CrossFit Athletic Group

The goal of this place has never been injury prevention, but injury prevention is a sign that things are going well. The issue with this is I (and you) never really know when injury prevention is happening because the action of injury prevention looks like nothing. The other issue is the standard for injury prevention does not end once you guys exit the garage doors, it also carries over to the fields and courts of the sports you play.

The other, other problem is there is a bit of evidence that it hasn't carried over as well as we are hoping. Here's a list off the top of my head:

• Evan's Achilles (spring 2021)
• Carvin's hamstring (winter 2021)
• Dylan's knee (spring 2022)
• Paris's knee (last week)
• Jaylee's ankle (this week)

Let's look at each of these people a little closer.

Evan

• Summer attendances leading up - 94%, 89.5%
• Regular attendance during the year
• Does all the mobility
• No glaring bad habits with feet or knees

Carvin

• Summer attendance leading up - 96%
• Regular attendance during the fall leading up
• Does all the mobility
• Leg lags back when he runs, knees come forward - both when not thinking about form

Dylan

• Summer attendance leading up: 70%, 50%, 30%, 47%
• Regular(ish) attendance during school year
• Does not do all the mobility, but has most of the mobility
• No glaring bad habits noticeable with knees, feet, etc.

Paris

• Summer attendance leading up: 32%, 70%, 75%, 39%
• Not regular during school year
• Does not do all the mobility, but has all the mobility
• No glaring bad habits I can see with knees, feet, etc.

Jaylee

• Summer attendance leading up: 95%, 96%, 100%
• Regular(ish) during the school year
• Does some of the mobility, missing a lot of ankle mobility
• Ankles are still tight and feet still turn out when speed is applied

Attendance. If you look at each case individually - not as a whole - it would be difficult to make the argument that more attendance would have helped; Paris and Dylan had the worst attendance out of the group, but they also had (and still have) the best positions, Carvin and Jaylee have the best attendance and have the worst positions out of the group, and Evan is probably the most bulletproof on paper.

Mobility. Jaylee and Carvin are definitely missing positions in the part of their body that got hurt. You'll note in the other cases I used the word "glaring." At some point everyone is going to expose a bad position in something - we can always get you so tired or make the weight so heavy that your vulnerable spots will show themselves. As Kelly Starrett said, "CrossFit is the world's best diagnostic tool." For Paris, Dylan, and Evan, it really takes a lot for them to lose their position in that specific body part.

"Jackie," Summer 2022

Bad coaching. We are a gym known for having really high form standards developed over time... so why couldn't Evan hold up to a routine Rugby scrum? We are a gym known for doing a lot of mobility... so how is Jaylee going to be at the gym more than the barbells for the last three years and still have tight ankles? We are a gym known for putting a lot of emphasis on running technique... so why does Carvin have bad running form? How are the Colussis going to spend all that money on Dylan being here for the last four... wait, five(!) years and he hurts his knee swinging a baseball bat? How can Paris justify all the butt back, knees out, nutrition checks, feet together stuff from me, undergo a full body overhaul, then have a noncontact knee injury?

If I am to accept credit given to me for Cecilia winning a National Championship and Chase playing at the highest level of high school basketball, then I also have to own part of the bad things that happen. These are all legit questions, and things I have to confront. I don't have an answer to any of them. It doesn't discourage me in any way, but it humbles me for sure and makes me think critically about how we do things.

What would you say... you do here? What it really comes down to is practicing good habits. That is what we can control. We know the shapes that are good to practice, and the shapes that are not good to practice. Once those are established, the task is then to make it as difficult as possible to keep the good shapes. Anyone see Mr. Robinson do snatches the other day? That hot-headed mofo was waaaaaaay down there! Okay, cool, hook 'em, now let's make him sprint a 400 and see if he can get all the way down there. Oh he still can? What if we make it 115 lbs.? We can go on and on and at some point everyone's positions will break down; we just need to keep pushing that point as far back as possible.

80's Workout, Summer 2020

Focus on the game. One of my basketball coaches made an injury analogy saying that if you drive a car hoping to not get in a crash, it is going to make for one miserable driving experience.

You are who you are when you step onto the field or court, all your good habits and bad habits,physical and mental. The 4th quarter of a tight game is not the time to work on your knee position and a coach is not going to use a halftime speech to talk about running on your heels. Those things need to be taken care of outside of competition and with enough reps we have seen these good habits to show without thinking about them. What exactly qualifies as "enough reps" is the big question, I suppose.

What's the limiting factor? Ugh, I don't know dude, but this is the question I usually bring it back to. If their bodies are giving out, then I would have to say that something fitness-related is their limiting factor and not their sport, right? Even though that's a difficult conclusion to come to (and a biased one, obviously), it still makes sense. There isn't a set number of sessions Dylan has to come to for his legs to be strong enough to buffer swinging a baseball bat in a weird way. There isn't a set time spent in the bottom of a squat for Jaylee to be able to buffer a weird landing in volleyball.

Or was Evan overdoing it with the split jerks and touch-and-go box jumps, and needed to give his feet a break? Was Carvin overdoing it on mobility, spending all that time mashing his hamstrings when he really needed to do running jump rope?

Again, the difficult part here is nobody really knows when an injury is being prevented. What we do know, however, is the job isn't done until the next game is over and you aren't hurt.