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Crossfit for bodybuilding [Article]

Posted by Pascal Landshoeft

Sep 4, 2019 9:00:00 AM

Crossfit for bodybuilding

Crossfit for bodybuilding

 
CrossFit might not be the ideal pairing with bodybuilding to make you successful. Better accessory work would be around low-risk cardio to shed your fat for competition or improving your cooking skills.
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What is your goal 

 
Before we go into the details of whether These different forms of sports activity are effective for you it is important to take a step back and assess your goals. Ask yourself: 
 
  • Why do you want to train? 
  • Why do you want to change? 
  • What happens when you do? 
  • What happens if you don’t? 
 
To be successful with your training, or almost anything in life, one of the key components is consistency. It is very hard to be consistent if you don’t know what you want and why. A bit of reflection seldom hurts and often comes short in our fast-paced, routines lives. So, take off the blinkers and take a look around. Why are you doing all of this? 
 
What helps me for reflections and staying on trick are my self journal and scribe notebook. They are the best tools to track my progress against a goal and check whether I am making headway. They also constantly remind me of the good things in life and what actually went well.
 
  • Do you keep a journal?
  • Does it help you to think positive and emphasize what works in your life? 
All of this will help tremendously to determine whether CrossFit, Bodybuilding, Powerlifting or other sports are the right choices to make you successful and happy. 
 

Crossfit

 
CrossFit has been on the rise lately. In its core, it is an extreme form of circuit training that utilizes barbells, pull-ups and conditioning training. It has its roots in military training and has the aim to create the “fittest people on earth”. This means that CrossFit creates bodies and physiques which are able to adapt physically to almost anything you throw at them. More or less the ideal definition of what you want in a front line soldier. Not specialized in one thing and in the top 5% of fitness of anything they have to do. 
 
What separates CrossFit from many other things in the gym is that you will be always be competing. Either against the clock or others. This introduces a high grade of intensity into the training. Based on this it yields results. 
 
What else to consider for CrossFit 
 
 

Pros of Crossfit

 
The big pros of CrossFit are that it has a high focus on intensity and that almost everything is measured. You will hardly find a workout that does not have any benchmarks attached to it you want to strive for. This makes it great if you are competitive or to show results over a short period of time. Many other exercise regimens leave you a lot of freedom to take rest, speed up or slow down. Not so with CrossFit. Crossfit is always gogogo. 
 

Cons of Crossfit

 
The negative sites of CrossFit are the Jack of all trades approach and the high intensity even for beginners. For world-class athletes, CrossFit might not be ideal as you spent very little time to perfect one thing in favor of being good at everything. This will get you to the top 5% in the world in almost any sports activity, but not into the top 1% where Olympic medals are won. The lack of specificity of CrossFit can come as a disadvantage for athletes who want to compete at the highest levels. They are better off looking for more specific supporting exercises to their sport to support their performance. 
 
For beginners, the quick emphasis on high intensity can become an injury risk and demotivating. If you have issues and don’t understand the movement patterns yet the last thing you want to do is to put the pressure on by creating a competitive environment. You need a very good coach to adjust for this and an individual who is willing to accept the coaching. Both are rare specimen and this is why CrossFit can be very dangerous especially for beginners. Combine this with Olympic lifting, which CrossFit does, and you have created a high risk for injury. 
 

Alternatives to Crossfit

 
Good alternatives to CrossFit are
 
 
If you like competing against the clock or for repetitions to keep your mind sharp and the sweat pouring you can opt for circuit training without added resistance. Only use your bodyweight and try not to cheat your way into more repetitions by using bad form. Examples of this kind of training would be bikini body mommy or a routine like 100 push-ups, 100 pull-ups, 100 squats, and a 10km run. Of course, this one is a more extreme example, but you get the idea. 
 
If you like working with a barbell you can opt for powerlifting instead of the many Olympic weightlifting components in CrossFit. The bench press, squat, and deadlift are easier to master than the clean and jerk, snatch and front squat you do in CrossFit. With this, you can work with a barbell without having to go too technical. 
 
If you want to have more stamina and work on your lunges than running is a good, cheap alternative to CrossFit. Start with a couch to 5k program and work your way from there. Hal Higdon has some excellent programs you can follow to improve. 
 

Bodybuilding

 
Bodybuilding has been made really famous by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the golden age of the sport. These were the sixties and seventies. Since then the industry has gotten a bit of a bad reputation because of steroids. Still, bodybuilding is a very popular sport all over the world and has many followers. 
 
The main goal in bodybuilding is to pack on the most amount of muscle onto your body in an aesthetically pleasing way. Here is where it gets a little fuzzy and always depends on the federation you are competing in and who is judging the event. Generally speaking aesthetically pleasing means in the context of bodybuilding that your body shape is symmetrical and you can see the Definition of the muscles. This is usually achieved by sculpting the body with different exercises and depleting it from water. Extreme dieting is, therefore, a steady component of bodybuilding as athletes go from the extreme of adding as much body mass as possible to the other extreme of depleting it of water and cutting fat to reach stage readiness. 
 
What else to consider for bodybuilding:
 
 

Pros of Bodybuilding

 
Bodybuilding will teach you a lot about the anatomy and functions of the body. As you have to know the names of the muscles you need to develop and show it has a higher emphasis on actually studying how the body works compared to CrossFit and powerlifting where you mostly focus on the performance rather than how the performance changes your body. The same goes for dieting and knowing more about foods. Bodybuilders are also more likely to develop skills in cooking as it is more likely that they want to have full control of their body. 
 

Cons of Bodybuilding

 
A big con of bodybuilding is that it is one of the sports where it is most apparent that success can not be obtained without using steroids. This makes it expensive and dangerous to your health, if you buy into the “any means necessary” mindset. Anything that involves injecting yourself on a regular basis for no apparent medical reason comes with a lot of health risks attached. Bodybuilders are also known for not being the best when it comes to endurance training. So if you want to run a marathon, maybe don’t go down this route. 
 

Alternatives to Bodybuilding 

 
Some alternatives to bodybuilding are 
 
 
Calisthenics is a relatively new trend which uses pull up bars and other machinery that you would usually find in a playground or outdoor exercise ground access to the public. The physiques some of these athletes achieve are as impressive as the ones from bodybuilding, just not as big. 
 
Gymnastics can be considered the classic form of calisthenics. The sport is Olympic and there are many different disciplines you can try. The physiques which are produced by this sport are also well defined and balanced and usually pleasing to the eye. 
 
Ballet, even though a more surprising addition to this list or dancing in general also sculpts some very impressive physiques. An added bonus to dancers is that they can go for hours. 
 

Crossfit for bodybuilding

 
CrossFit might not be an ideal pairing for anyone who wants to better at bodybuilding. The injury risk is unnecessarily high for the gains you will make. Your conditioning to shed the necessary pounds can be done on a treadmill or air bike. There is no need to do the explosive movements from CrossFit which might tear one of your precious muscles so you can’t compete. Better to invest the spare time into optimizing your kitchen game. 
 
 

Topics: Crossfit