The Smart Nutrition Made Simple Show with Ben Brown 092_What CrossFit™ Got Wrong About Training and Nutrition with Elliott Schackne
If you asked me, I’d say that the exponential growth of CrossFit over the past 10 years has been overwhelmingly positive. It’s built communities that value health, it’s motivated women and men to lift weights and validated the benefits of lifting heavy weights, it’s created a fun level of competition within the group training sphere and without question, has tested the boundaries of what people are capable of if they commit to the process.
But for as many of its benefits, it has an equal amount of flaws: a high injury rate, incongruent program design and coaching methodology, high participant attrition, and unrealistic and dogmatic nutrition guidelines.
To highlight the pros and cons, I’d like to introduce you to Elliott Schackne. Elliott is a strength and physique coach, specializing in helping CrossFitters and trainers drop stubborn body fat, build muscle, and improve metabolism.
He has worked across the globe as an educator, public speaker, and coach helping people break through plateaus to improve performance, regain health, and simply look better naked.
As a former athlete, Elliott was a state-ranked junior tennis player in Florida, a Division 1 tennis and football player at the University of Connecticut, and a competitive CrossFitter.
In today’s episode, we discuss:
- The pros and cons of CrossFit, including what’s missing and why there is such a high rate of injury present
- The role of carbohydrates in performance and body composition improvement
- Why low carb diets are a recipe for disaster if you train hard
- How you should prioritize your training and nutrition vs. simply cutting calories
- The role of nutrient timing, specifically when to eat your carbs for optimal recovery and sleep
- How to structure your peri-workout nutrition and how CrossFit totally missed the boat on this one
As you’ll hear, Elliot is a battle-tested veteran of CrossFit and a highly respected strength coach and online trainer who is openminded and progressive enough to realize that if he wanted to continue to improve as an athlete, trainer, and coach, then he needed to move away from the standardized CrossFit approach. In doing so, he’s built a much more refined and effective way of working with clients to help them achieve their strength, performance, and body composition goals.
As always, if you love what you hear on this show, then do me a favor and subscribe, leave a positive rating and review and share this episode with a friend or loved one whom you think could benefit. AND, if you want to talk about working with me personally, I’d love to chat, just schedule your free nutrition strategy call over at www.bslnutrition.com/levelup