I am the type of person who respects anyone who is in the gym that has goals and works his or her ass off. Now, most of the people I have seen in gyms doing CrossFit workouts do work hard. That is not my issue. What I don’t understand is why they CrossFit. What is the appeal and what are their goals and motivation?
I picked up bodybuilding when I was a teenager for the obvious reason that most any teenager would pick up weights: to get bigger muscles so that girls would notice me. You can bash on this all you want, but there really isn't any other reason a teenager would pick up weights and want big muscles. Okay, I may have also wanted to get stronger for baseball and football, but if I am being honest, it was secondary to wanting to be noticed by the girls. (A very distant second, I might add).
If you are a powerlifter or strongman competitor, you likely started lifting weights to get stronger and bigger. There is something very machismo about being big and strong—much more so than being muscular and ripped with shaved legs...and walking around while posing all of the time. I get the appeal of powerlifting, strongman, and bodybuilding because it seems obvious. You “wear” your results, so to speak, and it feeds the ego, as I think most of you would agree.
With CrossFit, however, you don’t “wear” anything (at least not that I can tell). I mean no disrespect by saying this, as I am simply calling a spade a spade, but the large majority of CrossFitters in gyms around the country simply do not look any different than an average person walking down the street. Sure, they are almost always pretty lean, but nothing anyone would consider ripped. Nor do they often sport a physique that stands out from the crowd. I have yet to see someone do a box jump in the gym with muscular legs, and anyone I see doing one of those shitty, CrossFit-kicking-chin things never has a back worth noting. What gives?
Now, clearly there are exceptions, and I get that. I personally know some CrossFitters who compete, and some of them are in incredible shape. You would clearly know that they workout. These are the ones, though, that used to be bodybuilders and have crossed over to CrossFit. They had so much muscle to begin with that not even CrossFit nutrition and training could eat it all up. But again, these people are the exceptions. The large majority of people who CrossFit would not get noticed for having a great physique. So what is the draw?
It can’t be health. The majority of people doing CrossFit are young. My best guess, that is without seeing accurate statistics, is that the average age would be something like twenty-two to thirty-five. This age group is rarely concerned about their health, and that can be backed up by the low percentage of people in that age group who think they need health insurance. Oftentimes, people in their twenties feel quite invincible and haven’t even considered their mortality, let alone having it weigh on them enough to make them go to the gym four or five times a week to do shitty chin-ups and some of the worst overhead pressing I have seen in my forty-four years.
As I noted before, it clearly isn't to build a physique that stands out, either. There just isn't much muscle being built by using such light weights and so much “cardio”-type training. I would actually classify it as more of a circuit-type of training than anything. Think about it. You didn't see people with big muscles doing circuit training in the 90s, right? (This was when circuit training was more popular). I do understand that not everyone wants to be big, strong, muscular, and ripped. It’s just that with the time invested in the gym and working so hard, I don’t see the pay off.
For a while, I wondered if it was the competitive aspect of it. People who aren’t terribly strong, big, or muscular can compete with others in a physical competition to see who has the best balance of cardiovascular fitness and strength (and I use both terms very loosely). This would make sense for the competitors that do CrossFit, right? However, the large majority of CrossFitters are not doing it to compete, so it brings me back to the same question: What is the motivation to CrossFit?
The best answer I can come up with is that most people have shifted away from wanting to look muscular and strong. I think most people want a look that is in shape but that doesn’t stand out too much or that doesn't take too much effort to maintain. Building muscle and getting stronger takes a lot of work—we all know that. With CrossFit, though, all you really have to do is go into the gym and work as hard as you feel like working that day, and you walk out feeling satisfied that you “got a good workout in.” If you feel off that day, you can choose not to work as hard. Obviously with bodybuilding and powerlifting, there is far more structure and the expectations are much higher for each individual workout. This is the best I can do.
Whether I or anyone else likes CrossFit or understands it, it is growing incredibly fast. If it isn't the most popular way to work out in most mainstream gyms today, it soon will be at its current pace of growth. I don’t get the appeal, but I am a megalomaniacal bodybuilder who likes to be more muscular than the average person and to be noticed. I admit it. The more CrossFitters out there, the less bodybuilders and powerlifters. Maybe, just maybe, not everyone in the world is like me...and the more I think about it, thank GOD.
