I would have loved to be able to hear his thoughts as he walked in our doors.
Is this CrossFit? Am I in the wrong place? Who are these people?
The Again Faster Sales rep was in Vancouver visiting local CrossFit gyms to promote their brand of equipment. He was young, trim, had big hoop ear plugs and a beard. He looked every bit like a rep suited for selling to CrossFit. And he had stopped by our Dunbar Street location expecting things to look a bit different.
Instead he found our 9:15am class. Shine, Doc Disc, Princess, Outlaw, Sam I Am, Benevolent, Go.
There were no Reebok Nanos to be found. No Under Armour. No compression gear. No sports bras or yoga shorts. No topless young athletes swinging from pull up bars. No loud, heavy tunes blasting the eardrums. No one under 40 years old. In fact some of us were over 50. One of us over 70. Benevolent was in street clothes. And Sam I Am in gym clothes that could double as street clothes.
Classical music was playing as half of us practiced the snatch with PVC pipe or colour capped bars.
His face betrayed shock, disorientation, uncertainty as if he had stepped through a door into the Twilight Zone. The sign read CrossFit but what he saw upon entering was not CrossFit as he knew it. And yet it was. Where else besides an Olympic Lifting gym or a CrossFit would you find a 70 year old athlete practicing the snatch? Not at Fitness World!
Shine described us as the “Anti-CrossFit” because of our age demographic and our tendency to eschew the trending CrossFit gear. We’re also not much on the drill sergeant coaching style or hard core music. In so many small ways CrossFit Empower breaks away from the typical CrossFit mold.
We do not look like a typical CrossFit box. Looks notwithstanding, our product is true to the original CrossFit. We at CrossFit Empower follow CrossFit programming more closely than any other affiliate in the city. Don’t be fooled by the window-dressing, looking the part will not make you fitter. It is the programming not the fashion that yields results. At any age.
Fitness is for everyone!
Keep it real, WOD Father!