Over the last several years I have witnessed a disturbing trend in the realm of physical fitness.   The movement known as CrossFit touting its “functional fitness” has spread like genital herpes in a frat house.  Ordinarily I would embrace any tendencies by the general public towards physical fitness, being that I decry the horrors of obesity and its prevalence in our culture today.  Unfortunately, CrossFit, more aptly named “CultFit”, embodies all the tenets of training hypocrisy and mindless exercise zealotries that would make any halfway intelligent person want to gouge his eyes out with protein bars.  CrossFit is America’s self-styled fitness elite which orders its followers to cultivate a distinctly martial, if not totally paranoid, ideal of “physical preparedness.” In a nutshell, CrossFit is total garbage.

“Your workout is our warm-up”, the cultists chant.  A cacophony of clanking kettle bells and the exaggerated thumps of bumper weighted bar bells abandoned midair at the apex of their extension by mindless followers are the reinvented sounds of battle in a fitness war being waged against common sense.  Every day devotees consult the CultFit website like a Book of Common Prayer, receiving instructions for their workout rites and periods of rest.

The CultFit website forum is the foundation of the CultFit ministry.  On a typical day, some 200 people post responses to the workout in a feverish fitness ‘facebook’.  It’s an exercise phenomenon uniquely dependent upon modern connectivity.  That is to say, CultFit couldn’t exist without lots of viral video, social networking, and an expansive platform for international, demographically varied community interaction.  It’s not just an exercise routine, it’s a lifestyle.  Like Chairman Mao dictating the orders of the day to all his peoples, the main CultFit website dictates its daily WOD to all the affiliates who in turn merely parrot the parent command to their worshippers.  Want to simply go to the CultFit gym, use the equipment and do your own thing?  Well you’re in for a surprise, membership precludes individuation.  That’s right, group sessions only, the official WOD only.

I want to stuff a dollar in your waist strap!

Many of the official demo videos feature women, generally attractive women, conducting grueling workout routines.  And you know I have to hand it to them, the women are hot (if not somewhat mannish).  There are literally hundreds of pictures and videos swirling around the internet of ripped CultFit chicks working out.  There is nothing that fires me up quicker than a badass fitness chick getting after it in the gym, but I have to tell you that I’ve never been a fan of bitches that cake on make-up just to go work out.  More than anything I am irritated by watching chicks cry after finishing their routines.  They act like it was the emotional pinnacle of their existence, some bizarre epiphany caught magically on video.  What the fuck is wrong with you!?  You merely finished your workout – get over yourself!

"Mr. CrossFit" (oh my bad)

Now these CultFit girls are not your garden variety bored housewives trying to spark a gym fling or turn a few heads, it’s actually something much more selfish.  I suppose in their viral video they don’t want to look like a total sea-hag, but motivation by ego and not results is hardly an argument for the program regardless of physique.  Maybe there is an ego piece that all athletes and exercisers possess, and yes, there are mirrors in every gym.  I’m just not going to debase my sense of self and adulterate my personal gains by videotaping myself working out and posting it all over the internet.  This is truly modern fitness masturbation, tantamount to ‘girls gone wild’ in a gym.

There is another element at work here, albeit a subtle one.  CultFit flaunts intensity, as do many exercise programs.  CultFit also seems very focused on form and ‘proper movement’, but there is a difference between form and technique.  Proper form can be expressed in any venue of exercise, as a particular condition, character, or method in which something is done.  Correct form is objective, based upon science and physiology, concepts outside the individual and the program as well.  Technique is subjective, it is the manner and ability with which an artist, writer, dancer, athlete, or the like employs the technical skills of a particular art or field of endeavor.  Two athletes of equal fitness levels could both perform the “Fran” workout and get vastly different times simply because one is using a quicker technique.  A perfect example of this is the distinction between the pull-up and the “butterfly pull-up”.  How then can this be in any way a measure of fitness or performance?  What about intensity?  How can a subjective existential quality be measured?  In someone’s Fran time, I don’t think so.  Perhaps intensity is measured in devotion to CultFit.

Although this guy is a total toolbag with faggy shorts, the demo is a simple, yet effective, illustration of the muscles affected as well as the basic movements of the pull up.

Now observe the bizarre CultFit complexity that has adapted from the pull up.  No comment on the potential risks to joins and tendons inherent with this technique.  How is this “functional fitness”.

A CultFit routine including pull-ups would allow either type (butterfly or regular), although the two can hardly even be called the same exercise.

CultFit is the epitome of successful marketing on a foundation of dogshit philosophy.  How exactly they were able to convince people that everyone should be doing the exact same workouts regardless of age, abilities, specific needs, or goals is completely beyond the scope of reason. The foundation of the entire program flies in the face of everything that has been learned about human performance and stress physiology over the last 50 years.

Perhaps a testament to CultFit success is in the general malaise that has set upon the American people.  When everyone is desperately struggling for attention and acceptance it is not difficult to convince them that doing 5 minute exercise routines picked randomly out of a hat is a smart way to train.  Since the workouts are very short and following a WOD requires no thought process or planning from participants it becomes mindlessly easy for the braindead zombie followers of this backwards fitness religion.  If you train for any specific purpose at all I would highly recommend learning the basics of programming rather than just following some claptrap program that has no scientific basis behind it or rational planning involved in it whatsoever.  CultFit is the Scientology fast food of the exercise world.

Admittedly, CultFit is better than much of what I see going on in the gym.  The problem is this, weights plus momentum equals a potential for injury.  It’s just that simple.  Now add competition into the mix, in addition to the subjective nature of CultFitters technique and intensity.  Performing heavy explosive lifts and training completely randomly without being physically prepared to do these things is a recipe for disaster in the long run.  I know many CultFitters who have suffered injuries to joints and tendons as well as more serious and debilitating physical damage.  The amount of training injuries alone is expressive of the hazards of the CultFit ‘curriculum’.  There is no training progression, no periodization, or methodical approach whatsoever.  Maybe most people in a regular gym don’t get peak results, but at least most of them aren’t getting injured either.

It is fundamentally flawed to believe that having no structure in a program means it will produce general results and that this is somehow better than specific training.  There is no such thing as a jack of all trades physiologically speaking, a marathon runner will never be a powerlifter and vice versa.  Even somewhere in the middle specific adaptations will always apply.  Throwing a bunch of methods together at random doesn’t mean the body gets better at everything.  Additionally, there are much better ways of progressively developing “general” fitness that will improve health than CultFit’s haphazard approach.  Just watch the CultFit games and witness for yourself the total physical devastation of CultFitters simply attempting to run seven miles.  Seven miles!?  Some trainers, Gym Jones for example, even use what you might call the CultFit style of intensity in their daily routines but without claiming that they invented the push-up or demanding adherance to a cult ideology.  On top of that, Gym Jones actually identifies a tangible goal or endstate for the individual that they will then craft their routines towards accomplishing.

“We do your stuff almost as good as you, you can’t do our stuff at all and we do stuff neither of us does way better than you can,” the cultists will scream.  This is a very confrontational statement with no testable results to back it up.  To that I simply say that I have done your workouts better than even some of your most devoted followers.  I have walked into your gyms and crushed some of your best times.  You have a great Fran time (ostensibly the benchmark CultFit workout) well that’s great, but the truth is this; doing CultFit only makes you good at CultFit.  Getting faster times on your CultFit routines is a measure of skill at CultFit and not of fitness or performance.  With no goals there can be no plan, with no plan there can be no attack, and with no attack there can be no victory.

Throwing the potential for injury to the wind, abandoning reason in place of popularity, and embracing an unquestioning lifestyle of fitness communism must be liberating.  I truly enjoy working out with likeminded and motivated individuals.  Individuals being the operant word.  God knows I love exercise and constantly hunger for competition, but I am not so devoid as to physically and intellectually consign myself to martyrdom like the rank and file CultFit disciples.  This is exercise for vanity not for longevity; this is an ideological struggle for an imagined moment of heroism that will never come.

Bitch tits, a fat gut, and he knows the proper form of how to gently caress a nutsack!

With every cult there is a cult leader, and CultFit is no different.  Enter one of the biggest fuck-tards in the known universe Greg Glassman.  CultFit’s founder, Greg Glassman, is referred to by his disciples simply as “Coach”.  A former gymnast who put his program online in 2001, Glassman is known for his impatience with exercisers who fear injury: “There’s nothing about crashing that makes you drive faster, right? But you’re not going to learn to drive real fast unless you’ve wrecked once or twice.”  What the fuck is this inscrutable bullshit!?  In brazen, inventive, hortatory speeches and prose, he leans on the concept of “forging,” blacksmith style.  His Web site is “forging elite fitness,” and his message board is “forging elite community.”  CultFit represents a ministry for Glassman, who is intent on drafting and redrafting his program — so intent, in fact, that he has said he works out inconsistently.  Physically Glassman is nothing to speak of, fat and out of shape even, hardly what one would expect from the leader of a supposed fitness revolution.

Glassman fancies himself the grand vizier of his burgeoning fitness ministry.  With bellowing and dogmatic seminars and psych-up speeches that make you sit like a sheep and think that you finally understand the secret of existence.   “If you say, ‘I will not take my intensity past where the form goes bad,’ the intensity will never develop!” Coach cries into the vacuous crowd.  The CultFitters unquestioningly eating his shit like soft-serve ice cream without even realizing that this statement is a contradiction of the entire religion.

Of all the things I hate about exercise culture, the thing I hate most is pontificating about ethos.  Exercise should be kind of primitive and stupid and mostly physical; it should not require flourishes and perfect sneakers and 10 sessions of learning minutiae before you even break a sweat.  Demo videos for exercises should show you what the body can do, how strong a body can be.  It should not exist to worry you that you’ll never do anything right, sell fear, be a showcase for vanity, or foster derision.  Maybe that’s all just part of the marketing gimmick.  You are fundamentally flawed, but come to CultFit and we can fix you, almost like original sin for athletes.

Some would argue that CultFit has outgrown its creator, but not Glassman.  He equates his program to the Second Coming.  Well that is if the Second Coming cost $1000 for a level one certification and $150/month gym fees.  That’s right, CultFit is mega expensive.

It takes two days of training and a thousand dollars cold hard cash to receive your Level 1 Certification from CultFit.  You heard me correctly, $1000 and two days to learn 9 basic movements.  The Certifications are run at one of the many CultFit Affiliates over the weekend usually, and CultFit conducts 2-3 per weekend.  There are 60 people in each class.  Simple math, $60,000 for one weekend of CultFit Level 1 Certification at one location.  So after opening up their doors and permitting use of their facility and equipment, how much money does each Affiliate gym get out of each of these certifications?  Nothing.  Not one penny.  All the cash goes back to the company with not one penny ending up in the hands of the gym owners.  Well what about Affiliate fees you say?  Ok, shit, you got me – Affiliates have to pay $2000 to apply for Affiliation and $1000 a year after that.  Cha-ching!?

I can think of a lot of things I learned in two days, but mastery over physical fitness was not one of them.  I don’t think there’s a professional coach of any athletic program in the country that was merely certified in two days and then took charge of that program.  But these educated, intelligent, and experienced professionals are exactly the people that CultFit is in a theoretical dispute with.  CultFit ardently attacks these myopic “specialists”, or athletes who they say neglect versatility in order to refine one or two skills.  The CultFitters’ critique has chastened more than one specialist.  “Specialization is for insects,” the CultFitters chant, yet specialists from other arenas show up and perform highly, even outperforming most CultFitters.  Meanwhile, CultFitters don’t notice that they’re all busy ‘specializing’ in their little WODs and demanding everyone use their brand of measuring stick.

Additionally, there are a myriad other certifications out there to become a personal trainer.  Some are generally valued and others are pure crap, but none runs over roughly $500 bucks.  On the other hand, some personal trainers go to college for years to earn degrees and learn the nuances and intricacies of anatomy, kinesiology, and human performance.  CultFit will advertise that form is always adhered to because all the guided workouts are at the behest of one of their certified coaches.  Well aside from a giant wad of greenbacks and a spare weekend it doesn’t take a whole hell of a lot to receive that certification.  This is yet another arrow pointing towards the movement’s cultish aura, unfortunately this also has underpinnings of multi-level marketing and unscrupulous financial dealings if not outright dishonesty.  Don’t worry about merchandising either – you can get everything you need to fuel your cultish devotion at their online store from t-shirts to pregnancy tests.  “What about the next generation?” you desperately cry… Never fear, there’s CultFit for Kids too.

Uncle Rhabdo: I just farted blood ;-P lol!

Now it is widely known that some professional athletes have used illegal substances to enhance performance.  Some have been injured and even died because of it.  Professional athletics generally refrain from celebrating these actions.  CultFit on the other hand takes a different approach.  Not to illegal performance enhancing drugs, to my knowledge, but to personal safety.  Take a look at “Uncle Rhabdo” one of the network’s mascots.  Rhabdo is a clown-headed figure often shown vomiting; who suffers from rhabdomyolysis, a dangerous condition in which damaged muscle tissue enters the bloodstream.  Many a CultFitter has suffered from this condition.  The clown is worshiped only half in jest by the CultFit crowd, which see exercise-induced injury as ritual suicide for the cause.  In a 2005 interview, Glassman said of CultFit: “It can kill you… I’ve always been completely honest about that.”

Ok.  Relax.  Let’s take a minute to breathe here.  I want to make sure that this next point is made abundantly clear.  Studies of the psychological aspects of cults focus on the individual person, and factors relating to the choice to become involved as well as the subsequent effects on individuals. Under one view, an important factor is coercive persuasion which suppresses the ability of people to reason, think critically, and make choices in their own best interest.

Studies of religious, political, and other cults have identified a number of key steps in this type of coercive persuasion:

1. People are put in physically or emotionally distressing situations;
2. Their problems are reduced to one simple explanation, which is repeatedly emphasized;
3. They receive unconditional love, acceptance, and attention from a charismatic leader;
4. They get a new identity based on the group;
5. They are subject to entrapment (isolation from friends, relatives, and the mainstream culture) and their access to information is severely controlled.

CrossFit is a cult.

CultFitters are put in physically and emotionally distressing situations.

CultFitters fitness problems are reduced to one simple explanation… “Functional fitness”.

CultFit advertizes themselves as a tight-knit community with “Coach” as their charismatic leader.

CultFit itself creates a general identity.  CultFit gyms around the country, all with various names and monikers, create the localized group identity.  Handles, callsigns, and screen names posted on the online forums express the adherents’ new internet CultFit identity.  Even real names take on new meaning in the subculture as the cultists are reborn into their CultFit identity.

The CultFit philosophy is faith-based and exclusive.  Look on the CultFit message board itself.  Articles are created, deleted – criticisms posted, rebuked, then evaporate into thin air.  There is an ominous totalitarian element in the information control that is exercised by CultFit online.

CrossFit is a cult.

Ask yourself just a couple simple questions:

Which martial art is best?

Which ice cream is best?

Are sunrises or sunsets better?

Everything has strengths and weaknesses.  Everything is good and bad.  CrossFit does have its merits.  Believe it or not I have enjoyed doing some of the routines and I have incorporated some of the exercises into my own personal fitness regimen, but listen to me very carefully all you would-be CultFitters; Beware any person that says that they have the answer. The only answer is that there is no answer.  No single answer that is, there are many, and in a democracy sometimes the opinion you hate most and makes the least sense is screaming the loudest.  CultFit is entitled to their opinion, something that they do not permit of outsiders, but that opinion is only valid if it can be sustained and substantiated by the worth of its own merits, the value of its argument.  A philosophy of any kind must stand on its own and endure criticism regardless of how loudly its worshippers preach it or how fervently they believe in it.  Even a drug dealer will sell you crack while arguing that it is harmless.   You know I fully expect this very article to be misquoted, flamed, spammed, and generally denegrated by the CultFit crowd, and you know what – bring it, me no care.  But make up your own goddamn mind, that’s part of being a fucking human.  Just hear this;  beware an exclusive and dangerous ideology that is prone to injury and isolation.  CrossFit is not a fitness regimen, it is an unhealthy lifestyle.  CrossFit is not an exercise ideology, it is a cult.  Good luck.

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