound movement to develop their quads. Speaking generally, of course, the compound movements are the best bang for your buck. They allow for the most efficiency because you train the most tissue through the fullest ranges of motion, oftentimes in a stable bilateral setting. So you can really, really apply mechanical tension to your contractile tissue, to your muscles,

to your soft tissues. They help top you up. They help build resilience. They help build strength that I think, to use the term that people hate to use, is functional functional and it's functional in that it very much carries over to all of your other lifts, to all of the things you might do in life. It's not to say that isolation lifts are unfunctional. I think all weight training, all exercise is functional, but the functionality of strength acquisition that then can just kind of bleed into all the other stuff you do, compounds allow for that in a way that's awesome. Obviously, they train a ton of muscle and CrossFit is very good at kind of shortening the time duration of workouts. Now, oftentimes they do this with time caps and with things that I think can be more of a negative, but it's very rare that you find a CrossFit

workout that takes two hours or a CrossFit workout that isn't effective because of the reliance on compound lift. So just to kind of unpack this a little bit more for you guys. So you really get an example of what I'm talking about. The squat, you are taking the ankle, knee, hip, and thoracic spine. You are asking them to do things that are really, really important. Like you need a ton of mobility out of those lower body joints and you need a lot of stability out of your back. You're going to use your calves and your quads and your glutes and your core and your upper back all in one movement. And obviously many of you are initiated in the exercise community and you know the benefit of compound lifting. But when

you're introducing exercise to people who are sedentary or who perhaps aren't already in the habit, finding movements that allow you to kill many birds with one stone, train many muscles at the same time, it's pretty amazing. So if you're like totally new, you could literally have a day where you just did squats and maybe you just did like presses and you train most of your body and that might be all you can recover from. And I think CrossFit just really nails focusing on the compounds. Speaking of compounds, as we transition to the third thing, I think they get right. And this one might lose me some friends, but I love, this is number three, that CrossFit is not obsessed with the barbell bench press, right? Like the barbell bench press is a phenomenal exercise for sports performance and for power lifting. It is a requirement

I love it because it allows you to produce a ton of force in that pressing plane So I think about athletes who maybe play in the NFL or who play football at a high level, and they need to be able to push and generate a ton of force or resist a ton of force with their arms extended. Bench press has a ton of carryover for strength, uh, sports like powerlifting. Of course you have to be good at the bench press and for bodybuilding. Um, you know, it's a great developer of the pecs and shoulders, although I do think it's inferior to dumbbell versions. And then I think just speaking, you know, more generally, people like it. It's fun. It's a great lift. And here's the thing. You never see it in CrossFit, right? Ever. And the reason I like that is because they find other ways to train the pec using things like

dips and pushups. I'm not a huge fan of the ring dips, but other ways to train it. They're not like beholden or married to that movement. And I don't think it has a ton of applicability to general population lifters, to bodybuilders, to kind of non-athletes and non-power lifters. I just think there's better ways to press and better ways to change their pecs. Now, if you are looking to develop strength or you're in a strength block, I think cycling bench through can be really fun. I actually have it in the upcoming July programming for my app-based training, the Elite Physique. So Elite Physique is my female-focused training group.

It's all app-based. And the July programming is strength focused. And there is bench pressing because I want those athletes and lifters to be able to develop power and strength in that plane. But we're only going to do it for one month and then we'll probably cycle it out for three, six, nine, 12 months before you see it again. you see it again and instead focus more on things like pushups, dumbbell bench presses, cable and machine chest presses that I think work really, really well. And I think a lot of people feel that they need to do it because it is such a popular commonplace movement. You know, it's really baked into the culture of fitness, of weightlifting, But truthfully, there's better ways to train that tissue. And with the overall fatigue and the overall stress and what is asked of the shoulder joint with all of the Olympic lifts and all of the pulling and all of the work on the rings that CrossFit athletes do, it's probably a good thing they don't do a ton of barbell benching because, and again, not to fear monger, all exercise I believe is good and safe.

Of all of the forms of bench pressing, whether it be machine, dumbbell, pushups, anything where you press in that plane and range of motion, the barbell bench seems to be the most fatiguing and have the greatest likelihood of causing agitation and other tissues like the shoulders and elbows, for example, when done in insanely high volumes. Taking a little break from the action here to tell you about our amazing partner, Seed. Seed makes the best probiotic supplement on the market, bar none. I'm very confident with that because I think that the probiotic space and the gut health space in general is filled with people who have no idea

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community. Back to the show. What's going on guys? Taking a break from the show to tell you about our amazing partners over at Elemental Labs. Elemental Labs makes a flagship electrolyte product known as LMNT Recharge. Recharge is amazing. It's got bioavailable forms of sodium, potassium, and magnesium, which can really help you train, contract your tissues, and get hydrated. I love having it in the morning before my fasted training because oftentimes I wake up without an appetite, but I want something in my stomach so I'm not flat, I can get a pump, and I can get hydrated in the gym and still perform my best. I also love to sip on my recharge when I'm on the golf course or especially when I'm in the sauna. The more you sweat, the more likely it is that you will need to replace valuable electrolytes

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tons of muscle-ups, tons of dips, tons of ring pull-ups, things that work the grip. They're also really good at doing a lot of overhead work and maintaining mobility in that overhead position, which is so, so valuable. And it's very, very good actually long-term to have a lot of overhead mobility and stability. And I think most CrossFitters, intermediate to advanced CrossFitters are phenomenal at that. So a lot of the hanging work, great, amazing for the grip. But another thing they do a ton of are carries, loaded carries. So farmer's carries, loaded carries. So, farmer's carries, suitcase carries. You're obviously going to work your grip when you do some of the more CrossFit exclusive exercises like rope climbs, right? But I love that the CrossFit community

and CrossFit programming more generally does not skip out on the grip work. For those of you whose goal is hypertrophy, having grip strength can be really valuable when it comes to movements like lunges and Romanian deadlifts, particularly for women where the glutes and hamstrings and the quads and glutes get so strong, they can't necessarily hold or load enough weight to challenge those tissues without using things like wraps and straps, which I totally recommend in that context. If your goal is hypertrophy, get like wraps and straps, which I totally recommend in that context. If your goal is hypertrophy, get some wraps and straps because you don't have a ton of time or you don't necessarily have the recoverability to do a shit ton of grip work on top of it.

But speaking to the general population or the people you might train or just people looking to get in better shape, having a strong grip can really carry over quite well to the other stuff you're doing. Just like how we talked about how compound lifts generally bleed nicely into isolation lifts and strength overall, having a strong grip is very, very helpful, very, very effective for just generally training better and longer. And I work with a lot of advanced age population individuals, so older people and like risked in elbow pain is quite common. And the development of the musculature in the lower arm that you use to grip the muscles in your hands is really, really important. So definitely something that they get right. I

absolutely love that. Moving on to number five, they don't skip their conditioning slash cardio. How many people out there avoid doing cardio at all costs? They hate it I don't like it. It's going to interfere with my muscle building It's not uh, unless you do it in insane amounts. Oh, I just despise it. You'll never catch me dead doing it They you know, they hate it. But here's the thing guys cardio is fucking important Your heart's important. Your lungs are important. Your vascular health is important. Your mitochondrial health is important. All of those things are modulated and enhanced by regular cardiovascular activity at high and low intensity levels. Going for walks outside is something you've heard me recommend on the podcast countless times. I love it. I swear by it. I think it's important. That's low level, steady state cardio or LIS. low level, steady state cardio or LIS. There's really no amount of that you can do that's going to interfere with your hypertrophy or your muscle growth. If you're training hard, if you're gen pop, you're just looking to get in shape. Amazing way to burn some additional calories, get some

mindfulness, get outside, get some vitamin D, clear your head. You can listen to podcasts. You can make phone calls. So many things you can stack with walking. But CrossFit does a really nice job of incorporating mid to upper tier level cardiovascular output. So things like, you know, workouts that involve quarter mile, half mile, full mile runs, that's that more intermediate level or rowing for a certain number of calories or using the assault bike to generate a certain number of Watts. We'll talk a little bit more about, um, this in the next tip, but like, I love that they are able to at the highest levels of CrossFit where there's certainly drugs, but even at the intermediate to beginner level where people are just going to their local gym, they're able to gain strength, gain muscle and stay in their routine while incorporating small amounts of cardio in that moderate to upper level.

So like those bouts of cardio that most people are not comfortable with, where they push it on the assault bike or rip it on the rower, go for a quick run or a quick sprint, like those things can be quite valuable for developing your aerobic health and fortifying your cardiovascular health in the short to intermediate term. These are the things that if you skip on them, they will probably come back to bite you in the ass down the road. Whether you're a power athlete, a bodybuilder, or you just generally hate cardio, there's hell to pay for completely skipping it. You can get so many benefits from just resistance training, including many wonderful cardio protective benefits. And if you do a lot just resistance training, including many wonderful cardio protective

benefits. And if you do a lot of circuit training or your heart rate's generally more elevated, you could even argue that you don't have to do cardio at all. But I think that the small volume of upper echelon, higher tier cardio you see in CrossFit is really, really helpful for developing a more robust, well-fleshed out, strong cardiovascular system. So guys, moving on to the sixth thing CrossFit gets right is they break the mold when it comes to variables. So for example, in most programs, you're going to see sets and you are going to see reps and that's about it. You're going to see three sets, six reps. So instead of just relying on that level of granularity, the kind of reductionist,

highly effective, highly effective sets, reps stuff, they incorporate novelty and, and unique would he through things like AMRAPs, meaning as many reps as possible in this timeframe. So instead of saying do 15 pushups or pushups to failure, they might say as many reps as possible in one minute. Nothing wrong with that. They'll do partner-based things where one of the more popular ones is a you go, I go, where you do 10 pushups, I do 10 pushups, and I rest when you go, you rest when I go. They do circuits, they do Tabatas, they do a variety of different things that I think can add a little bit of novelty, but also I don't think they're ineffective. So for example, I will often use like a very, very common CrossFit thing that you might see is finish with X number of reps for time. I do that all the time in my programming,

finish with a hundred kettlebell swings for time, finish with a hundred walking lunches for time. These things not only act as some form of conditioning, right? But they are also a great way to end your workout. You are staring dead on. I need to do this many reps. I need to, you know, I need to pack my lunch, put my hard hat on and get after it here to finish. And you walk out of that workout like, hell yeah, I did that shit at the end that I didn't want to do. That was really hard. I faced the beast. I conquered the demon that there's a place for that in any fucking program. And that scales to any fitness level. You can be totally new. And I can say, okay, I want you to finish with a 20 second plank and be like, Oh fuck. 20 second plank. I, and I'll sit there and I will count every second. And that person will sit there and they'll, they'll wince.

They will, they will hate it. They will suffer through it. And then when you get to second 20, boom, they're done. And it is just the best feeling. Or maybe you're super advanced and it's like, yo, I want you to finish with a hundred pull-ups on your back day for time. And you might do 10 sets of 10 and you go like 10, 10, 10, 8, 6, 5, 5, 4, 4. And you have to break it down into these tiny little elements. And for most people, that's totally overkill. They won't recover from it. But point being, CrossFit does a really nice job of breaking the mold. They're getting out of the granularity of sets and reps, which should be the base of the majority of the shit that you do. I'm not bashing on that. That's how I program. But these little fun things can be really helpful and can make things a little bit more palatable

to people who like novelty and don't do so well with highly repetitious formulaic stuff. Finally, guys, the seventh thing that I think CrossFit gets right, and I'm really big on this, especially post-pandemic, is you don't need a lot of equipment to do CrossFit. You just don't, right? Little to minimal equipment is all you need. I built an entire program in this app-based community, right? We talked about elite physique, which is gym-based, but I also have home heroes and all you need is dumbbells and bands. And the number of people who have benefited from home programs where all you need is dumbbells, bands, and body weight is huge. Most people don't work out enough. A lot of people don't live close to a gym. A lot of people can't afford to go to a

gym. Newsflash, a lot of people don't fucking want to go to the gym. So being able to carve out space at home to train is really, really valuable because it allows people to get the movement they need in to be healthy and fortify their body against illness and disease. And CrossFit is amazing at this. You can do it at home and you can still be part of a community, right? That's why I love the app-based programming I have and the online clients that I have because we try to create a community so you're not feeling alone the way so many people feel when they go to the gym and put their headphones in. And all you need to do CrossFit at home for most people, a couple dumbbells, a couple kettlebells, bench, barbell, plates, boom, done. You can do almost every CrossFit workout with that. And like some of the stuff that you might have to add on top, like a bike or a rower or a ski erg, you can replace with forms of jogging, running, walking, whatever cardiovascular modality you

have access to. So the low equipment requirement, the fact that you can do it at home or go to any box anywhere and join a workout, um, you know. And it doesn't require you to have a huge gym membership or to buy a ton of shit. I think that's one of the things CrossFit gets right. So guys, going over those seven things again that I love about CrossFit, again, not to bash on them here at the final buzzer. I don't think it's perfect and I don't recommend it for about 95% of people, but I do think they get some things right. The first of course is community. They foster community amongst members and amongst CrossFitters globally. They really focus on compounds. That's number two. I love that. Number three, they are not obsessed with barbell bench pressing. Number four, they never

skip the grip work. Number five, they get their conditioning in. Number six, they go beyond sets and reps to keep it fun and exciting. And number seven, it just doesn't take a ton of equipment to get into CrossFit. So guys, those are the seven things I think CrossFit gets right. I love it. I love that you guys are open to this episode, that you sat down and listened to it because I know so many have such a hot, inflammatory opinion about CrossFit. But here we are. We got through it. See what you can borrow from this

and add to your fitness routine, your clients, whether you're just getting started or whether you're totally advanced. There's lots to learn from all the different modalities. And we don't get very far when we just bash on people

and bash on things that are different from what we like. So thanks so much for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next one.