Crossfit – GASP – the corporate workout machine that takes
in recreational athletes and spits out bradycardic Olympic lifters. But between
you, me, and everyone else that stumbles upon this blog, I actually like
crossfit. I know, I just insulted crossfit and then said I liked it; it’s
complicated. I like certain aspects of crossfit like its community, but I
loathe others like its disregard for periodization. I could write a book on
what I would do to change crossfit, but I won’t. Crossfit will stay Crossfit
until it dies. Besides, I’m writing this post to embolden an aspect of crossfit
that I love, not to admonish it.
America is the land of the cheeseburger and the home of the bulimic.
Statistically, 24.6 million women have suffered from some form of eating
disorder in their lifetime. Even worse, the National Association of Anorexia
Nervosa and Associated Disorders reports that over one half of teenage girls
and 25 percent of college age women practice unsafe dieting techniques. Shockingly,
women that compete in sports are 11 percent more likely to have an eating
disorder.
While reading these statistics I wondered, “Why are these
women doing this to themselves?” I believe there is a happy medium between
starvation and gluttony. Our culture iseither punishing skinny women, or it’s throwing pictures of 3 percent body fatfemale models everywhere. I’m confused. I feel like we’re all confused.
Recently, a good blogpost circled the web with this picture attached.
This picture says it all. Both women are competing at high
level athletics, doing the same workouts, but looking totally different. People’s
bodies react differently. If either of these women took the stereotypical
approach, they’d look at the other and wish to have her body. This is where
crossfit earns its worth – at least to me.
Yes, the people of crossfit are normally very lean, but they
aren’t light. That is to say, most women that I train care more about the
numbers on the scale than the image in their mirror. Crossfit doesn’t care
about that. The culture of crossfit says, “Who cares what you weigh, what’s
your Fran time?”
Crossfit has slapped anorexia so hard in the face that women
want to look more muscular. And we know that muscle weighs more than fat. The
way I see it, crossfit has created a club that openly encourages people to be
built a bit more “athletic.”
I know from second hand experience that most women don’t
want to look “athletic.” I don’t mean what fitness magazines portray as
athletic. I mean actually athletic. This means having bigger thighs and
hamstrings, and stronger shoulders and arms. Yet crossfit has turned this into
a goal. It’s revolutionary.
If I was to award crossfit for one thing, it would be for
improving the body image problem of modern American women. I’m pulling a gold
star from America and giving it to crossfit; they’ve earned it.
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