How Safe Is CrossFit? (Compared to Big Box Gyms, other Group Fitness Classes, and traditional sports)

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By TravisHahn, CF-L2

I didn’t play a lot of mainstream sports competitively growing up. A couple years of play ground league soccer and track in middle school, martial arts as a kid, and that’s about it. It didn’t really catch my interest. What did though was skateboarding and BMX. Solo, alternative sports. I remember seeing Tony Hawk land the first 900, June 27, 1999, live at the X-Games and 12-year-old me lost his mind. But there was this perception of skateboarding and BMX back then: you were going to break a bone or damage your brain because it was so dangerous. Skateboarding and BMX were the OG’s of fail videos, but those of us in the sports knew otherwise. I found injury statistics (because nerd, duh) that showed that mainstream competitive sports were far more dangerous even with all their rules and safety equipment. Twenty-five-some-odd years later, I’m doing the same for CrossFit with this blog.

"It's better to be careful 100 times than to get killed once."

— Mark Twain

When I talk to folks about CrossFit or working out in general, there’s always this little bit from pg. 2 of the L-1 Training Guide under Methodology that I like to throw out.

“…safety, efficacy, and efficiency, the three most important and interdependent facets to evaluate any fitness program, can be supported only by measurable, observable, repeatable data.”

Let’s break that down. Safety, efficacy, and efficiency, as it applies to evaluating a training program, are like a three-legged stool. If a program is safe and effective, it’s not efficient i.e. it’s going take time to see results. If it’s safe and efficient, you’re probably not going to achieve the results you were hoping for in a short period of time. If it’s effective and efficient, it’s not safe. You can get the results you were hoping for in a short amount of time, but it’s highly likely you’ll get injured and/or not be able to maintain those fruits of your labor if you got them. On top of all of that is “measurable, observable, and repeatable.” If your workout program was a science experiment, then you should be getting roughly the same results every time if your control variables remain the same. That’s just proof that it works and wasn’t some fluke.

Sorry, I blacked out there for a second. I went a little too hard into my nerd.

"Working safely may get old, but so do those who practice it."

This blog is all about the safety aspect.

In a 2018 study published in the Journal of Sport Rehabilitation, and reviewed by the American Association ofOrthopedic Surgeons, Chris Durall, DPT found that

“injury rates with CrossFit were comparable to or lower than injury rates with more traditional forms of exercise. CrossFit was specifically compared to injury rates for Olympic lifting, distance running, military conditioning, track and field, rugby, and gymnastics.”

In 2024, the National Safety Council (NSC) reported that the listed sports and activities had the following number of injuries resulting in ER visits:

Exercise/Exercise Equipment*                                                                                     564,845

Basketball                                                                                                                      385,777

Football                                                                                                                          318,243

Skateboard/Scooters/Hoverboards                                                                             295,067

Soccer                                                                                                                            265,761

Swimming/Pool/Equipment                                                                                           182,344

Baseball/Softball                                                                                                            154,757

Lacrosse/Rugby/Misc. Ball Sports                                                                                   97,511

Golf                                                                                                                                   72,026

Volleyball                                                                                                                          65,540

Horseback Riding                                                                                                             48,521

*Exercise/Exercise equipment combines visits from big box gyms and at home gyms as well as groups like Orange Theory, F45, and CrossFit.

" I ain't gonna be no escape-goat"

-Karl Malone

Basketball is more injury prone than football?!?! While talking to one of my athletes, a former D2 basketball player in the 2000’s, he said something that stuck with me.

“Basketball is a contact sport; football is a violent one.”

While looking up more injury statistics, I realized how right he was. Let’s look at what it takes to play basketball: jumping, sprints, sudden changes in direction, and setting picks (when an offensive player without the ball stands still in a stationary position, creating a legal, temporary obstacle for a defender to run into) just to name a few. How many times have you seen highlight reels of players going for dunks, or blocking one, and having a mid-air collision that results in one or both players hitting the ground hard? Or when a pick is successful and a player slams into another one coming to a sudden dead stop in the process?

Football wasn’t far behind, but what it has more of was concussions. Does the movie Concussion with Will Smith ring a bell? If you haven’t seen it, it’s a dramatization of the true story of forensic pathologist, Dr. Bennet Omalu, his discovery of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in American football players, and the resistance he faced when presenting his findings.

“It took about 15 years from Dr. Bennet Omalu's discovery of CTE in2002 for the NFL to publicly acknowledge the link between football and CTE.The NFL officially acknowledged this link in March 2016, seven years after their initial 2009 public acknowledgement of the broader connection between concussions and long-term neurological effects.”

"I asked my CrossFit coach for a hug, and they told me to do 20 burpees"

What about CrossFit though? This is a CrossFit blog on a CrossFit gym’s website after all. How safe is CrossFit? Well, that depends on several very important factors.

In the National Institute of Health’s National Library of Medicine I came across a January 2023 article titled “Risk Factors for Injury in CrossFit^®—A RetrospectiveAnalysis.” A questionnaire was given to 424 CrossFitters in Poland asking about 4 different topics: characteristics of the sample group, training routine, injuries, and information about environment. Roughly 48% said they'd had at least one injury in their ENTIRE training history. Men were more likely to have injuries over women. The most common injuries in the study being shoulder joint and lumbar spine.

“An increase in the number of training sessions per week did not increase the incidence of injuries… The most common risk factors for injury in the CrossFit^® training process include, in particular: gender, training experience, and length of training sessions. Proper warm-up including isometric exercises and training conducted without accompanying pain symptoms reduces the risk of injury.”

"Surely you can't be serious?" "I am serious. And don't call me Shirley."

‍- Leslie Nielsen, Airplane

Seriously, how safe is CrossFit? Fairly safe so long as you do the following:

Þ  Take time to warm up utilizing a general warm-up to get your muscles and tendons ready for what you’re about to do. Then move onto a specific warm up that focuses on the muscles that are going to be used and the movements that are going to be executed.

Þ  Don’t workout injured. There’s a difference between being injured and being sore. If you’re sore, take extra time to get warm and loosen up. Instead of operating at high intensity on those days, reel it in and go light. This isn’t Oprah. We’re not giving away free cars.

Þ  Practice good form and technique. Perfect practice makes perfect execution and damn good sense. During a workout, as a trainer I/we expect to see your form breakdown TO A DEGREE due to fatigue. Every rep during the WOD shouldn’t be perfect. If it is, you need to increase the intensity. If every rep is trash, that’s covered in the next two.

Þ  Be coachable. Your coach is there to help you get stronger and faster while also reducing the likelihood of injury. If your form is atrocious, your coach should be helping you correct or scale the movement, and you should be listening and asking questions. We shoot videos of you to help you get better,  not just so you/we can post it to the ‘Gram.

Þ  Leave your ego at the door. Just because you can clean 250 lbs for reps, doesn’t mean you should (unless you’re able to adhere to the prescribed stimulus, then you do you, boo). If you’re supposed to get 5+rounds and halfway in you’re just completing the first round because you didn’t want to scale, “You done messed up A-A-Ron!” There’s nothing wrong with scaling.

My name is Travis and sometimes I scale the workout.

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We listen and we don’t judge.

References and Further Reading:

Orthopaedic Injuries in Recreational Sports: HowDoes CrossFit Compare to Traditional Forms of Exercise?

https://www.aaos.org/aaosnow/2023/jun/clinical/clinical03/

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Sports and Recreational Injuries

https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/sports-and-recreational-injuries/

Risk Factors for Injury in CrossFit^®—A Retrospective Analysis

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9916303/

CrossFit L-1Training Guide

https://library.crossfit.com/free/pdf/CFJ_English_Level1_TrainingGuide.pdf

Postmortem Autopsy-Confirmation of Antemortem [F-18]FDDNP-PET Scans in a Football Player With Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.

https://escholarship.org/content/qt7rd3h3g7/qt7rd3h3g7.pdf?t=p0m0y6

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Bennet Omalu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennet_Omalu

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