5 Reasons Why We Love CrossFit So Much!

We all know someone who’s joked – often only half-joked – that CrossFit is a cult. It’s your colleague, or a friend who whenever the topic of fitness comes up, attempts an intervention on your behalf.

“You’re obsessed with that place! It’s not healthy doing all of that lifting!”

It’s interesting – and infuriating for coaches – that when it comes to fitness, it seems like everyone is an expert. Janice in finance thinks she knows what’s best for your body, and she’ll try and make you feel like a weirdo for not seeing her point of view.

What everyone might be getting confused about, though, is that it’s not so much a cult that they’re seeing in CrossFit, but a mild form of the instincts that have kept modern humans alive for around 200,000 years.

So why do we love CrossFit so much?

1. Strength in numbers

The main bug-bear of most non-CrossFitters. We’re all the same, Inov8 wearing creatine drinkers with strange walks. That’s kind of true, but what it shows, as it does with most things in life, is that we do better with the support of others like us.

We know, you’re unique, there’s nobody like you, and your custom T-Shirts, hyper coloured Inov8‘s are definitely the best, by far. Would you say, though, that you push yourself just a little bit harder during a partner or team WOD, than when you’re on your own? Most people probably do.

2. Community

A very similar point to the first, but there’s evidence to suggest that people who lead solitary lives, who have fewer regular social interactions, have as much a chance of dying younger as a pack-a-day smoker.

If you’ve ever been to any kind of CrossFit event, you’ll have noticed the buzz that exists in the crowd, among themselves, and for the athletes on the floor.

It’s not just the weights and the burpees that make you a stronger, healthier person, it’s the people you hang out with, too.

3. Constant variation

Bicep curls and bench press are important isolation movements for the modern bro, but the motivation to do just those, and maybe a few hamstring curls down the Globo gym, runs out fast. Most coaches will keep the programming a secret from their members right up until they arrive at the box. This is for a couple of reasons:

• It stops you chickening out and not coming when it’s something you hate
• It means every single day is a surprise – you have no idea what you’re going to be doing

There’s no other major fitness programme that offers that in quite the same way.

4. Savage results

It’s probably fair to say that the average gym-goer is going to have a tough time cleaning 100kg. There’s not much in the standard Globo gym to teach you the explosiveness necessary to make a complicated Olympic lift. Pretty quickly after joining a CrossFit gym, most people see the potential of what their bodies are capable of.

When you go from 45 minutes of abs work, to throwing around 70kg for reps, it’s no wonder people don’t ever go back once they start CrossFit.

5. Fight or flight

Nobody ever felt like they were about to go to war while swinging back and forth on a cross-trainer. It’s mild, but the feeling you get when the 10-second countdown starts is essentially the same as it would be before the fight of your life. You have two choices: you can run away, or you can engage your primal desire to fight and conquer.

It’s scary as hell, but you do it every day and you love it.

So the next time someone scoffs at your cultish ways, remind them that you’re a savage beast, and that when the apocalypse comes, you will not save them.

Think you are addicted to CrossFit? Check out which of these 15 signs you are guilty of!