The Real Magic of CrossFit

“The magic is in the movement, the art is in the programming, the science is in the explanation, and the fun is in the community.”

Greg Glassman wrote this in 2005 when explaining CrossFit in its infancy. At the time, I had personally tried a few CrossFit workouts at my local globo gym. A BJJ partner of mine had told me about this crazy new workout thing, so I looked it up online and did Angie — 100 pull-ups, 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, and 100 air squats for time.

At the time, I didn’t really understand that “for time” meant go fast. So I just kind of leisurely did it. I rested, I stretched. I was like, “I don’t get it. What’s the big deal?” Obviously, I did not understand the magic — I’d argue I didn’t really understand anything. It wasn’t until almost five years later that I actually stepped foot in my first CrossFit gym, and that’s really when everything changed for me.

I went from being someone who was young and generally fit and athletic, to someone who was really fit — and more importantly, someone who was obsessed with fitness.

What Changed

At the time I found CrossFit, I had been running a bit, doing some bodyweight movements like push-ups and pull-ups, and some traditional lifting with a heavy upper-body, bench-press emphasis. When I found CrossFit, a lot of those movements got swapped out for more functional movements — more multi-joint barbell lifts, more lower body emphasis, and some of that higher-skill dynamic gymnastics stuff CrossFit is known for: kipping pull-ups, toes-to-bar, muscle-ups, all of that.

These movements were alien. They were challenging. They made me feel athletic, and they were really fun. They gave me something to practice, to refine, and to chase. And they were potent — a set of thrusters has a metabolic, gut-punch effect that a set of bicep curls just doesn’t match.

So naturally, at the time, I thought: that’s the magic. But looking back now — having coached thousands of athletes, having owned a gym for ten years, and having gone through my own up-and-down journey with CrossFit and with exercise generally — I’m not so sure.

Hard Stuff vs. Soft Stuff

I think Glassman and CrossFit may have gotten things backwards — or maybe sideways from what they intended — when they tried to lay out what made CrossFit so potent and important for so many people.

In that quote, they give a lot of credence to what I’d call the “hard stuff” — the movements, the programming, the science — and they use elevated terms like art, science, and magic to describe them. But then they only really mention one “soft” thing. They say, “Oh yeah, the community is fun too.”

My working hypothesis — the thing I’ve been kicking around recently — is that Glassman and CrossFit thought they were geniuses about the hard stuff, when in actuality, the place where they were really making big gains was the soft stuff. They were great at things like community, identity, habit formation, and sense of purpose — and at imparting those onto their members.

Because at the end of the day, it is undeniable that CrossFit’s greatest contribution has not been to high-level sport or strength and conditioning. You’d be hard pressed to find dedicated athletes at really any high level of competition who use CrossFit as their primary training methodology. And that’s okay — that’s what we’re going to talk about, because that’s not who CrossFit was really for. Not really. Not when you get into it.

Who CrossFit Was Really For

CrossFit was for normal people. Kids out of college, moms and dads, teachers, doctors, retirees.

CrossFit is built on concepts from Russian strength and conditioning coach Yuri Verkhoshansky, which had been brought to America and the mainstream by Mel Siff in his book Supertraining. The main idea is General Physical Preparedness — what’s often called GPP. GPP was an off-season training phase for competitive athletes where they’d work on general conditioning to improve strength, speed, endurance, flexibility, and skill. Sound familiar?

It was meant to help prevent imbalances and boredom through both specific and non-specific exercises — basically building a base, moving holistically, moving in a more balanced way. Then as athletes got closer to their season, they’d specialize and focus on whatever their sport required.

Here’s what I think most people miss: Verkhoshansky, Siff, and Glassman too — they all recognized that burnout and non-adherence don’t only come from elite athletes overtraining, or from injuries and over-specialization. For normal people, they often come from very human challenges, like boredom or a lack of excitement in training. And this is what CrossFit was — and is — really great at.

How CrossFit Accidentally Did Something Brilliant

I’m not sure if this was by design. Glassman had originally designed CrossFit as a small group training model — he’d train three or four people at a time. Then, kind of without any deliberate effort on his part, gyms started asking: Can we affiliate? Can we teach this model? Before he knew it, gyms were popping up all across the world, teaching ten, twenty, or more people at a time. Gyms had hundreds of members all uniting around a shared methodology — but also a shared culture and shared excitement.

And I think that’s what actually makes CrossFit so powerful. It takes your Joe from accounting, or Ms. Jenkins the biology teacher, and gets them super invested in their fitness. It gets normal people to treat exercise not as a little side dish they sprinkle into their week, but as the main course. The thing they look forward to each day. The community they enjoy spending time in. What they plan their weekends around.

It takes people who were maybe active — who ran a little or did yoga a couple times a week — and gets them going to the gym consistently four, five, six times a week. Gets them thinking about what they’re eating because of how it might make them feel during a workout later that day. Maybe they skip happy hour to get sleep before their group class the next morning. They make better decisions.

To me, the magic of CrossFit was in creating identity change — creating buy-in and adherence and interest and fun.

There are very few people in the world so intrinsically motivated that, sight unseen, they decide “I want to reach a fitness or performance goal” and just set about doing it in a vacuum. Most people need a little salsa on that taco — whether that’s competition, movements that make you feel athletic, or rituals and mythology like CrossFit’s Girl or Hero workouts. CrossFit, knowingly or not, did that really, really well, and created a lot of super fit, super invested people.

What CrossFit Actually Accomplished

I want to be clear: what CrossFit did was really hard and was absolutely revolutionary. Out of disparate parts, they created a training philosophy that was more rigorous and more intentional than 99% of what was on offer — while also being 99% more fun and exciting than the more nose-to-the-grindstone performance-based stuff out there, while fitting it into an hour-long experience, while charging a reasonable rate. They did a lot of things at once.

In short, they didn’t let perfect be the enemy of good. And in doing that, they made something very, very good.

Like anything that lasts a long time, over the years the faces and the environment change, and things can drift. CrossFit did drift for a while. But I’ve always paid attention to what they’re doing, and lately I think they’re starting to find their feet again. They’ve begun incorporating lessons and trends from other parts of the fitness industry — things they would have held at arm’s length in the past. I’m interested to see where they’re going, and I’ve been thinking about how to apply some of these lessons to my own gym. How do we use these ideas to create programs that are accessible, interesting, potent, and fun? What do we take with us, and what do we leave behind?

Outro

I’m planning to do a companion piece to this about how to apply some of these ideas to yourself — how to benefit your own fitness, whether you’re training CrossFit or something else entirely. It’s about identity, dedication, and change.

I’m interested to hear what you think. If you’re a CrossFit OG, tell me: what got you in, and what’s kept you in? If you’re someone who drifted away, where did the disconnect happen, and what would they have to do to earn you back? Comment below, send me a message, or send this to someone who might have a hot take.

As always, thank you for watching.