Crossfit and Back Pain

In this episode, Rob Crowley Chiropractor and CrossFit Competitor talks about the value of CrossFit as both a fitness methodology and a competitive sport. He shares what it means to an individual who trains in CrossFit in addition to their working week and how professional CrossFit elite athletes work towards their goals and how exposure to movement and load is the key to building resilience, strength and endurance. Rob reflects and shares great advice from all angles - as a chiropractor, physiologist, CrossFit competitor and CrossFit coach. Cross fit can be hard to define and this is a great opportunity to understand more about how and why CrossFit continues to grow in popularity year on year.   KEY TAKEAWAYS Load, movement and variety of exercise is very important to decrease back pain and keep people healthy. CrossFit is designed to be constantly varying functional activity performed at high intensity across times and domains. CrossFit has moved from the domain of athletes to being within the reach of the average person and this brings unique challenges for those individuals in terms of mobility and what they can achieve early on. The ability to coach complex and varying movements is about scaling for the differing abilities and experience. You need to understand the phases and stages of each lift to successfully build the necessary skills. There is a difference between CrossFit as a fitness methodology and CrossFit as a competition sport. In CrossFit, there is a paradox with movements where your lower back needs to be very stable such as weight lifting but there are also gymnastic movements that require the lower back to be very mobile and they might be in the same workout. The same treatments work with athletes and the average person but often the average person doesn’t feel they need the level of care an athlete has. Bodies aren’t fragile there isn’t a bad movement it’s having the strength, endurance and skill to perform the movement.   BEST MOMENTS ‘I’ve never avoided loading my body and over the years this is what has made me resilient’ ‘We need to not make people afraid of lifting things it’s what we are designed to do’ ‘A CrossFit workout will always feel about the same, the amount you feel f#cked afterwards will change as you get fitter and recover quicker’   VALUABLE RESOURCES The Back Pain PodcastFree Sciatica guide: www.thebackpainpodcast.com  Gain Recovery website   ABOUT THE HOSTS Dave ElliotDave is the owner of Advanced Chiropractic, a chain of Chiropractic and massage therapy clinics in Essex, UK. Dave still sees patients during the week but has been working hard to talk to as many experts in the field of back pain as possible to help distil all the information and bring it to you in this awesome podcast. You can find Dave on any of the Advanced Chiropractic social media platforms, or you can contact him @ [email protected] if you have any questions for him.-Instagram   Rob BeavenRob owns and runs a multidisciplinary clinic, The Dyer St Clinic in Cirencester Gloucestershire. His team of Chiropractors, Physiotherapists, Osteopaths, Doctors and podiatrists all collaborate on thousands of back pain patients every year. Alongside Dave, he has worked hard to bring to the table experts across all industries to give you the low down on back pain, with steps you can implement today to start feeling better.-Instagram -Twitter CONTACT METHOD Instagram Twitter Facebook [email protected]  Support the show: https://thebackpainpodcast.com