My fitness program can beat up yours!!!

I found this on someone elses blog and really like it, so I decided to repost it. Enjoy!


I’m a fitness snob and I know it. I laugh at fitness infomercials, scoff at the gadgets and gizmos-a –plenty, condescendingly flip through fitness magazines. And I know I’m not alone, CrossFitters are known for our fitness snobbery (we like to call it “elite”). Besides our cultishness and unorthodox reverence to puke, it’s kind of our “rep”. The fitness industry is bulging with a seemingly infinite selection of programs, methods, beliefs, and products. Through goals, circumstance, and sometimes fate, dedicated fitness enthusiasts find their niche, hunker down, and trod up the slippery slope to the elusive pinnacle of fitness; each touting the virtues of their chosen path.


But in life and in fitness (What? Life and fitness aren’t synonymous?) - Haters gonna hate. You can’t throw around a term like “elite” without getting someone’s gold lame competition Speedos in a bunch. Bodybuilding is often considered the antithesis of CrossFit.

Rippetoe- “...bodybuilding is men on a stage in their underwear wearing brown paint showing other men their muscles. It is training for appearance only, and at the contest level requires a degree of vanity, narcissism, and self-absorption that I find distasteful and odd.”

True, bodybuilding vs. Crossfit, is kind of the east coast vs. west coast hip-hop rivalry of the fitness world (although currently with a lower death count…currently), bodybuilding is not the candy-center of our gripe-flavored lollypop. We have a strong distaste for every non-functional cardio-machine filled, leg-pressing, bi-cep curling, aerobic pelvic thrusting (ok this one is marginally functional) inch of the globo gym. And we’re not afraid to voice it. Most CrossFitters are under the assumption that anyone who trains any other way is only doing so out of ignorance. We badger every jogger, bodybuilder, yogi, Zumba enthusiast (Zumbiast?), and spout the gospel of CrossFit. We consider ourselves the missionaries of fitness, trying to save the WOD-less heathens from the eternal damnation of elliptical machines, chest and back days, and non-timed 5-mile-runs. Sometimes we are successful, we convert someone from the evils of non-functional fitness. But many times we are not, and that’s ok. Many in the bodybuilding community are not uninformed; they acknowledge the benefits of CrossFit. They don’t dispute it’s an effective method of training, and the outcome is a functionally fit physique. They just don’t want it. They like we being big. Period. Functional or not, it’s their standard of beauty. As hard as it for us to wrap our CrossFit minds around and it’s really easy to make fun of, lets give them some credit; bodybuilding isn’t easy. It takes a lot of time, dedication, and ferocious dieting. Look at yoga, yeah the concepts can be a little too Namaste for some, but yoga is brutal. I know better then to talk smack to the bearded vegan in hemp yoga pants holding a thirty-minute fire fly pose. And at the risk igniting a brightly-cargo-panted-head-band adorned mob, brandishing torches and battering rams with impeccable rhythm, it’s easy to peg Zumba as fad fitness. But remember, CrossFit -a relatively new addition to the fitness world, has also been thrown into the trendy fitness category by some (blasphemy I know). I’m all for Zumba, but I rather do mine on a Friday night in heels, preferably after a couple of beverages. Do I think Zumba is high intensity? By CrossFit standards, no, but is it better then going for a walk? Yes, and is going for a walk better then doing nothing at all? Most definitely. Because isn’t that the real enemy, a sedentary lifestyle? Ironically, the subsets of fitness choose to hate on each other far more then they hate on people who don’t exercise at all.

The natural inclination when you feel as passionately about something as most of us feel about CrossFit is to shout it from the rooftops. But sometimes us CrossFitters can be a little preachy towards those who choose to get their endorphin fix through other measures. By all means keep spreading the love, but there comes a point when you need to back off your bodybuilder buddy, leave your treadmill jockey of a co-worker to their pounding, and quit nagging your P90X-tremist brother. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink the Kool-Aid. If and when they are ready, they will enter the house of WOD. Use your time and energy to reach out to those who have little to no form of activity in their lives. If CrossFit loses any “rep”, I hope it’s the one where many have the misconception that it’s too hard, they can’t do it, or that they need to get in shape first. These are the souls we need to save and not just to prove that “my fitness program can beat up your fitness program”. By sharing CrossFit with the sedentary, you will be doing more then just saving them from the hell of non-functional fitness. You could be saving them from the real life hell of obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, or cancer. The guided group setting of your friendly neighborhood box can become a safe haven for those who have yet to find their place in the fitness universe. Although we may not agree with the other genres of fitness, if you look at the bigger picture we’re all fighting the same fight, we just choose to battle with different weapons.

-Mahina
CrossFit Oahu