CrossFit Athletic Group

I got a mass email last night from a student at USC who is looking for participants in an online survey regarding a very common topic: injuries and CrossFit. It's really quick and if anyone wants to participate, the link is below.

Severe Injury Rate in CrossFit

How bout this throwback from the vault! Summer 2012Coach Glassman had a great quote that was something along the lines of, "I could make an exercise program that is 100% safe, and doing so would also make it 100% ineffective. You'd just be sitting on your butt the whole time."

Obviously we never want to get athletes injured during training; this is not our main goal, but it is very high on our priority list. Some of the things we do in life and sport requires potentially risky physical activity, so it is best to train those things in the gym in a little bit safer fashion. We jump on boxes, climb on ropes, tumble and go upside-down, and we put relatively heavy things over our heads. Sometimes Mr. Carey just misses the box. For the most part, I can live with those kind of injuries.

The ones I obviously have a hard time dealing with are the ones I think came from training with bad form. Bubs's shoulder thing in 2012 (or early 2013, I forget) comes to mind as the only one that I can think of that was probably solely due to a workout and required surgery. In fact, it's something I still think about - which is why I am so picky about head position on all lifts. The other ones that have hit me hard are when our kids get injured in their sport. Thankfully they have been few and far between, but Jay's knee was tough for me to deal with, as was Cam's and Amy's knees. I always think there was more I needed to do in here to help them prevent that stuff.

At the end of the day, it's difficult to balance that line with playing things conservative and progressing an athlete further. The longer I'm at this, the better I'll get, and the longer you're at this, the more feedback you'll be able to give regarding which days are good and which days aren't. Just remember that there has to be some element of risk in an exercise program in order for anything productive to get accomplished.