[User23]

The fundamentals of Crossfit are entirely sound. A warmup followed by some subset of bodyweight exercises, calisthenics, rowing, running, climbing, and (olympic) weightlifting is a completely reasonable fitness regimen. Being sensible is a matter of leveling the workout to your own particular circumstances: age and overall fitness being the two biggest factors.

But yeah I've also seen the videos on youtube of people doing heavy barbell back squats on a bosu ball and similar, to use the technical term, stupid shit that will get you hurt.

Mark Rippetoe has one of the better criticisms of CrossFit: it's just an exercise program, not a training program. Proof is that the athletes that compete in and win the Crossfit games don't actually do Crossfit to prepare, they have specific training regimens for those games.

[retiredcoder]

Being sensible is not having a WoD one size fits all. It oversimplifies too much IMO.

People, specially who are new, haven’t gotten serious injuries, or just don’t understand how exercise can get you high, tend to fall in the WoD trap from my observations.

There have been a great mindset change with CrossFit in terms of sharing good knowledge, welcoming new members no matter their level and mixing everyone together but still everyday seems to be race day in CrossFit.

[User23]

I completely agree. Any Crossfit gym where the coach doesn't enthusiastically support scaling down from the "Rx" is one nobody should go to. As I've said elsewhere in this thread I don't do Crossfit (I'm lazy and I hate cardio so I powerlift), but I know many people that do and their coaches have been entirely supportive of proper scaling to ability, with an eye toward progression of course.