I believe that people have some built-in warnings to keep them from hurting themselves, and it’s a cultural pathology to make ignoring those warnings into a virtue. It’s one thing to push through pain in an emergency or to increase your capacities, but it’s another to keep hurting yourself just to prove that you can.
Here’s an example of a workout by Scott Sonnon, who encourages athletic ambition while making serious efforts to keep people from getting injured. This is a free workout he’s offering because people need free, useful things when the federal government is semi-shut down.
I generally agree with your sentiments. There is, however, a relatively tricky balance to achieve when attempting to optimize athletic performance.
I think overtraining has become a bit of an epidemic among novice strength trainers, and “less is more” can be a helpful lesson to learn sooner than later… but extreme athletic results often involve extreme training methods. Injury is a line that is always (very) detrimental to cross, but not pushing yourself close to that line can result in you failing to reach full potential.
You could argue that optimizing for some athletic output is not a wise use of resources anyway, especially given the risks (and I might agree with you) But it just may take the most extreme training to produce the most extreme (and optimized) results.
I believe that people have some built-in warnings to keep them from hurting themselves, and it’s a cultural pathology to make ignoring those warnings into a virtue. It’s one thing to push through pain in an emergency or to increase your capacities, but it’s another to keep hurting yourself just to prove that you can.
More about injuries being common at Crossfit.
Here’s an example of a workout by Scott Sonnon, who encourages athletic ambition while making serious efforts to keep people from getting injured. This is a free workout he’s offering because people need free, useful things when the federal government is semi-shut down.
I generally agree with your sentiments. There is, however, a relatively tricky balance to achieve when attempting to optimize athletic performance.
I think overtraining has become a bit of an epidemic among novice strength trainers, and “less is more” can be a helpful lesson to learn sooner than later… but extreme athletic results often involve extreme training methods. Injury is a line that is always (very) detrimental to cross, but not pushing yourself close to that line can result in you failing to reach full potential.
You could argue that optimizing for some athletic output is not a wise use of resources anyway, especially given the risks (and I might agree with you) But it just may take the most extreme training to produce the most extreme (and optimized) results.