Your daily outdoor news bulletin for September 25, the day the Little Rock Nine were escorted by armed guard into Little Rock High School in 1959:
CrossFit’s Dirty Little Secret: Rhabdomyolysis
CrossFit is one of those things I will never understand. I get fitness , I get exertion, I get positive reinforcement and pushing yourself and all that. I get the point of CrossFit. What I don’t get is the big hubbub over what is essentially a workout routine. If you bring up CrossFit with, well pretty much anybody, the reactions are blunt and often accompanied by the red face usually reserved for the gym. WTF? Why do people care so much about how other people exercise? Haters call it a cult, CrossFitters call anyone who criticizes it a hater, and the cycle repeats itself. Unfortunately, this is the American Way, and you could take the above statement and apply it to any number of things – gay marriage, PEDs, racism, Miley Cyrus, and that’s just a quick scan of the Twitter feed. The latest argument against CrossFit comes from Eric Robertson on Medium.com in an essay titled, “CrossFit’s Dirty Little Secret.” Robertson is a professor of physical therapy at Regis University, among other things, and states the “dirty secret” of CrossFit is a condition called Rhabdomyolysis, which is essentially working your muscles so hard they explode. Well, rather, the cells that make up your muscles explode, causing permanent damage, amputation, and even death. He claims the competitive nature and culture of CrossFit causes people to blow past what their bodies can handle and put them on the path to “Rhabdo.” He makes a compelling argument, even throwing in some stuff about peeing yourself, but I’m not sure this is the biggest problem in the world. Plus, he doesn’t really have any numbers proving high rates of Rhabdo in CrossFit gyms, just that a lot of CrossFit people are aware that it exists. Weak argument. Then, if you read most of the comments on the article, the classic CrossFit, “you don’t know what we’re about so shut up” attitude is all over the place. Why do people act like this?
I have never done CrossFit, but I can tell you one thing for certain: I will never, ever, ever, ever, exercise hard enough that my muscle tissue explodes. That’s for amateurs.
Here is a counterpoint from HuffingtonPost contributor Ericka Andersen. Spoiler alert! Here is the last line of the piece (emphasis her’s): “Anyway, haters, stop blaming CrossFit for your problems and take some responsibility for your bad decisions.” So, there you go.
Virginia Trout Stocking Shakeup in the Works
The Virginia trout stocking program is under review, and the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries wants your input. There are a myriad of problems with the current system, but most people come down on one side or the other – I’ll classify them as fly fishermen vs. bait fishermen to make it easier. Fly fishermen want less stocking in native streams, less info on when and what streams are being stocked, they want more catch and release, they want an opening day. Bait fishermen want more fish, bigger fish, more fish, more info on when and where they are stocked, and more fish. These are the guys that follow the stocking trucks around and pull out the biggest fish with panther martins before the last fish hits the water. The DGIF is quick to point out that they do not think the system is broken, but that it can be improved. One of the biggest issues is the bottom line: the DGIF sold 100,000 trout licenses 20 years ago, but only 60,000 last year. This is a disturbing trend. The formal process of evaluating and implementing improvements will take three years – remember this is an arm of the government – and the DGIF will be assisted in their research by Virginia Tech advanced degree fisheries students Vic DiCenzo and Amanda Hyman under their professor Steve McMullin.
There will be eight public meetings/hearings on the trout stocking program throughout October and all Virginia anglers are urged to attend and voice their opinion. The first is in Wytheville on September 30th. For a full list of dates, times, and locations of the meetings, click here to see the press release.
Water War Between Georgia and South Carolina
Dividing states with rivers probably seemed like a good idea in the 18th and 19th centuries, but today it is causing all sorts of problems for state governments, especially in the Southeast. Georgia and South Carolina are currently at odds over the Savannah River that divides their state, and the impact of any decisions will have long lasting affects on industry, drinking water, and utilities for decades. Water demands have skyrocketed in both states over the past several years from a range of sources – nuclear plants, expanding industry, and sea water encroaching on coastal communities’ aquifers being the most prevalent. And then there are the environmental and ecosystem issue raised by basically running the river dry. The good news is that the governors of both states – Nathan Deal of Georgia and Nikki Haley of South Carolina – are sitting down to talk about solutions to the water crisis in attempts to avoid getting caught up in the court system, which could then take years to resolve.
This article on GreenvilleOnline.com does a great job of laying out the issues from both sides.
