In Part 1, we addressed the opening rounds of a popular fitness influencer’s critique of CrossFit, covering his claims about endurance athletes, work capacity, isolation exercises, and mixed-modality training. If you have not read Part 1, start there.
In Part 2, we get into the remaining criticisms. These are the ones that are harder to dismiss as simple misunderstandings. Some of them reflect genuinely widespread misconceptions about CrossFit. All of them deserve a direct answer.
Are the Olympic Lifts Too Risky for CrossFit Athletes?
The claim: Olympic lifts were never meant to be done for high reps, should not be performed under fatigue, and carry excessive injury risk for the general population.
That’s a load of crap.
First, the history. Coaches like Mike Bergner and Jim Schmitz, who have trained Olympic lifters at the highest level in the world, have long advocated for high-rep Olympic lifting as a legitimate and valuable training tool. This is not a CrossFit invention; it is a well-established methodology with deep roots in American and international weightlifting history. The criticism that high-rep Olympic lifting is inherently dangerous or outside the tradition of the sport simply does not hold up against the historical record.
Second, the fatigue argument. The critic in question is a former Army Ranger. He understands better than most what happens to human performance under extreme fatigue. In that context, the argument that complex skills should only be trained in fresh, controlled conditions is worth examining carefully. No sport in the world lets its athletes perform to a lower technical standard once they get tired. Every sport trains the skill of maintaining technique under fatigue, because that is the only way to develop the capacity to do it, and the only way to win.
CrossFit is no different. When mechanics degrade during a workout, coaches intervene. Load gets reduced. Speed gets managed. Volume gets adjusted. That is the coaching process. The goal is never to grind through broken movement. The goal is to push the threshold of clean movement under increasing fatigue, which is exactly what conditioning means.
Third, the coach’s convenient example, an athlete going from a PVC pipe to near-maximal loads in four days, is a coaching failure, not a CrossFit failure. It does not reflect what CrossFit teaches, how CrossFit coaches, or what the program prescribes. Mechanics and consistency before intensity is not a footnote in CrossFit’s methodology; it is a founding principle. Such anecdotes are not a critique of the program. They are a critique of individual coaching decisions. The use of such stories by our critics makes us question how authentic these scenarios really are.
We have found strength training, complex movement patterns, and intensity are the variables that matter most for long-term health outcomes, capacity and quality of life. CrossFit built a program around those variables 25 years ago. A 75-year-old doing a dumbbell power clean variation is not a liability. That athlete is jumping, landing, absorbing external load, and coordinating hips and arms in a pattern that has direct carryover to every physical challenge life presents. That is the point. That has always been the point.
Does CrossFit Look Down on Other Athletes?
The claim: CrossFit athletes think that if you are not doing CrossFit, you are not really getting fit.
CrossFit athletes are proud of what they do. They have earned that pride. The program produces extraordinary results across a wide range of populations, ages, and ability levels, and the community built around it is among the most welcoming in fitness. CrossFit athletes routinely celebrate powerlifters, Olympic lifters, gymnasts, and endurance athletes. Many CrossFit affiliates have hosted athletes from those communities and helped them address the gaps in their fitness while respecting what they had already built.
Is there occasional tribalism? Sure. Every community has it. But characterizing CrossFit culture as exclusionary or arrogant misses what is actually happening on the floors of affiliates around the world every day. These are gyms full of regular people doing remarkable things because someone believed in their capacity to do them and built a program that delivered on that belief.
There is also something worth naming directly: People are far more capable than the fitness industry has traditionally given them credit for. One of CrossFit’s most important contributions is refusing to treat everyday athletes as fragile. The assumption that regular people cannot learn the snatch, cannot get inverted, or cannot handle complex loading under fatigue is both insulting and demonstrably wrong. The evidence is in every affiliate gym in the world, every day of the week. Damn right, we’re proud.
What CrossFit Actually Means by ‘Intensity’
The claim: CrossFit defines intensity as how hard you are working, how much you are sweating, and how destroyed you feel afterward.
This is perhaps the most frustrating inaccuracy in the entire critique, because it is the exact opposite of what CrossFit actually teaches.
CrossFit defines intensity as power output. Power is the rate at which work is performed: force multiplied by distance divided by time. That is a physics definition, not a feeling. An athlete can be sweating through their shirt and emotionally spent and still be producing low power output. Another athlete can look relatively composed and be producing twice the power. The former is not more intense in the CrossFit sense. The latter is.
This definition matters because it is measurable. CrossFit’s insistence on tracking loads, times, reps, and distances is directly tied to this definition of intensity. If you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it. Intensity is power, and power is something you can observe, record, and improve over time. Yelling, tearing up your hands, and lying on the floor after a workout are not measures of intensity. They may be after-effects, but they are not what produce results. Intensity is.
Confusing perceived exertion with actual output is a fundamental misunderstanding of the program. A CrossFit Level 1 Certificate Course would clear this up in about 45 minutes, which is precisely the invitation we would extend to any critic willing to actually study what they are critiquing.
The Bigger Point
CrossFit is not perfect and has never claimed to be. The program has evolved over 25 years, incorporating new research, refining methodologies, and continuously improving its coaching education. If something genuinely increases work capacity across broad time and modal domains, it belongs in the program. That openness to refinement is a feature, not a weakness.
What CrossFit will not do is accept criticism that is built on misreading, misquoting, or simply not doing the homework. The foundational literature is publicly available. The Level 1 curriculum is rigorous and transparent. The results speak across millions of athletes over decades.
Do the reading. Take the course. Train the program honestly for a year. Then offer a critique. That critique will be worth having.
Until then, the fundamentals stand. Move well. Train hard. Define fitness precisely. Earn the intensity. And do not mistake clicks for credibility.
About the Author
Stephane Rochet is a Senior Content Writer for CrossFit. He has worked as a Flowmaster on the CrossFit Seminar Staff and has over 15 years of experience as a collegiate/tactical strength and conditioning coach. He is a Certified CrossFit Trainer (CF-L3) and trains athletes in his garage.