What Makes CrossFit Sticky?

Once, I did a pull-up and running workout at a CrossFit box in Miami. In roughly 100% humidity. Max rep pull-ups without dropping off the bar. Once you drop, you run a 400M penalty lap. 20 minutes of work, and yet by about minute three my hands were drenched in sweat. No amount of chalk helped - in fact, applying chalk only made the situation worse. The sweat and chalk and humidity combined to form a gooey, sticky brew on my pull-up bar. When I ran outside, my soaked shirt stuck annoyingly to my body. The moisture-wicking technology didn’t stand a chance. It was kind of awful. But that’s not the “sticky” I’m talking about.

There was that time my wife asked me to pick up something from Rainbow Organic Grocery on my way home from CrossFit. Only problem was, I had just finished Open Workout 16.3 - a seven minute AMRAP (as many reps as possible) of 10 Power Snatches and 3 Bar Muscle-Ups. Quick aside: To the uninitiated, a seven-minute workout seems almost comically short. They even made a scene in a movie about that. But if you’ve done CrossFit for even a month, you’ve likely come across a deceptively short workout that absolutely kicked your butt. If you do 16.3 right, if you give it 100% effort, you might approach a sensory experience of a nearly psychedelic caliber.

That workout is all about grit. How long can you hang on to the bar? How hard can you fight for that extra rep? It leaves you high and buzzy and breathless. Anyway, there I was, 16.3 done, walking into the store. My mind and body were so completely, beautifully spent after those seven minutes. I walked in, just sort of wandered into a random aisle, and stood there. Not really focused on anything, and totally unable to comparison shop, navigate the spice section, or use an acceptable form of payment. It’s hard to convey the feeling of absolute detachment, exhaustion and bliss. I stood in the aisle for a bit, and then just sort of gave up. No shopping would happen that afternoon. I turned around, and walked out.

What’s my point? And why would anyone want to feel this way in the first place? Well, that’s the magic, and “stickiness” of CrossFit. Do it for a couple of months, and you’ll start relishing these little battles. When I used to go to a regular gym, one “chest day” would simply blend into another. (Leg days didn’t blend as much because I regularly skipped them). But there’s something magical about CrossFit workouts, that makes some of them stay with you forever.

First, there’s the shared sense of effort and purpose (and, yes, suffering) when you work out with a group. Everyone does the same workout, we feed off one another’s energy, and maybe some of us even get a little competitive with the person next to us. Many workouts have a name (“Fran”, “Isabel”, “DT”) which makes them instantly recognizable and easy to benchmark (to test every few months). And then of course there are the Open workouts, which, rather than having a name, are named simply by a cold, logical formula: the year, and the week of that open. For example, 16.3 was the third workout of the 2016 CrossFit Open.

What is the CrossFit Open? Simply, it’s an annual opportunity for everyone in the world to attempt the same workout each week, for several weeks. How about that for a shared sense of effort and purpose? Every year in February and March, you can compare your performance in several workouts to literally everyone else in the world that attempts them.

And if you happen to find yourself out and about in the world, you can walk into a CrossFit box in Mexico City, or Tel Aviv, or Delhi, and instantly find common ground with the natives. Your Fran time doesn’t require any translation whatsoever.

So what makes CrossFit so sticky? Shared effort. Group motivation. A series of repeatable, measurable tests that allow you to push the limits of what your mind and body can achieve. If you totally devote yourself to these tests, the harvest is rich with satisfaction, camaraderie, and a sense of accomplishment.

Alright, gotta sign off. I’m being told I have to pick up something from the grocery store.