Is CrossFit going to give you a six-pack or back pain?

I had been doing CrossFit for a year when I first saw a woman injure herself. It was January 2016 and the workout that day was five rounds of 15 box jumps, 5 power cleans, and an 8 calorie row. I was on my third round of box jumps when I saw her fall. She was a middle-aged woman with bright pink leggings and a lisp. When she fell we all froze. I yelled for my trainer as I continued to jump twenty inches onto the box in front of me. The trainer called an ambulance and she was taken to Yale New Haven Hospital.

I spoke to her a week later. She had sprained her ankle, but she had decided to continue attending workouts. Instead of back squatting that day she completed several sets of sitting ball slams. I watched her swollen ankle from my squat rack.

CrossFit is based off constantly varied high intensity movements and has become an incredibly successful fitness trend in the past five years. Despite its success CrossFit has a notoriously bad reputation for injuring and overcharging its athletes.

Koki Oka, a physiotherapy postgraduate student at the University of Melbourne, is skeptical that CrossFit can keep its members both fit and happy. He suggests that all CrossFit Gyms should have a physiotherapist on call, “CrossFit has become accessible to people who are not physically fit enough or ready to do high intensity exercise. These are the people that get injured. With a physiotherapist this injury could be avoided.”

Oka might have a point. The rigorous training program asks a lot of its athletes. The original roots of Crossfit come from police and military training focusing on cardiovascular endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, agility, balance, coordination, and accuracy. The curriculum was not meant for the everyday man or woman.

Common workouts come in three styles: WOD (workout of the day), AMRAP (as many rounds as possible), and Metcon (repeated AMRAP exercises). Popular movements are double unders (jump rope passes under feet twice), power cleans, pull-ups, and burpees.

Regardless of the strength of the athlete, this quick style of weightlifting causes a sacrifice in form if not facilitated properly. If an athlete bends their arm, leg, or back slightly wrong during a lift, it could lead to an immediate injury. Shoulder, back, and knee injuries are the most prevalent in CrossFit athletes.

Hannah Farrow, student at University of Melbourne, has been doing CrossFit for a year now, but her injuries came long before joining her CrossFit box. Farrow injured her back when she was lifting with her lacrosse team at University of Tampa.

“The strength and conditioning coach was more concerned with numbers than form and I dead lifted a weight too heavy and pulled my lower back. When I asked him if I could lower weight in the future, he made me feel very weak and inadequate compared to the rest of the team.”

Farrow is a die-hard CrossFitter. She began her CrossFit journey in New Jersey where she would pay 100 dollars a month for unlimited membership, but here she buys the 10-pass membership at CrossFit St. Kilda for 120 dollars.

According to Forbes CrossFit generates 4 billion dollars in annual revenue. The 3,000-dollar annual fee that all Crossfit boxes have to pay and 1,000-dollar seminars put on by gym owners supports this fund. The coaches themselves further support the revenue. In order to get a Level 1 CrossFit Training Certification, the athlete has to pay 1,000 dollars. Then after they reach Level 1 they coach members who pay roughly 150 dollars per month for unlimited memberships. This limits the demographic of CrossFit members and coaches to those who have enough supplemental money to spend on working out.

Alex Cheong, the head coach at Crossfit U in Melbourne CBD, stands behind his gyms prices (200 AUD per fortnight), “At a commercial gym you pay for equipment, at a CrossFit Gym you pay for coaching and accountability. If I don’t see someone at the gym for a few days, I’ll give them a call and check in.”

Is accountability and coaching why people are continuously shelling out money to participate in a sport with a high injury rate? In a 2013 study put on by the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, data was collected from 132 CrossFitters. The results were as follows: 73.5% had sustained an injury during training and 7% of 186 total injuries required surgery. Shoulder and spine injuries were by far the most prominent.

CrossFit U does its best to prevent injuries at all costs. The gym’s coaches are first aid trained and the gym has an injury ledger in order for the coaches to stay up to date with their athletes. If an athlete is injured the coaches will modify the workout. Cheong highly values safety at his box, “We always advise our members to focus on mechanics and consistency first. Move better, before you move fast. Most of the times we are asking our members to take weight off the bars!”

That said, not all CrossFit gyms are the same and not all can avoid injury. At CrossFit St. Kilda several people have been injured including a coach. However, Farrow is not turned off, “Shoulder injuries are common — it’s not because the people are doing the lift wrong, accidents happen. It’s like in lacrosse; our best player sprained her ankle, not because she didn’t know what she was doing, but because she landed on it wrong. There’s a stigma with CrossFit that everyone gets injured, but anyone in any sport can get injured.”

She argues that the negative stigma that surrounds CrossFit comes from people that don’t listen to their bodies. Farrow has a point. In every high level sport, there are injuries. Even the best athletes make mistakes.

So why is CrossFit given a bad reputation when other high intensity sports are not? Like any other sport CrossFit has a fan base, media coverage, high expectations of athleticism, and an exponentially growing member community. The danger in CrossFit comes when you try to push yourself past your capabilities.

If you can find a CrossFit near you where coaches value form over numbers, you are at the right place. Try something new! Give CrossFit a shot!