But Glassman believed that segmented training leads to segmented ability, that the magic of fitness happens when you mash cardio and strength up into a medley of intense bursts of exercise that favor functional movements like stepping and lunging.
In the s, after dropping out of six colleges, he began working as a personal trainer in Los Angeles, where he became known for peddling his seemingly eccentric exercise methods. Instead of the usual workouts of biceps curls and an hourlong slog on the stationary bike, he would have his clients run backwards on the treadmill and lift weights, all while competing against each other for the fastest time.
He was intense, and maybe a little contrarian, but his clients were impressed. But even though Glassman left every gym he worked at, his ripped disciples always followed him out the door. When he parted ways with his last gym, in , Baker and another client gave him their credit cards and told him to open his own establishment. Around this time, Glassman and Jenai launched CrossFit. Soon after, two trainers from Seattle approached Glassman to open their own box.
With word-of-mouth proliferation and zero marketing, the company grew from that small garage in Santa Cruz into a worldwide phenomenon.
There are now an estimated 15, CrossFit gyms in more than countries. To think that one of the biggest fitness trends started as a fluke and grew by the force of its own obvious superiority is a compelling story. A week before the games, I meet Glassman at his home outside Santa Cruz, where he lives with his second wife, year-old Maggie Robinson, the youngest three of his eight soon to be nine children, and their two dogs.
The big house sits on 16 acres off a long, tree-lined road in a gated community. The youngest child, Riley, is roaming around in a Grateful Dead T-shirt, playing with a music box. The walls of the house are stark white and towering, the ocean view and sparse furnishings accented with sealike abstract paintings and family portraits taken on the beach.
Glassman, on the other hand, presents a less polished image. Scruffy and not exactly a mass of muscle, he looks more like a guy who enjoys a good burger than any CrossFit buff or business mogul.
But when he speaks, this air of unpretentiousness dissipates. In a spacious breakfast nook off the kitchen, Glassman and Robinson interview the future nanny next to a large whiteboard scrawled with CrossFit notes—half-erased ideas for workouts and rest-day posts for the website, the latter of which are always a poem or a painting or a short story, something for the mind.
As CrossFit ballooned into an international sensation, an undercurrent of negative press dampened its reputation. Reports surfaced about the potential dangers of the workout, along with rumors of its cultlike following. At first, Glassman brushed off the criticism. But Glassman and Greene ended up being right—at least about the falsified data. The study was retracted, and Devor resigned from Ohio State. Judge Janis L.
Despite its success, there are still plenty of big-time critics of CrossFit and its participants. The extreme nature of CrossFit workouts has been a large point of contention in the fitness world. The report did not mention rhabdomyolysis , which some contend has a correlation to CrossFit and its training approach. But just what is unsafe exercise? I attended a fitness lecture once where a renowned exercise physiologist explained there are no such things as contraindicated exercises, just contraindicated individuals.
Such a statement sounds like it would come from Glassman himself. To say no [to deadlifts] is to say that, if you drop your pen on the ground, you're not gonna pick it up. It's a deadlift. It's picking something off the ground. It does not require a physician's OK. If your physician doesn't think you should deadlift, you need to get a new doctor is what you need. I tend to agree. Fitness should be about function and wellness. One grabs the rings and hangs. She quickly pulls herself up, bringing her body in toward the rings, begins to press, then stalls and plummets back to a hang.
Her body slowly rises above the rings. Might as well have been the savior rising once more. The docs lose their shit, yelling, clapping, and whistling. Nearly half of Americans report feeling lonely, according to research from Cigna. Scientists at Brigham Young discovered that lonely people were 26 percent more likely to die across seven years, making social isolation as bad for you as obesity. Picture a traditional gym. Everyone has earbuds in, avoids eye contact, and scrolls through their phone between sets.
Now picture a CrossFit box. A group of 10, 15, up to 50 people exercise together. They encourage each other through the same workout, personal bests are posted on a whiteboard, no earbuds in or cell phones out. Yes, that holds you accountable to show up and work hard, says ter Kuile. Half of Americans have at least one chronic disease, and more than a million people die unnecessarily each year from the maladies. The paleo thing? It caught fire when Robb Wolf, a nutrition scientist, began talking about the diet in early CrossFit nutrition seminars.
Go ahead, exercise as hard as you can. Keep to levels that will support exercise but not body fat. And nutritionists generally agree that added sugar is a scourge. The eating plan is reinforced in boxes and is approachable for any diet novice. Research shows that exercise and eliminating processed carbohydrates from your diet can reverse diabetes—the key is adhering to the program. Canta y no llores. There are doctors of all specialties, CrossFit execs and Games athletes, Special Forces operators, scientists, a drooly pound mastiff, and, yeah, the mariachi band.
Glassman pivots from group to group, attracting attention. He is in conversation like a pit bull on a pork chop. His eyes gloss and his laser of consciousness is equal parts erudite, poetic, and conspiratorial. Scientists at Boston University confirmed 96 of them, and other research shows that studies funded exclusively by food and drink companies are four to eight times as likely to find results positive to the funder. Drinking one or two sugar-sweetened beverages a day, for example, is associated with a 26 percent increase in risk of type 2 diabetes, say Harvard researchers.
Greg likes to fight, and he never, ever backs down. He regularly calls out publicly the names of researchers who have accepted soda dollars and is lobbying to strengthen conflict-of-interest guidelines at the CDC and the National Institutes of Health.
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