CrossFit Athletic Group

Excluding 2020, Michigan football has had 315 consecutive home games with 100,000+ in attendance - a streak that dates back to when my dad was in high school listening to Bob Ufer's euphoric conniptions on the radio broadcasts. But the question many non-slappy fans were asking was how in the holy name of Woodson could one count the number of people in The Big House chaos?

Well, in 2015 John U Bacon dug his way to an answer in his book, Endzone, in a chapter about the 2014 season.

For Michigan's second game against Miami (OH), the department sold 87,608 tickets - which they counted, whether the buyers showed up or not - and gave away 10,143 tickets, for a very soft total of 97,751. Yet, they made the announcer claim attendance for that game was 102,824 - or 5,000 more than even the highest possible estimate.

Bacon later went on to explain that Michigan also counted staff, volunteers, players, band members, and journalists to help get to their arbitrary 100,000 landmark. Sometimes I feel the Mr. Marks and the Mr. Kuipers of the gym are justified in their hate for Michigan.

...........

As a competitor, by definition, I am addicted to competing and I will find anyone and anything to compete with. One on one is my go-to when I am feeling particularly insecure about my basketball ability, but I don't mind a CrossFit workout, euchre, Sequence, a race with Johnny J, throwing the baseballs back in the bucket vs. Aaron Sexton, and seeing the fewest amount of steps* I can take on my walk up to the gym. 

The tricky part about being a competitor as a business owner is there are no defined rules, objectives, or even opponents. Dylan knows exactly who he will be competing against in his basketball game next week, how long the competition will last, and what qualifies a team to claim a victory. For me to get Dylan to come to the gym, I might be competing against basketball one day, baseball the next day, homework the third day, and the bed on the weekends. My competition with Mr. Ron involves his desk job shortening his hamstrings and impinging his hips and his background with LSD*** making it difficult to find that next gear. My competition with Aaron Sexton involves him saying yes to more people than he needs to, or finding a consistent nutrition rhythm. The real difficult part of all those factors is there is no winning; getting them in the gym or helping their health and fitness today just means we need to do the same thing tomorrow... or maybe something completely different to compete against an unexpected opponent like a job change or a death in the family.

In the first few years owning the Champions Club I tried to "compete" with other CrossFit gyms in areas I knew we valued over them: form, website posts, weird shit like The Freaks Voodoo Snapping Game. Then I shifted to the focus on being better than our previous years: starting with the Summer of 100, I began to use attendance as a main marker of our progress and the numbers were really, really good. Then Summer 2023 happened and it confused the hell out of my concussed brain and Erica's poor excel sheet. The proceeding months have brought me to a very unsettling realization.

I have no idea how many people are in the Champions Club right now. And not only do I not know, but I don't even know how I would begin to accurately count.

But then I wonder, is it important to know the exact number? Would having that information benefit anyone? Is it sufficient enough just to say our number is somewhere between some and enough?

At this exact time I think we are closer to some; I would like to bring that to enough. But not now, not even this winter. Whenever the time is right.

*811 is my record**, and these have to be normal steps, not walking lunges.

**Aaron said we all have a touch of the tism

***Long Slow Distance, get your minds out of the gutter!

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Today's Christmas workout featured some people. For the 2023 Champions Club, "some" counts as 63 (64 if you counted baby Clyde aka. Artemis Clydefrog, and 66 if you counted Mr. Burton and Kyron coming in late). In previous years that would have been anywhere from enough to The Building License Says Our Max Occupancy Is 30 Please Don't Alert The City! It went... smooth? I'm trying to be picky, but it seemed to really flow efficiently once Mr. Malak rolled in thinking the workout started at 10. It featured a workout that might be the best design going forward, a gift exchange that combined the kids and adults into one group, an almost exact amount of food, and finally the end to the chrisfacewed...

Ricky said to compare this picture to our classic one from the Fieldhouse. Well at least it was just...

Ruthless, ruthless souls, those Colussi.

Full photo gallery can be seen here. (I uploaded a few and will come back and finish either tonight or tomorrow)

This year's workout and "scores" can be seen here. (Same, basically)

Four minutes of video proof we have hooligans normally referred to as highlights:

But what I would really like you to do is take a look our group picture and, using the pointer finger on your left hand (my dad says practice things with your left to help with basketball), count the number of people who you would not consider to be regulars at this exact time. You get to define what "regulars" and "at this exact time" means.

I counted 30.

So does that mean we really only had 34ish Champions Club people at the 13th running of the Christmas Workout? Hell no! It means that on a year when the numbers were going to be down anyway (Sunday church alone took out 13), we could count on 30 (or whatever number you came up with) Champions Club people to step in and help make this thing a great environment. I didn't even invite Wesley. Completely slipped my mind. Luckily he knows once in the Champions Club, always in the Champions Club, and he invited himself, Loretta and Clarice. We can't get a head count but our mob runs deep.

I love you guys for real.

Thank you.

Chris