Robb Wolf: The Present Future CrossFit
This is part two of my interview with Robb Wolf. And, I thank the interviewee so kindly for reviewing the post with me multiple times to make sure all information was accurate and educable.
AB: Do you plan on having your own certification… if so what will it entail?
ROBB WOLF: I am going to do my own seminar, a Paleo nutrition module with testing and quantification for strength coaches. We also will offer a module for pharmacists, doctors through Professor Loren Cordaine. This will be a credentialed program for allied health people who cover the gamet. We will work more explicitly with endocrinology and how food affects gut health.
ROBB WOLF: I will remain an affiliate. Being an affiliate long term is up in the air.
The Zone diet is great as quantification method. Yet, the Zone looks more like numerology than nutrition.
We have produced top tier athletes, MMA fighters, champion Motorcross and no one measured food. People need to remember that Barry Sears’ first chapters were on Paleolithic eating. Get down to brass tacks, the Zone Diet makes you weigh and measure food. If you want the best Zones, you still have to find food outside of 10k years ago.
AB: Care to comment on CrossFit Headquarters and on-ramping programs for new CrossFitters?
ROBB WOLF: Crossfit affiliates are never going to receive input about best practices from HQ. This is because significant efforts in this direction would place HQ in a position of looking like a franchiser. this situation has some opportunities but also some risks. Couple this with the stratospheric growth of CF and we have a situation in which CF no requires an RRG (Risk Retention Group) for “additional” protection. Normally RRG’s are for exceptionally high risk endeavors like trampoline parks and high-rise crane operators.
The situation that has developed is this:
Many hundreds of not thousands of people with little more than a weekend seminar wielding some fairly potent medicine. The indoc can frequently be more focused on beat-down than scalability…and there is no REAL ability for HQ to police this from the top. So, it falls upon local affiliates to “help” each other…when that help may in fact become your competition. We see dense areas of affiliates driving prices down. Somehow the laws of supply and demand are not supposed to apply here!
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And with those questions, Robb and I chatted off hand a bit more about fitness and the CrossFitter newbie. Wolf stressed that one needs to fully endorse strength training to see improvements in WODs. His classes traditionally begin with warm, dynamic range of movement, mobility followed by a strength workout (i.e. deadlifts). This may be followed by a gymnastics portion (i.e. a rope climb) and then a short WOD (8-15 mins). And, a class may end with a 10 minute chat (i.e. how much technicality is necessary for a beginner working on cleans.)
I brought up running (my goat) as part of the fitness plan. Wolf opines, “I see escapism in long distance cardio. You don’t have to be in your body to do this. You have to be IN YOUR BODY to do CrossFit. Running is not necessarily a technical movement. Olympic lifts require a serene focused mind. And, being self-aware has a lot more healthful benefits to it. Mindlessness versus mindfulness.
Thnx for the good info guys, Robb says it like it is and that ain’t easy, MUCH respect, bruddah!
–z–