CrossFit Athletic Group

This was originally a bullet on the Workout Notes post, but I figured there was enough here to make it it's own thing. Also, all of the OGs that come back eventually get around to asking me why there's no music during workouts, and my answer is always the same: no answer is going to make you okay with it, so don't worry about it. But that double-under/dumbbell snatch/pull-up workout really had me thinking, so I'll rant for a bit.

The origins of cutting out music for workouts started, like much of the other good stuff around here, during lockdown. We were outside, didn't want to draw attention to ourselves, and... yeah, we never played music. But countless times during lockdown I recalled a quote Jacob said one time:

"My least favorite part about coaching is picking the muslc."

I can't even begin to explain how much I agree with that. I agreed with it in 2018 when he first said it, and I still agree with it (if it applied). Either I'm listening to something I don't like, or I'm hearing a song I love so much I'm getting sick of it, or I'm trying to find a common ground between Mrs. Pip, Arlene, Mallory, and Mr. Wonsil, or I'm associating a good song with a certain miserable workout feeling, or I'm frantically sprint over to change the song when I realize the 2 Live Crew station Mr. Warthman suggested is really as provocative as their reputation suggests.

So when lockdown happened I found myself relieved of not feeling the need to set a soundtrack to the session.

There is also this thing called ASCAP that I was never aware of until I owned a business. The gist of it comes down to the fact that all songs are made for "personal use only." What does that mean? Literally, exactly what it says. If I am listening to Kill You by myself, and then bring Murley in the room to show her how artistic Eminem is when he talks about killing his mom, I'm technically breaking the law: music is made for the person who bought the music. Obviously nobody can enforce this on a household level, but business are really held accountable to this, so we have to pay a yearly fee to ASCAP in order to play music. Mine was $426.

The ASCAP license renewal for 2020 was coming up right as we were moving back in the gym for the Summer, and I figured it was perfect timing to cut the ASCAP and cut the music. Our 8 am kids were the first to test this.

When we get rid of something, we are left with a block of unused space that can be used for... well... anything. There have been two really good consequences of this blank space, neither of which were anticipated. First, it exposes which people have positive things going through their heads during workouts and which people have negative things going through their heads during workouts. As mentioned in the Workout Notes post, this is an area that we need to work on. The second consequence is it encourages us to fill "dead time" by talking to each other. I am all in on our community and anything that takes attention away from the people in your session does not need to be there. As Dr. Romanov said, "Unnecessary things create incredible obstacles."

The ironic thing is I absolutely love music. I'm a hip hop head and I find a lot of inspiration and guidance from artists that are truly great at their craft. It's just right now music is not a necessity of the gym. Most of the time it distracts me and you from the important stuff. So it goes.

Except for the Disney Workout!