With Thanksgiving coming and all this emphasis on being grateful, I think it's time for me to get some good old-fashioned complaining in right now while I still can before I'm expected to be all grateful and cheerful... Here are three things that I don't get about Crossfit.
1) A Muscle-up is worth *how* many pull-ups?? The muscle-up = 3 pull-ups + 3 dips conversion that most everyone seems to use. That didn't make sense to me when I first started, and now that I can piece together a few muscle-ups strict, it still does not. Yes, 4 strict MUs in one set is a good day for me now, while in one set I can do somewhere over 20 deadhang pull-ups. (I have no kip though, so I hate workouts with a lot of pull-ups. I suck at a lot of reps.) So why am I against the conversion: The first is that it changes the focus of the workout. If the workout calls for 3 rounds where 7 muscle-ups are done in a round, then well, 3 rounds of 7 that is challenging, probably makes it something of a strength movement. Replacing that with 3 rounds of 21 (pullups OR dips, nevermind together) and that's endurance. The second is that the conversion actually isn't helpful for anything. Many workouts call for something like 21 muscle-ups. Does it really do anything to have someone who isn't good at muscle-ups do 63 pull-ups and 63 dips? If someone can't do a muscle-up, then they might not be strong in their pull-ups and dips, so all those reps is just too much, and form suffers. You don't deserve to be killed with reps for not being able to get a muscle-up. You instead need to be given tough love--maybe something like 20--30 reps of chess-to-bar pullups or weighted pull-ups until you are strong enough to get your muscle-up. And something like 20 high-quality dips where you go nice and deep, not 60 half-assed dips where the elbows don't even go higher than the shoulders.
2. Why we scale down much more often that we scale up. A sub-3 minute Fran with 95-lb thrusters is way beyond my ken. I'd love to see what someone could do with 135-lb thrusters though. If you're really strong, why not?
3. The funny socks tradition! Women, you have amazing calves. Why hide them behind a pair of striped socks?
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