Does Crossfit Cause Injuries?

Ok here is why I asked this. My squad does alot of Crossfit and we found a so called “Crossfit” gym. Well we went there and they informed us that they were a MEF gym and that they despise Crossfit and are trying to have it banned on FT Bliss.

They are trying to say that Crossfit causes overtraining injuries and only works one plane of motion during the workout. Well we disagree with this and I was hoping if someone could hook me up with medical articles and workout journals that support Crossfit.

Any training can cause injuries. However, many people argue that a Crossfit workout can be more injury prone than others. I think this is mainly due to the fact that their workouts can have you doing things such as deadlifts for reps immediately after a 1 mile run. The fatigue from the run can wreck havoc on your DL form making you more likely to get injured.

I think as long as you know your limits and know how to maintain proper form injury really shouldn’t be an issue. Crossfit won’t get you big and jacked or freakishly strong but it will get you in pretty damn good shape. I live in your area and I know that there are a few Crossfit gyms on the west side of EP, Im not military so Im not sure about on base.

Oh and there was a pretty good article published awhile back on this site titled “The Truth About Crossfit,” you might wanna check it out.

Yeah I know about the Crossfit gyms in El Paso. We are trying to do it during the work day on Ft Bliss. The MEF gym has everything we need and isnt crowded like Soto Gym is in the afternoon with people screwing off. But like I said the MEF gym wants us to do MEF. My old unit was one of the test units to test MEF and most of our run times got worse. Yes people got stronger but it was just 12 exercises you did one after the other for 1 hour. It was just a smoke session and I thought I didnt benefit at all from it.

MEF is more geared toward performance training (balance, agility, power, etc.)and Crossfit is more fitness based (weight loss, cardiorespiratory fitness, etc). MEF is a solid concept for military training but I have never seen applied so its hard for me to judge it. In theory you should have better results with MEF since its “functional training for soldiers” but I think a crappy coach can screw that up. If you already tried MEF and experienced poor results I would suggest a new MEF gym and coach (a C.S.C.S not personal trainer) or giving Crossfit a shot.

What it is MEF?