CrossFit Athletic Group

As we continue to work back in the CrossFit archives, I'd like to bring up the CrossFit Journal issue from October 2004.

A Beginner's Guide to CrossFit

Summer 2019 Rookies

There are two major themes I think are worth keeping in mind as you read this.

First, I'd like you to consider who the target audience is: that is, who do you think Coach is writing to? Here's another way to look at it: who do you think is the target audience for the current crossfit.com beginner's page?

The way I read it, the target audience for Coach's original post in '04 was the actual athletes who are going to start their CrossFit journey. The new CrossFit page might seem like it is also geared towards the new athletes, but it's actually geared towards affiliate owners; look at how everything is trying to funnel a prospect into a gym, where the '04 article had Coach giving us no excuse not to try this out on our own without coaching. One option empowers the athlete and the other empowers someone's pockets.

The second theme I'd like to point out has to do with the phrase, "meet people where they're at." CrossFit does that for sure, and this article (and his other one in the October 2004 Journal called Girls for Grandmas) give examples of how the CrossFit stimulus can be adapted for anyone in at any fitness level. But it's important to understand that the phrase has to go the other way also: people need to meet you where you're at!

In an article geared towards athletes who have never done CrossFit before, he talks about puking behind a garage, draws a science(ish) graph, and does not dumb down the language. He also includes this quote about intensity:

This brings us to a few final important points about intensity. Intensity and results are directly proportional, but intensity and comfort are inversely proportional. Choosing for greater intensity is choosing for more fitness, but, also, greater personal sacrifice in the form of discomfort. Expecting elite fitness from comfortable efforts is naïve, while going too fast is dooming. No formula can sort these issues out for you; the intuition of athletes and coaches everywhere has smartly outperformed all formalized approaches.

Knowing the taste and feel of intensity is no less than coming face to face with the real cost of elite fitness.

The only critiques I have of this article are that 1) it's not available on the CrossFit website any more and 2) this is just as useful for a 20-year veteran as it is for a New Kid.