Crossfit For Athletes Good or Bad U Be The Judge

I'm going to preface my answer by saying that I have nothing against crossfit for the general fitness population. I know many police officers, fire fighters and weekend warriors who love the quick, challenging workouts associated with crossfit. I will also take Crossfit gyms over "carpet & chrome" health clubs any day of the week!!! But, with that being said, I am not a fan of Crossfit for high school, college or pro athletes. Here's why...
There are a bunch of reasons why crossfit isn't optimal for athletes, but my biggest problem with crossfit for athletes is that there is no specific focus to their workouts; it's a "Jack of all Trades" type of mentality. I've seen crossfit workouts that consisted of 20 meter sprints, 30-rep sets of snatches, high rep 'kipping' pull-ups, squat jumps and handstand push-ups. This type of training isn't optimal for athletes because athletes need to develop specific physical attributes to excel at their sport.

For example, football players need to develop maximal strength, explosive power, speed, agility, mobility, specific endurance, etc. BUT, the "catch" is that they don't need to develop every attribute equally. The key is knowing when, how much and how often to train each attribute. Dave Tate spoke about this topic at a seminar at my gym a few years back; he used a great analogy that I still love to use today. He compared training to going out to dinner. When you go out to dinner, you'll have a few appetizers, a main course and dessert. You don't go too crazy on the appetizers because you want to save room for your main course. You really stuff yourself on the main course because that's what you went out to dinner for in the first place. Then, you may or may not have dessert, depending if you have 'room' or not. Here's how the "dinner analogy" compares to training athletes... Let's take a football player/wide receiver as our example: a wide receiver should look at speed/agility as their "main course" in training. Maximal strength and mobility will probably be two of the "appetizers" for most NFL receivers. Hypertrophy training/bodybuilding methods may be "dessert" for some of the skinnier bastards in the NFL. For lineman, max strength and explosive power will most likely be the "main course" of their training, while sprinting and agility will be two of their appetizers, etc. Hopefully you get my point. Simply put, every athlete needs to focus on improving different attributes (during different times of the year) in order to excel at their sport. They must first define these attributes and then define the order of importance on their specific "training menu" during different phases of the training year.
The problem with crossfit is that EVERYTHING is the "main course" -- aerobic endurance, maximal strength, strength endurance, jump training, anaerobic circuits, Olympic lifting, etc. This is like going out to dinner and ordering steak, tofu, pancakes, sushi, ravioli's and cereal -- THERE'S JUST TOO MUCH RANDOM FOOD TO DIGEST!! And you know what happens when you eat too much random foods that don't mix well together? ...YOU PUKE!
Hmm, sounds kinda like a crossfit workout!?
The bottom line is that when you try and train for everything, you usually end up with nothing. If you want to get to a high level in any sport, you must focus your training on things that will specifically help you with the physical demands of your specific sport.

-Joe D.