Tuesday, December 17, 2013

CrossFit: The (Full-time) Job You Pay to Have

SOOOOO...Your friend has invited you to check out their box, try a WOD, come and see what the CF thing is all about. Great. Let me just say up front that I am not one of those people who says CF is for everyone--just for everyone who is upright, breathing, and may or may not have limbs and joints and cartilage. You are going to feel more fit and strong and good-looking than you have in ages. You will lose body fat and inches. It's practically a guarantee...But you might be wondering how much time it will take from your schedule. You've heard it's fast and intense? It really is. A WOD will only take about 10-30 minutes out of your daily schedule.

Here's where it gets tricky. I will do the math for you so that you can predict just how much time you will need to carve out of your schedule to do CrossFit.

Time to drive to the Box (assuming you live fairly close): 10 minutes
Time to warm up: 10 minutes
Time to complete a normal AMRAP style WOD: 10 minutes
Time to cool down and stretch: 10 minutes
Time to drive home: 10 minutes

You have just done the best exercise you have ever done in your life and have only used up 50 minutes of your day, 20 of which were spent in the car. But wait, there's more.

Time to come home and lie on the floor and analyze every sore muscle in your body: 15 minutes
Time to get off the floor and hobble to the telephone: 5 minutes
Time to call your BFF and tell them what kind of crazy you just did (even though she was there and did it with you): 30 minutes
Time to crawl up the stairs to the shower: 8 minutes
Time to shower: 30 minutes (you'll need to soak those sore spots in the hot water, and you'll stink so badly you'll think you need extra time.)
Time to prepare the paleo lunch with all organic ingredients so as to maximize your new, fit, metabolism: 45 minutes
Time to eat the paleo lunch: 1 minute (You're starving. You are now freakin' starving. Like you have never eaten before.)
Time to look at you-tube instructional videos on all the new moves you'll see in tomorrow's WOD: 1 hour
Time to take and post the "after" selfie: 5 minutes (you had to try several poses before you found the right one)
Time to post on facebook about how amazing you are now that you do CrossFit: 2 minutes (you've been doing it a whole week now!)
Time to read the box blog and see if tomorrow's WOD is up yet: 5 minutes
Time to call BFF and freak out about tomorrow's WOD: 30 minutes
Time to look up photos of Rich Froning and pin them to your pinterest board: 2 hours
Time spent shopping for new workout clothes online: 1 hour

Okay, so consider that you have just purchased your brand-new membership at your local box and you went all-out and did the unlimited membership. You goal is to work out 5 days a week. At nearly 7 hours a day (that is what all those things up there added up to) you have just taken on the equivalent of another 35-hour per week job. Technically that is not full-time, but with the new Obamacare regulations, no one will be hiring for many more hours than that anyway, so it might as well be. I'm assuming also that you will not be blogging about your CF experiences, but if you are, please add an additional hour to all of that. In that case, you have just taken on a new full time job. Oh, and you do realize that YOU pay the box, not the other way around? Just checking.

In the long run, I expect you will not mind that you are paying for that unlimited membership, and somehow the rest of your life will start to absorb all the hours spent doing CrossFit related stuff, but I just wanted to make sure you were forewarned. Your new defined muscles, awesome-fitting clothes, comments from friends, energy, improved health, and new friends who share in that miserable 10-minutes of hell will be payment enough.

No comments:

Post a Comment