I'm sitting in Reebok's private CrossFit gym outside of its Canton, Mass. headquarters and I look like I'm about to slip into a coma. There’s a photo taken of me after my second CrossFit workout in as many days, and despite the fact that I'm well nourished, rested, and hydrated, I've had it.
I hadn’t weight trained in almost two years, and jumped headfirst into a culture that’s all about pushing yourself as hard as you can go. Mind over matter type stuff. Turns out my mind was way over my matter. Two days after the second workout of the day (CrossFit's "WOD"), which I had spent mostly unable to move, bedridden, drinking water, and watching Seinfeld when I wasn’t sleeping, I went to the bathroom and peed brown. Google told me that this is a symptom of Rhabdomyolysis, a potentially life-threatening condition that could include kidney failure as a result of working out too hard. My body cast its vote: CrossFit is not for me.
The decision had actually been made for me during the workouts. The first was a timed group workout where we completed a number of push-ups, kettle bell swings, and med ball cleans together, followed by a short run holding the medicine ball. The second was a solo workout with sit ups, squats, dumbbell shoulder presses, and burpee pull-ups completing as many reps as possible within a time limit.
I failed doing them. I failed a lot. Don’t get me wrong, I fail a lot at life. My life, like many people’s lives, is a veritable conga line of failures. But working out is hard enough; I prefer to create a series of hard-fought wins that stack up over time and develop into goal achievement, inspiring myself with my own record.
Everyone in the gym was patient and helped me every step of the way, but I pushed myself too hard too fast and here I was a few days later, piling on fluids and electrolytes to save myself a trip to the ER. I was given totally fair warning about the workouts and wiser participants skipped out.
I just wanted to see how far I could go. I got my answer: too far.
Crossfit is a series of weight training and agility exercises that are scaled, rearranged, and timed in infinite combinations to create the WOD that you either do as quickly as possible (if the WOD describes the number of reps), or as hard as possible (if the WOD describes a time limit). Hypothetically every time you go to your CrossFit gym (your Box), the WOD will be different, a surprise, and you'll never do the same WOD twice. Often these workouts are only between 15 and 25 minutes. But if you do it right that's all you need. You'll be sore for days.
Crossfitters are often criticized for engendering a culture where people push themselves too far and injure themselves. But that culture is what makes CrossFit popular. A box is a generally positive, high energy, laser-focused place where CrossFitters support one another with encouragement and cheers. For me, this is my worst nightmare. I need to be focused on my own thing and don't want anyone in my business.
Reeboks are on a different level than a retro Jordan or a collaborative runner. This is the knowledge that I walked into Reebok Headquarters with. We were welcomed to Reebok Global Headquarters by VP of Brand Communications Yan Martin and that was the first time I heard their HQ referred to as “The Home of Fitness.” I had missed it literally written on the walls and in their PR materials. The first time he said it I laughed. I was looking at someone who was so deep in the Kool-Aid.
It felt like the people here were totally misreading the industry's conversation. But they're actually not misreading the conversation—they're having an entirely different one.
Reebok's goal is fitness. There was some time in the ’90s and ’00s when they inched into sports but then realized it was the wrong the move for them. Fitness is different from sport. I always thought of fitness as being what people did when they couldn’t play sports, but fitness is an entirely different goal. It is its own path. Some CrossFitters work towards the clear goal of competition (the CrossFit Games), some with specific measurable tasks, but the object of fitness isn’t a ring or a trophy: it’s to get fitter.
No one in fitness wants to be like Mike. They just want to be healthy. They want to be the best version of themselves.
What Reebok showed me about their world turned out to be too much too fast, and that’s on me. But Reebok and CrossFit are onto something that I think most people could learn from, even if most of them won’t sign up.
