CrossFit Athletic Group

From a business perspective I never thought I would say this before the age of 50, but I feel completely, oddly, and confidently prepared for this time of insane uncertainty. I was in high school when the housing market thing brought the economy down, and there was nothing on my mind except my small world of basketball. I honestly had no idea things were bad until about a year later – which shows you the kind of parents I had, never complaining about anything other than the most serious of issues (my neighbor blowing his leaves on our side and quarterbacks who can outrun Michigan’s safeties). The entire duration of my life as a business owner has seen – at least from what I’ve heard – as a constant up in the economy. There are about 4 websites I check every day and none of them report on things that would give me this information, but from how much people I know are freaking out, it might be a safe bet to say our confidence in money and our ability to hang onto it is not as high as it was 2 weeks ago. Seriously, two measly weeks. I wonder how the birds outside are coping.

Anyway, this burst of confidence in my preparation came last night. I pulled into our improved outside workout location for a group of 8 people I informed of said session about 2 hours before it started. It should be noted that it was not raining at the time of my calls; it was pouring when I rolled into the parking lot. What I saw through my crappy windshield wipers was a park completely deserted. The rain and cold had scared away all the dog walkers, runners, and homeless people. In the parking lot, however, were 7 cars sitting patiently in their spaces. These can’t all be Champions Club people I thought to myself. But, of course, they were. We found a sheltered area and did improvised box jumps, squats, and dumbbell things Murley calls A Bad Excuse for Disco Dancing. It was one of the most fun workouts I’ve ever witnessed – partially because I didn’t have to do it, and partially because of the rush of gratitude I felt towards the Champions Club people.

When we first moved out on our own in June 2012 into this beautiful warehouse at 32301 Stephenson Hwy (beautiful in the same way people call my big ugly dogs beautiful) we were forced to operate around the most unusual workout conditions I’ve ever seen: couches, Corvettes, creepy guys hitting on Meghan Murley while building our bathrooms. We weren’t even supposed to be operating in there until mid-October, but there was no stopping that rabid group from doing their thing. 

Summer 2012

In 2013 we settled down and ended up having an all-timer of a Summer. Things were looking good, but I actually saw a potential blind spot. The blind spot was me being really bad at business. I knew I was, I just didn’t know how, exactly (though I found out in the coming months, both with the tire incident and the lack of rookies for Summer 2014.) So here was my thinking: what if I couldn’t afford rent any more? What if I messed up our Affiliate Guard insurance and the building caught fire without the right coverage? Bottom line: we need to have a gym full of people that would pay me to coach them in a park in the middle of December. Once I came to that realization, I quietly built in a tolerance factor into just about every session because we needed to find the right people, no matter how long it would take. There were many ways to do it: outside while it’s hot, outside while it’s cold, run in the snow even though the sidewalk was clear, go to the hill despite the sleet, keep the heat down to 52 this winter, hold off on buying new equipment even when I could afford it, not allowing people their favorite spots on the floor, changing session times on a short notice… you name it. I know sometimes I come off as clueless – and sometimes I really am – but I promise just about every decision I make is calculated from a long-term perspective, and out of 10 times you felt frustrated by some non-exercise thing with a workout, 8 of them were intentional.  

At one of our Groves practices this year, Coach White told me he thinks a big factor in the attitude we were seeing from the kids was how many “options” they have in front of them; if they don’t like this thing, they can have that thing instead, if they don’t like orange, you can have blue, if you don’t like this team, just play for that team, whereas it was more of a take-it-or-leave-it model when he grew up in the 60s. So it makes sense that taking away options at times (best bar, jump rope at perfect length,  shoes, etc.) would help build the mindset to just make the best of whatever is in front of you. Effective workouts are always my first priority and safety is always my second priority, and as long as those two aren’t compromised then there is nothing I enjoy more than throwing a “tolerance test” into a session and see who passes on that day.

As a result, the current roster at the Champions Club is by far toughest and most tolerant group of people out of any setting I coach in. You guys might never understand how rare of a breed you are, but I promise you I appreciate it. And you.

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Can you imagine how horrible it must be to be a lab mouse? Seriously marinate on that for like 15 seconds. I heard about this one study where scientists took two groups of mice and threw them in separate buckets of water to observe how long it would take them to drown. But there was one variable: in one of the buckets, the scientists plucked the mice out of the water for a brief moment then put them back in. The mice in that bucket were able to tread water something like 3 hours longer (if I remember correctly) before drowning than the ones who had never been given the hope of being rescued.

Imagine if the Health Department came out and said, “look guys, we are going to let Umbridge have her way until April 30. Then I promise everything will be back to normal on May 1: all businesses will be open, schools will resume, spring sports will get extended time, and we will sacrifice Stephen A. Smith to the basketball gods in order to bring back some semblance of March Madness.” Imagine how different things would be just knowing when the end to the discomfort was coming. Even if they said things would be back to normal 1 year from today, I still think that would put people at ease more than they are now. The tone in which some usually-happy people have been talking to me gives me a new appreciation for the power of the unknown.

But CrossFit is a training program designed to prepare us for the “unknown and the unknowable.” And after my third refresher of the Level-1 last weekend, I am convinced the Champions Club embodies CrossFit’s core principles as well as anyone in the country. There is a point this intense weirdness is going to end. We just don’t know when, exactly. But if there was one group you’d want to be with while all this is going down, I can’t think of a better one than us.