Why doing high intensity Crossfit for fat loss is a bad idea

So you’ve decided to drop a few pounds of fat (maybe more than just a few pounds) and want to combine it with Crossfit that’s going to include regular high intensity workouts or metcons (metabolic conditioning).

What does this means for you is that you’re going to be running a calorie deficit (you can’t drop body fat unless you’re actually eating less – unsure how to do this right? Read this) yet want to still be able to perform very high intensity activity at the same time.

This is quite a bad idea because your focus should be completely on dropping body fat for e.g. a four week period, then maintain that loss for another four weeks and then run another cycle again and keep rotating until you’re at the body fat you know you can maintain without much stress and excessive effort and not putting all your energy into workouts designed to improve your fitness or conditioning.

Dropping body fat is a stress on your body so it makes no sense at all to have this fire burning and then start another fire in your body through the overuse of high intensity metcons or conditioning sessions.

While running said deficit it’s normal to not feel like you have the same punch or energy in your workouts so trying to perform in sessions that will require a high output doing this time goes against the original goal. You need to and all trainers need to better manage expectations during this time as you can’t possibly think you’re going to get far fitter and stronger at a time when you’re eating less. This can be quite hard to do if you’re training in a crossfit facility so I suggest you let your coach know what’s going on in your body so he/she doesn’t think your slacking when you pull back in the metcon part of the sessions because that’s what you need to do on that day.

However, you can get fitter, stronger and leaner if you’re new to all this training and eating well lark but it’s far more sensible to run a deficit and combine that with a properly structured strength based program with metcons that don’t end up beating the living daylights out of you.

Instead I would structure your workouts so that you perform no more than 1-2 higher intensity sessions per week:-

This means that on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being lying in a pool of your own sweat and you need to be picked back off the floor, that your higher intensity sessions are an 8-9 out of 10 and no more.

On those days I would encourage the client to up their Carb intake along with those sessions or to consume the bulk of their required Carbs pre and post workout to fuel and refuel the higher intensity which will require more Carbs.

The basic message here is that during a fat loss phase (remember you’re NOT looking to run fat loss ALL the time as it’s physically and mentally draining) focus on dialing in your nutrition, doing your strength and mobility work and any conditioning work should be mainly focused on lower intensity sessions (5-8 out of 10) peppered with a limited amount of higher intensity metcons i.e. stop looking to smash yourself up every workout when your body is focused on a different task and goal. Your sweat is not always the best indicator of your progress. In the next 4 week cycle you can then make a bigger push on strength and conditioning.

Be more patient in your progress, know what your goal is during each phase and have a structured plan of action.