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Nov
Compare, contrast: same exercise, different cultures
Here is the same exercise as taught by CrossFit and as taught by a personal trainer who is intelligent and successful in her business. Since it is too easy to pull stupid representatives of bodybuilding or mainstream gym culture — or to caricature the worst of mainstream fitness as we often want to do — I find this is a fair comparison, between excellent representatives of the two cultures.
If you have no familiarity with exercise, physical performance, athletics or the analysis of these, it’s possible that the CrossFit analysis of the functional virtues of the exercise will go over your head. While Coach Glassman doesn’t explicitly say it in this video, much of what he is describing in the exercise is its functional qualification.
I’ve finally written a decent introduction to this topic here, so you can see exactly what we mean by ‘functional’.
First, the mainstream video, with an emphasis on what parts of the body you’re training — a bodybuilder approach:
Second, the CrossFit video, with an emphasis on functionality. Nicole Carroll is the model and Coach Greg Glassman is speaking:
