10 Reasons Why CrossFit Isn't a Sport

It can put on lipstick, rub perfume between its haunches and take you out to the May Pole Dance—but that doesn't change the fact that CrossFit is not a sport.

That doesn’t keep CrossFit from trying, however. CrossFitters hold organized competitions, jack traditions from real sports and sound off like they’re the cutting edge of athletics. They're the next wave of office softball champions with a zealous bend, and they know they're 10 times the athlete you are. 

Unfortunately for them, some of us haven’t drunk the burpee brew just yet and can still distinguish the very plain lines between real athletics and being the best at exercising. 

CrossFit is not a sport. Now step back while I get specific on you.

If a CrossFitter pops the lid on a shart-salad while hang-snatching, and nobody is in the box to smell it, did it actually happen?

Nope, because CrossFit happens en masse, and membership in that mass is $125-230 a month “depending on your commitment level.”

You don’t earn your way onto Team CrossFit. You buy in like those people who sell Hawaiian miracle juice, and in two months you’re either burnt out or you’re shellacking their logo on your car and selling it to other goofs who just want to lose a few pounds.

CrossFit is like the Match.com of working out. 

You want to look better, to be desired. You’re working out to get it done, but man, it’s awkward walking up to someone at the bar or gym and saying hi. You need an "in."

CrossFit is that in, providing clients a prepackaged workout routine and a daily structure that takes the fear out of approaching people and brings them together through the time-honored human tradition of b****ing about being in a position you put yourself in.

Playing sports can get you a girlfriend or boyfriend, but rarely will you ever find teams where half the roster is secretly hoping the other shows up to practice in yoga pants.

This was supposed to be anti-CrossFit, but I can already hear some of your credit card numbers searing through the ethernet.

No one likes CrossFit, not even people who swear by it.

Barring the one or two hardcore guys or girls in every group, no one looks forward to doing it, and no one but an active participant can appreciate it in any fashion. 

No person unaffiliated with Crossfit has ever sat in their office X-ing in and out of a live-feed from a box-jump competition thinking “Mother of God, strike five o’clock already. Papa DVR’d the kettlebells.”

CrossFitters are a highly competitive, incredibly regimented group of weekend warriors, which raises the question: why not just score the thing?

There are no losers in CrossFit, just people who don't lift good, and want to learn to do other things good, too. The only time they keep score is it at the annual CrossFit Games, where the people in your office who use the phrase “Work hard, play hard” come each year to compete to be crowned King of the Kettlebells.

But no matter how many shirtless dudes they get to mimic the All-Blacks haka war dance, they’re still only psyching up to “increase work capacity across broad time and modal domains.” 

If you're on a sports team and don't show up to a game, that's a problem. Even if it's just a recreational game, your buddies might not be able to find a replacement and the whole thing will be ruined.

If you miss CrossFit, you miss CrossFit. Some of your workout friends might razz you for not showing up for burpees, but no one in your box will be lighting your phone up and ripping you a new hole sideways if you don’t lift.

By the way, a "box" is a gym where CrossFit holds its seances, workouts and scream-meetings. They call them boxes because they’re like storage units, but instead of old headboards and suitcases, they’re filled with people who can’t throw a spiral.

What sports coaches say: 

“Shut your face-slits, get off the Internet and get some shuteye. Twitter is something that happens between a man and a woman, and nobody needs to hear about practice."

What CrossFitters pay a guy named Devon to say:

“Post your daily workout online so you can keep track of it and stay motivated. Or because it’s free viral marketing for our product. Whichever.”

Sports are founded on the desire to defeat your opponents, who would kill to know your game plan. CrossFit is founded on the desire to be on top of the new chick from Logistics, who needs to know how hard you're working to make it happen.

No one has ever mistaken a game of softball for anything other than a game of softball.

Not once has someone walked up to an umpire at home plate and said “Hey, you making sure these girls are drying that ostrich egg properly? Throwing it around with mitts...never thought of that. Smart.”

People can easily mistake a group of CrossFitters for your average pedestrian lifter—or a gaggle of overly aggressive dry cleaners in training. 

CrossFitters design shirts to rep their box, but there’s no league-designated uniform with specific requirements, which puts CrossFitters about on par with most family vacations.

And yea, that's an actual CrossFit shirt.

You could respect someone who turned their life around and got in shape with CrossFit, but there’s no CrossFit Hall of Fame. You don’t have the poster of CrossFit legend squat-thrusting on your wall.

Even if you do (really?), chances are you’ve met this person, which makes it a personal preference, as opposed to a universally accepted acknowledgement of greatness. It would be like me saying “My dad’s a great guy, I really look up to him.”

You don’t know my father from Adam, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. 

Herm Edwards once said, “You play to win the game.” 

That’s it. That’s why you play sports. There’s the reason—cut, dried and cured—plain for all to see. 

What’s the goal of CrossFit? Everything and nothing, according to their web site.

“The aim of CrossFit is to forge a broad, general and inclusive fitness. We have sought to build a program that will best prepare trainees for any physical contingency—not only for the unknown, but for the unknowable.” 

Huh. Sounds broad, general and hauntingly exclusive—like Mr. Miyagi converted to Scientology. 

But hey, don't get down, CrossFitters. You still look great, and you can still be my Crystal (Medicine) Baller.

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