Sunday 11.01.09

“How many of you started Crossfit within the past six months?”

 The majority of people at Crossfit Level 1 certifications raise their hand when the presenter asks them this question.  We all know what this rate of growth means for Crossfit right now.  The number of affiliates is approaching 1500, and apparently growing at one percent per day. 

What percentage of the people who will be doing Crossfit ten years from now, are Crossfitters now?  Such talk of the future is surely guesswork, but let’s give it a shot.  Almost certainly, the vast majority of people who will be Crossfitters in 2019 are not Crossfitters now. Many future Crossfitters have not even heard the name Crossfit before. 

This trend has important implications for the way that we, as current Crossfitters, interact with people who haven’t yet kipped a pullup or squat cleaned a barbell.  Many people have noted that the longer you do Crossfit, the harder it is to relate to normal people.  I certainly have been guilty of only interacting with people remarkably similar to myself.  This insularity is a problem if we are to expand Crossfit into the vast population of people who have never done it, and in many cases do not regularly exercise at all. 

Sure, I have encouraged you to build your badass inner circle.  This does not mean, however, that you should cut yourself off from the less intensely Crossfit world.  Such isolation will greatly limit your ability to be a part of the Crossfit expansion.  The people who really need to train more are the ones who are the least likely to be currently interested in it.  The people you most need to reach out to are the ones you’re least likely to think of as the “Crossfit type.”

One of our athletes at Crossfit Monterey, Tom Hickey, gave Jacob and I some good advice last week.  Tom told us that we have been Crossfitting so long that we have forgotten what it’s like to walk into a Crossfit gym for the first time.  This is true, for myself at least.

In my time at Crossfit Monterey, I’ve realized that I cannot tell who is going to flourish as a Crossfitter and who is going to drop out or take the program less seriously.  A middle school teacher currently taking Body Pump classes may start Crossfit, train hard five days a week and double her strength in a few months.  On the other hand, I’ve seen more experienced athletes fail to thrive.  We expose their weaknesses and sometimes they find that they’d rather not struggle at the movements they suck at. 

You don’t know who is going to make an awesome Crossfitter either.  So how do you make future Crossfitters?  What has worked for you?  What hasn’t?   -CrossFit Monterey

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