Below is a piece of CrossFit history for you, a funny story, from the archives. One which, accompanies tomorrow's workout beautifully.
The crunch came to fashion on warnings and claims in popular media of the traditional sit-up’s destructive impact on the back.
It was argued that the GHD style sit-up’s primary movers were the hip flexors and not the abs and consequently this sit-up, and sit-ups like it, were actually not good abdominal exercises. It was further argued that recruiting the hip flexors to lift the torso was destructive to the lumbar spine.
Once every couple of years we get lucky and find an exercise physiologist to repeat this message of poor ab recruitment and lower back destruction standing in front of the GHD apparatus. What we do is ask them to mount the GHD and perform a set of thirty sit-ups for us while rehashing the poor recruitment claim.
The fun comes the following day when the report comes back from the exercise scientist that they are almost too sore to sit upright. Laughing, walking, standing, and moving are all excruciating. Where are they hit? The abs.
Our favorite story along these same lines comes from Matt Weaver, arguably the world’s fastest human being. On top of being known for hitting 85 mph on a bike, Matt was crowned “King Sit-Up” in high school for completing 100 perfect-form bodyslapping sit-ups in one minute. In one of his earlier visits to CrossFit Santa Cruz he found himself in a multi- station circuit with a group of CrossFit veterans that included twenty-one reps of GHD sit-ups with a full range of motion, hands reaching back to the floor.
The workout left Matt sick in the immediate aftermath. This was a surprise for sure but nothing prepared Matt for what came the following morning: “I awoke later without the slightest ability to sit up. It was as if the six pack was totally gone, though all ribs remained. The curse had left me merely able to roll over and slither like a snake off the edge of the bed. From there I had to use my arms in humiliating ways to move about. I avoided being seen. A week passed, and I began to revitalize.”
The worst was yet to come! In the wake of Matt’s being dethroned as King Sit-Up, his abs had swollen and distended markedly. This kid looked fat and sunburned where the week before he’d been ripped and lily white. As the swelling subsided, his scrotum grew and grew and grew. Matt’s father, John, is an ER doc, so he was consulted. He laughed himself to near seizure. (Our kind of doc.)
Before the swelling stopped Matt’s scrotum had become the size of a small and very ugly cantaloupe. Why we have no pictures we’ll never understand.
Apparently the fluids that had swollen Matt’s abs had drained into the inguinal canal and filled the scrotum. Oh, and apparently GHD sit-ups recruit the abs. Matt is convinced.
CrossFit Cardiff WoD
For time:
50 - 40 - 30 - 20 - 10
5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1
100 - 80 - 60 - 40 - 20 - 10
GHD Sit Up*
Ring Muscle Up
Double Under
*NOTE - 150 GHD sit ups is a LOT and scaling is NOT a dirty word!
Please post times to the whiteboard and do NOT end up looking like Buster...
