I started CrossFit in Oct of 2017, absolutely love it. I'm 45 yrs old, and haven't done any lifting since the piddlin' stuff we did in high school. I'm not especially muscular either, I was a runner for 10 years, so the aerobic parts of it are easy for me. But I have to scale the lifting portions, and then there are some things I simply am not capable of doing (either not strong enough, flexible enough, or both). I cannot do overhead squats to save my life....I can snatch decent weight overhead, but I do not have the shoulder or ankle flexibility to squat with it.

There is NOTHING dangerous about CrossFit, rather you are dangerous to YOURSELF. If I tried to do 5 rounds of 15 power snatches at 125 pounds, I would destroy something in my shoulders.... I know better, so I don't do it! Not everybody does though, and there's peer pressure to perform. You've got to be man enough to walk away, to just laugh at yourself and say "Ain't no way I'm doing that." So I drop down the weight (honestly, maybe 75 lbs) and/or scale down the reps.

Now I had inguinal hernia surgery last September, most likely caused by something at CrossFit, but I never felt it or have a clue how/when it happened. I started back in Dec/Jan, and somehow busted that surgery open again (however, I think I did it dragging a deer out, not CrossFit). So I had surgery again in March. I started back in July, and went two months feeling really good, but in early September I started having pain on my surgery spot. It's not reinjured, we assume it's just chronic mesh pain. I haven't gone since the end of August, but I plan on starting back tomorrow (Nov 1st) and only doing the "conditioning/fitness" WODs for a while.

My doctor told me I would've had that hernia from anything, I had a "weak floor" and was susceptible to them anyway (very thin wall in my inguinal tube, usually a birth defect)