8/12 Myth Busting Monday

Teresa looking solid as she receives a clean. 
A few Monday's ago I addressed the myth that if you want to lose weight you need to to more cardio, and more cardio for most people means a long slow run. When most people consider what they need to do "to get into shape," they mostly think about doing long slow runs. The long slow run has a tight grip on the misbelief that it is the best way to lose weight and get into shape. 
Don't get me wrong, a long slow run has its place in a well round and varied fitness program. We regularly program 5 and 10k runs for the gym (Sweet Pea, Huffing for Stuffing, Run to the Pub.) It's also great for mental health. A long slow run can help you get into a mental state where you can either solve all of your problem, or completely forget about them. 
However, long slow runs do not build muscle, or help increase bone density, or help  improve other metrics of fitness such as speed, power, strength, flexibility, stamina, balance, agility, coordination and accuracy. The long slow run focuses on metric of fitness only - cardiovascular endurance. I argue that its not even that great, for the average person, at improving endurance. 
Recently, Outside magazine interviewed retired marathoner Ryan Hall, arguably one of the best American marathoners of all time. Hall has made some significant changed to his fitness program and consequently he looks very different from his competitive marathon days. 

When asked by Runner's World about his body composition changes, Hall replied:

“I’ve been small and weak my entire life—just, like, totally underdeveloped,” Hall told Runner’s World. “I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to be big and strong.”

“To be an elite marathoner with a body that’s light and lean: while you’re running, you feel amazing. You’re fluid and economical, floating along without having to carry a lot of muscle mass,” says Hall. “But the rest of the day, to be honest, is not a lot of fun. My energy was super low [throughout most of my career]. I took naps every day and felt pretty much useless when I wasn’t running.”

Useless is the absolute opposite of they type of fit person CrossFit aims to develop. Of course, we must remember that Hall was a marathon specialist, thus developing and maintaining his general physical preparedness (GPP is what we build through CrossFit) was antithetical to running fast marathons. However, when most people start a fitness program aren't looking to specialize. They're looking for well rounded fitness and when they look to running as the sole modality for getting fit they're losing of potential fitness gains by neglecting cross training, high intensity intervals and strength training. 
Now that his competitive days are behind him, Hall encourages people who are wanting to look and feel good to place a greater emphasis on weightlifting and include easy runs in a cross training program. Huh, that sounds exactly like what we do every week at True Spirit CrossFit. We cross train our way to fitness, thus we become CrossFit. 

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