There are several different ideas and even thoughts about what exactly fitness is. Some are only concerned with "mountain" shape with little or to no regards in being fit for life.
One dimensional views of "fitness" very often result in failure. This happens because physical and mental stress in life are varied and not one dimensional.
Long time distance runners die of heart problems, are weak, injure easily, and suck at everything but near naked running in tennis shoes. The aerobic ability that they posses does not transfer over that well to the repetitive stop and go nature of carrying heavy things up steep inclines. For sure the endurance itself is beneficial, however there are much better ways to get there.
Crossfit is awesome and at the same time, horrible. The positive community atmosphere and motivation helps to get people engaged and keep them consistently involved. As well when done correctly and intelligently it offers great capabilities in fitness. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Crossfit gyms and "trainers" have no experience and knowledge of exercise physiology or competently coaching the Olympic lifts. The "trainers' encourage and at times demand through peer pressure that participants keep going to beat the clock even under atrocious form and outright failure. Crossfit fails itself by incorporating olympic lifts under the timer and doing them until muscle failure. That is when injuries happen, and my god they happen with Crossfit. More than any other exercise "system" in common usage. Because Crossfit purports that Crossfit as laid out with the WOD is the only fitness needed for everyone, they will not admit that as laid out Crossfit is not a one stop shop. In fact those with real history of producing phenomenal athletes, and even those with a bit of critical thinking ability, easily see the major flaws in their methodology and non prioritization. Yes, despite the non sense of CF HQ, prioritization is very important. Every single truly successful training program for every single task by mankind follows a crawl/walk/run sequence.
Now lest anyone think that I am anti Crossfit, I am not. I am anti stupidity and wholesale relinquishment of critical thinking skills in order to follow lock step. My own history of CF is like many others. I was introduced to it during the mid 2000's at work. I was in what I believed to be phenomenal shape. I remember thinking between blackouts during Fight Gone Bad, how bad A I was and that this shouldn't be happening to me. Following that I started doing Crossfit religiously. After 4 solid months of following the workout of the day, with every workout straddling that brink of puking and passing out, I really was in phenomenal "shape". I was by far the fastest of any that I worked out with, and my times were competitive regionally.
I also had reoccurring flu like symptoms, overuse (actually under recovery) injuries, and had plateaued physically. But CF swore that you can't plateau with CF, so I continued. At 6 months I started using my brain again. The love fest with the WOD stopped. I realized to get better that I needed to get stronger. That durability is a huge part of fitness and that your body can not recover and repair when going truly all out every workout, every day. Soon thereafter I was also introduced to another program that was researched, developed, validated and implemented by a sister organization with the help of the best coaches, organizations, and sports medicine professionals in the world. That program found that there was a lot right about CF and a lot wrong with Crossfit.
What Crossfit gets right is that too much specialization is suicide, Olympic lifts, pure strength and 'functional" fitness, high intensity training workouts, and anaerobic endurance.
What it gets wrong is technical Olympic lifts under time and fatigue, no knowledgeable coaches or training in those lifts, "holy chit" workouts everyday, training way past muscle failure everyday, inadequate recovery, inadequate raw strength, no prioritization.
I will post more later as I'm out of time, however I want those who believe that hiking in the mountains is the best thing for getting in hiking in the mountains shape, to think about that if doing a sport is the best way to get physically better at the sport, why does any professional sport have gyms and put so much emphasis on strength and conditioning?
