Today I take on a blogger who wrote some really dumb stuff about CrossFit, round up the best podcast episodes of the week, and digress on globo gyms.
Good morning and welcome to the WODDITY podcast for news about CrossFit. We are a daily podcast, Monday through Friday, doing CrossFit news in five minutes or less.
My name is Ben Garves and today is Thursday, the 13th of February, 2020.
This is a podcast and we’re about to talk about what’s going on with other podcasts, so let’s call this segment the “Podcasting Podcast Segment for Podcasts about Podcasts”. Each Thursday I’ll break down my favorite CrossFit-related podcast episodes from the previous week. I’m addicted, so I listen to over fifteen shows in this space and share the most important ones with you each week. Check my show notes or WODDITY.com for links to these episodes.
- Tommy Marquez and Sean Woodland give you a great look into the upcoming Norwegian CrossFit Championship, along with an update on Laura Horvath on the Talking Elite Fitness Podcast.
- Annie Thorisdottir joins the Make WODs Great Again podcast to talk about her pregnancy.
- If you haven’t been following too closely, Joy and Clair from Girls Gone WOD have started a new podcast called This is Joy and Claire. On their episode this week, they review that new pseudo science GOOP Lab series on Netflix.
- James Hobart and Austin Maleolo take to the WHOOP Podcast to talk about their training expertise.
- And Rich Froning talks about opening a coffee shop on the Froning and Friends Podcast.
That’s pretty good – I listen to fifteen hours of podcasts and you only have to listen to the most important five hours. You’re welcome.
Michelle Kinney on Motivation
This week, Michelle Kinney was featured in Men’s Health, talking about what she does to stay motivated. Kinney currently holds three mind-blowing records: she lifted 1,189 lbs of Atlas stones in one minute, 3,079 lbs in three minutes, and completed 19 burpee pull-ups in one minute. Not too shabby.
Globo Gyms vs. CrossFit
Something I found fascinating last week was an article in TheTalko about why Equinox memberships are so expensive. Things like having a full-service spa and selling boutique clothing. We talk a lot in the CrossFit space about how globo gyms like Equinox are only profitable because they sell you a membership and hope you don’t come in and use it. This is because they actually have more members than their gym can support in a single day. So, factor in that they’re now also charing you for facials and Lulu Lemons, and I feel gross just thinking about it. Hug your affiliate owner. They’re doing the right thing.
Blogger Makes Up Inaccurate Stories About CrossFit
In the realm of Op-Ed shame this week, we have an article by Sarah Gibson for The Globe. I started reading the piece because it started with the sentence, “I’m a little late on this story, but Jillian Michaels needs to shut up.”
But that’s really all the good that comes from the piece. I’m going to read you a good chunk of it, where Gibson direly mis-represents CrossFit. It’s a disgusting miscategorization and I really invite her to actually do CrossFit before she writes about it again.
Gibson writes:
“The Biggest Loser likes to steal lots of stuff from CrossFit, namely, how it breaks you down mentally. Coaches love breaking their contestants down until they cry by reminding them how they could be dead in 10 years and miss little Timmy’s wedding. Contestants are supposed to work past their body’s natural reactions telling them not to do so. Need I remind you, those reactions are there for a reason.
CrossFit enables a very similar concept called The Dark Place, which is a state of mind that every CrossFit novice yearns to achieve where they are able to ignore every ache and pain in their body, every sign telling them to stop, so they can get the next best score on the workout that day. (Crossfit is also a very competitive workout regimen, much like the larger concept of The Biggest Loser).
What I’m saying is that bodies are smarter than Chads. They know what we can and can’t handle, and they send those signals to us for a reason. I could talk more about Cultfit – oh, I mean CrossFit – forever, but I’ll save it for a different article.”
Here are my thoughts. CrossFit doesn’t break you down mentally, it builds you up. We don’t cry. I’ve never actually seen someone cry in a gym. We don’t have a “dark place”, although we do occasionally have a pain cave. We are encouraged not to ignore the aches and pains in our body, we focus on mobility and taking rest days, and, while I understand the stereotype, I’ve never met a Chad at a CrossFit gym.
So: Dear Sarah Gibson, Beside your flagrant typos, grammar, and capitalization problems, if you want to have a reputation of quality journalism and do your bleeping job when it comes to having influence in the health and fitness industry, you should probably actually do your homework before you unleash your lying thumbs on your phone’s keyboard. Thanks.
And that’s it for news about CrossFit for Thursday, February 13th. Thanks for listening. Please be sure to rate, review, subscribe, and share. For WODDITY, I’m Ben Garves. Chat tomorrow.
