7 Years In - the 7 Stages of CrossFit
I walked into CrossFit Tysons Corner seven years ago at the end of September right after moving to the DC area, signing up for a monthly membership on October 1. Coach Matt told me, "We don't have our regular workout today, but you're welcome to stay for Hoover Ball." Two things about that: 1 - I had never been assigned a workout walking into a gym, and 2 - what the hell is Hoover Ball? I played the game - basically a version of Volleyball, where a medicine ball is tossed over a net and if it touches the ground, your whole team gets a penalty. After the workout, I thought to myself, "what a strange group of people."
Seven years later, I'm at the same gym as a trainer, and to say I've never looked back would be a lie. I would say a more accurate description is that I haven't found anything that can fill the efficiency in terms of time to results, camaraderie, or challenge that CrossFit brings. Those seven years include 4 half marathons, a Tough Mudder, the Civilian Military Combine, Parkour classes, (not enough) yoga classes, gymnastics classes, flag football, intramural soccer, countless 5 and 10Ks, hotel workouts, Planet Fitness doldrums, and skulling classes on the Potomac. All of those were fun, but not something that could hold my interest for a long time. Plus, I've made some really close friends through the gym (I still can't call it a box) that have become close to family. Blah blah blah, you've heard it before, I know. But I think anyone's relationship with CrossFit boils down to 7 stages. The stage you land on is up to you -- others more motivated, younger or with a better athletic background than me will blast through these stages in weeks or months, not necessarily years.
Stages 1 - 3: The beginning loop
1: Intro
For some reason, you find yourself in an empty warehouse space staring at a row of pull-up bars and squat racks. Blame it on your friend, significant other, magazine article, or the impending expiration of a Groupon, but you make it to your first class. The experience can vary - either you leave pumped and invigorated by the simple moves that leave you gasping for breath, or your head is swimming from the coach that validated his existence by every gymism or made-up CrossFit lingo that he can manage. Whatever, the first day is over.
2: Show Up
That first class at least caught your interest, and you come back. Or perhaps you signed up for a multi-week fundamentals course. Or perhaps you saw a cute guy/girl on your first day. And you come back again. And again. Nothing really sinks in, but you average 2 or 3 days a week, experiencing the high of finding a workout where you hold your own, and the low of watching someone with ___ body type do infinitely more weight than you in infinitely less time. For me, this period lasted longer than I care to admit. Probably a year or two, maybe three. I didn't make many friends in the gym (mostly because I didn't want to and was very quiet), and having just come from grad school, I didn't care to base my schedule around what seemed like a random workout. Depending on the gym though, this Show Up phase could incorporate a bunch of other phases. Maybe you stumbled onto a gym run by an inspired regional athlete, and you progress very quickly. Or on the flip side, maybe you've found a xfit spin-off, that uses konstantly varyed funxional movements at higher intensities. It's crossfit, not CrossFit and something has been lost in translation. If this is the case, you can unintentionally stay in Show Up phase for a long, long time.
3: YouTube Infatuation
YouTube, ESPN, Instagram, whatever platform. One day you type in the name of a workout or athlete you've heard of, and... House of Cards style, you forget when the last time you ate was because you're in click heaven. For some, this is their intro into CrossFit, skipping past the need for a friend to introduce them, and instead getting mesmerized by abs on dudes, or abs on girls, or maybe even videos that just mock CrossFit. Whatever the case, you realize that there is passion and results in the area of CrossFit, for or against the workout style. Here, you may gain a little knowledge, but more importantly, you realize that just showing up on a random schedule won't get you to YouTube fame very quickly.
4: Competition
At some point, whether it is the CrossFit Open, an internal gym competition, or signing up for an obstacle race or other "functional fitness" competition, you will compete in CrossFit. This is when you realize - "Damn, what have I been doing?" You see women flying through muscle-ups and old men lifting more than the best high school version of yourself. Or in my case, you ask for people's goals and realize you've been selling yourself short for too long. Even if you have no desire to compete again, the "Show Up" phase is over. You start to appreciate the coach's cues, or realize that your coach doesn't know what they're doing. You watch instructional YouTube videos, instead of performance videos. Maybe you sign up for a CrossFit certificate course or begin filming your own performance so that you can fix faults and not just show off. Maybe you visit a different gym on a road trip and get your a** handed to you at your best workout. At this stage, the progress comes quickly - you've mentally committed, and likely this stage also brings along diet changes - paleo, Zone, Whole 30, gluten free, Renaissance, you'll try anything your man crush suggests. Life is good, and the next competition is going to be different.
5: Breakup
Then, tragedy strikes. Anyone who tells you they have loved every single part about CrossFit forever and always is lying. As the sport and fitness trend expands, so does the chance to run into someone who rubs you the wrong way. Do you love everyone at your job or in your extended family? Do you expect to love every CrossFitter? Probably not. So maybe it's a personal conflict that fuels the breakup with CF. Maybe your only interest was in dating a guy/girl in the gym, and for whatever reason, CF fizzles along with your love for him/her. Or, a likely scenario is that you run into an injury. CrossFit, if done correctly, does not mean you will eventually get injured. But what's more likely is that in your "Show Up" phase, you didn't take the fundamentals to heart. You could muscle through a handstand, do curls for cleans, or develop bad habits while squatting. It happens to everyone. The best gyms will help you avoid this phase. But sometimes, they can't save you from yourself. On top of CrossFit, you're going to night classes and sleeping 4-5 hours a night, training for a 10K, and doing adventure races. You've also cut out meat and count calories, because that is "healthy". You don't tell the coach because you want to prove you can improve on the previous competition. You ignore a twinge or tweek during a workout, and then... it's breakup consideration time as you lie on the physical therapy or massage table. From here, you either ease yourself back into CF land with a new perspective or you walk away from CF, realizing it's just not for you.
6: Education
The only way to really break out of the intro cycle through breakup, is to educate yourself. Even if it's admitting that there's one coach at your gym has never really helped you, that's education. Shifting your schedule to avoid that coach, or trying other gyms - that's still education. That doesn't mean he or she is a bad coach, more likely that they're a bad coach for how you learn. You don't have to go through pre-med curriculum to educate yourself, but you will need to be more proactive. Everyone responds differently and learns differently. For me, I realized that I react defensively to cues if I don't understand them. My only way to improve was to see my own errors, and then I am OK if a coach reminds me and helps me to correct them. It's made me sign up for the CF Level I cert (I had no intention of becoming a coach), because I felt I was missing the link between programming as a whole and an individual workout. The need for education made me sign up for the CF Level II cert because I realized I didn't have confidence in my coaching abilities.
7: The Decision
Once you admit to yourself that you don't know everything, the sky is the limit with CrossFit. Do you want to help others avoid your mistakes by becoming a coach? Have you continued to improve exponentially after going back to basics in your education phase and you know that you have the mindset for competition? Have you seen a gap in the products out there or gyms in your area that you can serve with a business idea? Or do you realize that CrossFit helps you in other aspects of your life and realize that CF workouts 3-4 times a week is just what you need to have a better lifestyle? After 7 years, I think the biggest mistake in CrossFit is that people try to skip from YouTube infatuation to Elite Competition without the in between steps. If you're 18, you can probably do this without too much pain. If you're 28, that window is incredibly small to get right. It requires the right combination of coach, gym environment, humility, and competitiveness that sometimes leaves people broken.
You can do the things that make you you without putting CrossFit front and center.
After 7 years, I'm still learning that there is nothing wrong with CrossFit as a lifestyle. It helps you play with your kids, you can run a 10K or mud run without too much additional effort. You can still go to yoga/swimming/knitting/book club without having to wake up at 5AM and prepare bottles and tupperware to get you through the week. You can do the things that make you you without putting CrossFit front and center. My elite competition window has closed, but that doesn't mean my education and coaching phase needs to end. An effective trainer teaches, sees, corrects, manages groups, has presence and attitude, and demonstrates movements perfectly. Its the last two areas of presence/attitude and demonstration that I'm pretty sure I can spend the next 7 years on, and that's fine with me. My path to better demonstration will involve yoga, olympic lifting, mobility (oh so much mobility) and gymnastics instruction. That's not a short road for someone who's 30, and that's OK. Eventually, I do want to take the CF Level III cert, so I can officially earn the title of Coach, even if I don't coach a day after I pass that milestone. I don't think CrossFit is going anywhere any time soon. Perhaps it's not for you, but if you've already given it a try, why not make sure you get to step 6 before hanging up those high socks?
