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Comment by juddlyon | Hacker News Reader

This is really cool to see an American with such potential.

The explosion of Crossfit is exposing a lot of people to Olympic lifting. However, Crossfit's programming can be incredibly dangerous - encouraging Joe Sixpack to do such complex and technical lifts "AMRAP" (As Many Reps as Possible) is a recipe for serious injury. Source: I got rhabdo and was nearly hospitalized.

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Yeah, Rhabdo is really serious. A family friend of mine got it and was just going to 'wait it out" until I told him to get to the hospital immediately. Seriously people, if you do a workout and start pissing blood, get to the hospital: Rhabdomyolysis is a serious syndrome due to a direct or indirect muscle injury. It results from the death of muscle fibers and release of their contents into the bloodstream. This can lead to complications such as renal (kidney) failure. This occurs when the kidneys cannot remove waste and concentrated urine.

Barbells = Good.

Cult of Work Past Exhaustion = Injuries.

The other horrible part (besides exhaustion) is that I see so many people with horrible form on the first rep when they're totally fresh, nowhere close to exhaustion, and the trainer just screams '1, 2, 3!' etc, as opposed to 'dude holdup, here's what you're doing wrong'.

And this isn't just at local small shitty gyms which couldn't find decent trainers and are run by a novice trainer...

I mean if you want to laugh and cry and watch a slightly offensive video, check this out: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x22p3g0_deadlifts-from-the-...

If you have no time, just check the single lift that starts at 2:30, and consider that the judges passed it, and that they passed it according to the rules of the crossfit event. I mean that's criminal negligence if you ask me!

Yes. Lift to exhaustion encourages poor form, which in turn encourages injuries. One size fits all also encourages injuries. It's just stupid. It's one thing getting hurt in something like football or jiu jitsu where it's part of the sport, but weightlifting shouldn't have such a high injury rate.

CrossFit has done more than USAW ever has and ever will do to get barbells in the hands of Americans. Too bad that it comes with serious side effects...

Related (I'm sure you've already read this):

https://medium.com/@ericrobertson/crossfits-dirty-little-sec...

I made rhabdo 2 weeks ago after doing just 80 squats (I haven't exercised my legs for about a year prior). I think it's pretty hard to make it and a pretty rare encounter in the emergency room. I recommend you to show the wiki page of the rhabdomyolysis at the ER if you think you have it so they won't send you home because you look healthy (I have to thank HN because I read about crossfit and rhabdomyolysis here a few years ago and that's why I searched the Internet when my pee was Coca-Cola coloured 2 days after doing the aquats). I had a week of hospitalization but I think I'm OK now (I have to do another set of analysis tomorrow to confirm). Although it's a diagnostic I'm pretty proud about having, I hope it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me.

You're the second person I've heard that exact same scenario about on HN. I wasn't even aware it was a thing before I heard about it in reference to crossfit.

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