Re-re-test, and some Legal News

JT Scott | 12/08/2019 | 6

I don’t often talk about CrossFit HQ’s lawsuits, but this one has been lingering for a long time.

If you’ve got friends and have mentioned that you do CrossFit, you’ve probably heard someone say “oh gee I hear that’s really dangerous”. And yes, CrossFit can kill you – it’s in the waiver. But on the whole, CrossFit is actually less dangerous than running as an exercise regime: our injury rates are lower.

The one example of risk that people most frequently cite is a study from back in 2013 that asserted alarmingly high injury rates in CrossFit participants. The rates were so high, in fact, that CF HQ reached out to the box owner and asked just what the hell was going on over there. It turned out that the injuries reported in the study never actually happened. It was a falsified study.

Looking deeper, it got worse. The study was funded by the NSCA – the National Strength and Conditioning Association – whose main business is selling trainings and certifications to personal trainers. CrossFit HQ took them to court, and in 2016 they won… with the court finding among other things that “the NSCA fabricated the injury data and published them in [the Journal of Strength and Conditioning]…with the intention of protecting its market share in the fitness industry and diminishing the burgeoning popularity of the CrossFit program”.

That’s pretty bad. And it got worse still. In the ongoing appeals processes and countersuits, the court just threw NSCA out and ordered $4 Million in legal fees be paid by NSCA to CrossFit HQ because, in short, NSCA had been lying so much throughout the entire court process that it dragged out the case and made it impossible to believe any claims they made. They found yet again that “the NSCA’s unfair competition and false advertising—including its false statements in the Devor Article, Erratum, Hak Study, various TSAC Report articles about CrossFit, content promoted at NSCA events referencing CrossFit-related injuries, and republication of these false statements—have deceived and continue to deceive the public and consumers regarding the safety and effectiveness of CrossFit training” – and further that those actions were “willful and malicious”. In the end, the court said “Having carefully considered the record, ‘the severity andfrequency of defendant’s bad faith misconduct is as egregious as anything this Court has ever seen or read in any of the cases.'”

The court case is a good read (if you’re a weirdo like me who likes reading court cases). You can find it at https://morningchalkup.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/2019-12-04-394-Order-on-CrossFit-Renewed-Motion-for-Terminating-Sanctions-copy.pdf if you want to read all 49 pages of it.

But then again, maybe instead just take away from all this that CrossFit isn’t dangerous – and that much of that fearmongering and bad reputation was the result of a rival personal-trainer certification company trying to undermine the thing that has brought all of you so much personal success and joy over the past decade.

Speaking of personal success, we’re retesting the cycle’s workout today. In fact, it’s a re-retest, since this workout was originally CF Open 13.4. Let’s measure how much progress we’ve made in the past few weeks. Good luck!

STRENGTH:
Clean & Jerk x3

WOD:
CF Open 13.4
AMRAP 7
3 Clean & Jerk (135/95)
3 Toes-to-bar
6 C&J
6 TTB
9 C&J
9 TTB
…etc…