CrossFit Athletic Group

I wasn't sure if this was another Media Primer post or a Campus Improv Eats, so I figured I'd make it both.

Bubs is mostly up to date on the social media stuff and her and I used to have conversations like this:

Bubs: "Hey there's a post here on Facebook that might be relevant to you."

Me: "Okay."

Bubs: "So do you want to see it?"

Me: "Nah."

Over time she's developed a very good filter to determine when to alert me to something she sees (which is almost never) and when she doesn't (most of the time). A few days ago she told me about a CrossFit Games athlete she follows who posts pictures of her "meals" on Instagram. Only thing is, they're... uh... not what you would probably expect from a CrossFit Games athlete...

... or maybe it is what you would expect if you'e keeping up with that crowd, because a few other accounts of CF competitors showed similar stuff: unfavorable carbs, energy drinks, liquid food, and candy. And inspired by a conversation I was having with Chase, Sap, and Mr. Ron after the Hill on Sunday, I figured it would be good to say a few words here, but not in the traditional Campus Improv Eats format because trying to use protein, carbs, and fat to analyze this junk would be like trying to use a Karen time to analyze Ol' Floppy.

The Lie Detector Test. What do your former high school/college teammates look like nowadays? You know the kid who was speeding around the court, running laps around everyone on the track, playing football and basketball and baseball on the same day... does he look like he can still play? Seeing someone that used to be a fit athlete in their youth who no longer looks the part is a sign that their health habits were not in place as kids, only their constant involvement in sports hid the problem. To me, the biggest lie detector test for nutrition is to ask yourself how would a meal plan work if you subtracted physical activity from it?

We have seen limiting unfavorable carbs and drinks put both active athletes and desk workers at a body composition and health of their desire; I would be surprised if the same could be said about the stuff pictured above.

Conflict of interest. Have any of you been sponsored before? I sure haven't. But apparently this athlete is sponsored by at least three of the food-type products pictured above. How do we really know if there's is a big difference between this brand of canned drink shit and the next one besides the dollar amount going into this athlete's pocket?

I cannot say what came first: the athlete consuming the product or the product marketers reaching out to the athlete. I also do not know if this athlete was offered and tried different canned drink shit products and found this one worked best. But neither do you. A conflict of interest doesn't mean that everything someone is saying needs to be discredited (literally everyone has conflicts of interest to some degree), it just means that we need to think critically about what is in front of us. If we have access to the person, ask the questions you have. If not then it is very important we...

Don't Make Assumptions. My basketball coach told me to read a book called The Four Agreements over the winter. The third agreement - Don't Make Assumptions - was the topic of the aforementioned conversation with Mr. Ron, Chase, and Sap. And it is now I would like to bring out two pictures from The Old Weight Room archive for you to make every single assumption possible:

In 2010 I ate a Baconator from Wendy's between every round of Diane (a Triple the first round, a double the second, then one bite of the single is all I could take for the third round before Pukie's bucket called my name). This terrible idea was inspired by some dudes from California eating an In-N-Out burger between rounds of Fran. How much of my fitness habits can you gain from this picture? Does this mean I promote peri-workout nutrition? Do my abs mean Baconators can be part of a healthy diet? Does this mean all Marygrove athletes have abs? Does this mean all Foley kids do dumb stuff with food and weights? And how much more blurry would your conclusions be if Marygrove or Used Nike Shorts LLC had set up an NIL deal with Wendy's for me at the time?

When you get a glimpse of someone's life through an interview, picture, or video, it is common to assume that's the way they always are, or they're telling the entire truth. The trouble with assuming that is you don't have nearly enough information, and that's probably the point of those kinds of media: not give you enough to know everything, but give you juuuuuuuust enough that you think by coming back tomorrow for the next post you will.

The truth is you can't assume you know a damn thing about this CrossFit athlete's nutrition by looking at a post any more than I can assume I know a damn thing about Kobe's training habits by hearing someone tell a story about him. We need context, big sample sizes, and first-hand observations, otherwise it's usually too limited to be useful.

Conclusion. When I view something informative a media outlet, I always tell myself two things:

1. It applies to that person only
2. This is their idea of their best self, not necessarily their most common self, and cartainly not their worst self. 

If I keep both of those things in mind, it becomes difficult to get persuaded one way or another - which is something I used to be guilty of often (see gluttonous deadlift pictures above). On the occasions I don't keep those in mind, I find myself in an endless search for information that will never be available to me no matter how many links I click.

Wait, was that an actual conclusion?

Actually yeah, it was. Will you look at that!

So conclusion?

Yes. Conclusion.