The Art of Manliness - #83： Crossfit & the Primal Future of Fitness With J. C. Herz

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so if you haven't

00:00:20.560 been living under a rock these past five or six years you've probably heard of crossfit

00:00:27.880 this new workout routine program where you're using barbells and medicine balls and it's just

00:00:35.260 high intense whatever you've probably seen people at your gym do crossfit workouts and you

00:00:38.680 probably had friends who told you about their crossfit box anyways i've known about crossfit

00:00:44.340 but i really didn't know much about it like the history of it and the development of it and all

00:00:48.200 like the culture that goes around crossfit because i don't belong to a crossfit box so i was really

00:00:53.260 excited when this book came out called learning to breathe fire the rise of crossfit and the primal

00:00:57.920 future of fitness it's by jc hertz and it's basically a history and cultural analysis of

00:01:04.460 crossfit which was really fascinating i got to go into this world that i i knew nothing about

00:01:10.040 so today on the podcast we have jc hertz on discussing her her book learning to breathe fire

00:01:15.100 we're going to talk about what exactly is crossfit some of the workouts that you might see in crossfit

00:01:20.300 we're going to talk about the guy who started crossfit the political philosophy that sort of

00:01:24.420 underlies crossfit that um most people that aren't aware of we're talking the business model of crossfit

00:01:29.420 which i think is very fascinating we're going to talk about why crossfit and other workouts like

00:01:35.560 crossfit are resonating with americans right now and uh jc has some interesting cultural insights

00:01:43.440 on and why that may be why more and more people are turning to crossfit instead of just you doing your

00:01:49.140 typical machine weight machine workout uh it's a fascinating podcast i think you're gonna like it

00:01:54.660 so let's do this jc hertz welcome to the show great to be here all right so your book is called

00:02:03.200 learning to breathe fire it's about the rise of crossfit why did you write a book about crossfit

00:02:11.040 about this sort of this new fitness some would say a fad or a fitness uh trend uh why why that

00:02:17.320 there was such a big difference between what was going on in the workouts the experience of the

00:02:24.840 people who were doing them and what you would see if you just looked through the window at these insane

00:02:31.940 people chucking balls up nine feet in the air so the difference between the experience of the people

00:02:38.320 doing it and what you would just see looking through the window was so huge and the tribal dynamics going on

00:02:45.380 inside the box were so powerful that as someone who does cultural analysis for a living it just

00:02:52.600 seemed very ripe to write about also it's really fun to write about because it's dramatic because it's

00:02:58.280 high intensity anything intense is inherently dramatic so one of my inspirations was the book born to run

00:03:04.800 by chris mcdougall and i gotta take my hat off to chris mcdougall because he made putting one foot in

00:03:10.420 front of the other for 40 miles interesting and that's hard making people competing against each

00:03:17.460 other to like lift up heavy objects and do stuff they don't know that they're going to be able to do

00:03:22.000 or not is relatively easy to make that read really fun and exciting for people yeah you did a great job

00:03:30.900 of that um sort of there's yeah crossfit has sort of this competitive nature in it which makes a great

00:03:35.860 story and you yourself you are are you a crossfit practitioner i am but i will qualify that by saying

00:03:43.180 that i'm an excellent example of what you can do with zero genetic potential for sports so i was kind

00:03:50.020 of dragged into it by my husband my husband started doing it he's like really great athlete so he got you

00:03:55.340 know he drank the kool-aid and he was thrown around all the terminology so i had the experience that many

00:04:00.100 people have which is someone i know will not shut up about this yeah that there's that joke that you

00:04:06.400 know the first rule of fight club is never talk about fight club and the first rule of crossfit is

00:04:10.820 never shut up about crossfit always talk about crossfit right so i figured i had to try it kind

00:04:16.700 of for the sake of my marriage because if i liked it it would be something we both loved that we could

00:04:20.980 share as an interest and if i didn't like it and didn't do at least i would get points or credit

00:04:25.640 for trying it so that was my starting point and what i realized when i started doing it was that

00:04:32.420 for the first time in my life or because i had never been an athlete uh you know i was always

00:04:36.600 smaller slower less powerful i'm a year young in school so i was this shrimpy little kid

00:04:41.900 for the first time in my life someone actually gave a damn about my physical capacity and my progress

00:04:51.480 like i had a coach and i was on a team right so i finally at the age of 38 right you know i got my

00:04:58.240 jersey right i got to be on the team and it resolved a lot of adolescent angst for me and what i find is

00:05:05.260 that there's two people who love crossfit when they join one is the people who played sports in high

00:05:11.000 school and maybe even in college and they thought that they would never have that amazing experience of

00:05:16.020 being on a team and being in the weight room again that that was gone and they get that back

00:05:21.260 and they get their varsity letter back and the other is the people like me who were never part of a sports

00:05:28.040 culture and the athletes were always you know those people who were sitting at different tables in the

00:05:32.260 cafeteria who finally get to experience that esprit de corps and it's great it's it's fantastic even if

00:05:40.200 you come to it a little bit late in life and and those two groups of people generally love the

00:05:47.200 experience of crossfit okay so let's let's talk about what crossfit is because uh before i read the

00:05:53.560 book i had a general idea of what crossfit is was you know olympic lifts combined with you know

00:05:59.380 throwing the wall ball combined you know this is sort of like multifunctional strength endurance speed

00:06:05.180 agility type workout but i i really didn't know the specifics of it um so for those who aren't

00:06:12.060 familiar with crossfit workouts can you kind of explain you know what makes it different from other

00:06:17.240 types of exercise routines and what type of workouts a person will typically encounter

00:06:22.980 so one thing about it is that it's it's functional movement right so a lot of whole body movements

00:06:30.960 not you know sort of single muscle isolation exercises no curls um it's high intensity which

00:06:37.920 means you're going to be really uncomfortable when you're doing it your heart's going to be going

00:06:41.880 you're going full on all out and then it's constantly varied which means you never get the

00:06:50.580 same workout twice which is good it's a different form of torture every day so you combine all these

00:06:56.580 different things you do them at high intensity and you develop you know strength skill coordination

00:07:02.580 all the rest of it and one thing that tends to hook the kind of type a competitive personalities

00:07:07.680 is that it's all measurable right they all of the workouts are sort of named and and you do them and

00:07:13.960 then three months later you do them again and you can see that you've improved and for people who like

00:07:19.220 to see progress you know you are your own avatar you know for anyone who plays you know online role

00:07:26.420 playing games you have these different attributes and you know you sort of build up you are your own

00:07:30.660 avatar right you get to build up in your speed and you get to build up in your strength and you get to

00:07:35.480 build up and you can coordination you can see evidence of all that like hard numerical evidence

00:07:40.820 and that progress in itself is really really motivating so it's not like yeah i went to the gym i did 30

00:07:47.720 minutes of this i did some crunches it's like wow i actually got better uh you know i put five more

00:07:53.500 pounds on each side of the bar or i did this 35 seconds quicker than i did it three months ago and

00:08:01.180 that's really awesome we're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsor hey art of

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00:09:35.420 slash art of man and now back to the show and one thing i noticed about crossfit workouts after i

00:09:42.300 read the book i decided to actually try some the lingo is wad right w-o-d the workout of the day

00:09:49.280 workout of the day and uh the one that i tried out was fran because that was sort of oh my goodness i

00:09:55.060 tried it out and the thing is here's the thing with crossfit like workouts is that they look they're

00:09:59.280 deceptively they look deceptively easy you're like you're like because like okay on paper yeah so

00:10:04.820 tell us like what fran is and um you know what what exercises you do in this and then what it's

00:10:11.640 actually like doing because i can tell you my experience it was horrible yes it is it is horrible

00:10:16.180 it is the most feared workout in crossfit although there's one other workout that i think is actually

00:10:22.180 more miserable for for me but so fran is a simple on paper um a a reputation scheme of 21 15 and then

00:10:32.780 nine of two exercises one is called a thruster where you have 65 pounds for a woman 95 pounds for a man 0.99

00:10:40.360 on a barbell and you you basically take it to your shoulders do a full squat and then you launch upward

00:10:49.160 and propel the barbell all the way over your head and that's one that's called a thruster so you do

00:10:55.060 21 of those 21 pull-ups 15 thrusters 15 pull-ups nine thrusters nine pull-ups and it is awful because

00:11:04.860 it taxes your heart and lungs so you're breathing you're gassed and as you're gassed you're also

00:11:12.540 having to having to move significant quantity of weight and it in it's really really it sucks

00:11:19.700 terrible and and that's why people at crossfit use it as a benchmark because there's this really

00:11:26.480 like depending on how you define it like awesome or completely perverse um pride in being able to

00:11:34.780 endure discomfort right and just be able to step up and your mind is telling you stop stop stop this is

00:11:41.000 this it just feels bad and you manage to keep going yeah yeah so you do this non-stop like it's

00:11:47.620 like it's for time right so it is for time so you don't there's no rest between the different sets

00:11:53.760 and yeah i thought i'd be like okay i can probably do this in 10 minutes and it just 10 minutes turned

00:12:00.480 into 15 and 20 and i had to bring out the the rubber the giant rubber band to put on the pull-up bar to

00:12:07.900 help me yep assisted the pull-ups it was brutal um it was yeah it's not a it's not a workout i would

00:12:13.200 recommend as a starter workout for i and the workout that i love the most is called cindy

00:12:20.040 and it's great for beginners um it's a rep scheme of 5 10 20 so 5 pull-ups 10 push-ups and uh 15 sorry

00:12:30.780 15 squats full air squats and you do a round of that 5 10 15 as many times as you can in 20 minutes

00:12:38.520 so as many rounds as possible and amrap and the thing i love about it was that when i started i

00:12:43.560 could not do many push-ups on my toes actually started doing them on my knees and i couldn't do

00:12:49.920 unassisted pull-ups i had to use the big rubber bands and squats i could do right and i started out

00:12:57.400 doing them modified that way and then over the course of a year worked my way up so that i did

00:13:02.980 more on more push-ups on my toes every single time and i used skinnier and skinnier and skinnier

00:13:08.060 rubber bands on the pull-ups and then no rubber bands on the pull-ups and then i could knock out

00:13:12.400 five pull-ups anytime i wanted and so i could really see myself getting stronger and moving my own body

00:13:19.820 around in this quantitative way and it was a real accomplishment for me and people look at the

00:13:26.840 crossfit games and espn and they think it's for these super humans or for soldiers or firemen

00:13:34.360 but everything can be modified or scaled on i mean even fran right there are people who are doing fran

00:13:40.440 just with the bar right or doing it with rubber bands on the pull-ups and the point is that

00:13:46.100 if you really want to be macho you can try it scaled but if you just want to work within your

00:13:53.000 definition of intensity like what you're capable of you can always start somewhere and i think that

00:13:58.740 that's one of the empowering messages of crossfit especially for women is that you can start somewhere

00:14:05.580 and get really strong you don't have to be this super athlete to even begin and but then you can grow

00:14:13.680 along with it you'll get better all right so speaking of fran because that is i guess like

00:14:18.880 the first crossfit workout i guess in crossfit lore yes in crossfit lore can you talk about the origins

00:14:25.260 of crossfit how this whole thing gets started so crossfit was started by this guy greg glassman who

00:14:32.780 was a personal trainer who was you know super super smart um kind of rebellious um not very good at

00:14:43.460 working for people and he had originally been a gymnast and he wanted to come up with a workout

00:14:50.300 when he was a teenager that would be as taxing as a routine on the rings you know they would get him

00:14:56.080 out of breath because building stamina was you know really important in gymnastics so he started

00:15:03.420 experimenting his dad's garage with all of these different routines and mixing it up and mixing what

00:15:09.700 we call weight lifting with what we call cardio and finding out that actually there's not such a big

00:15:16.960 division after all you know if you move a weight around enough it gets very cardio so and that's

00:15:23.540 what gymnastics is is moving your own weight around very quickly and you know what it's it's pretty taxing

00:15:29.660 on your heart and lungs so when he moved to california and originally to train police officers

00:15:34.780 um he started doing this with personal training clients in santa cruz and this eventually morphed

00:15:40.800 into you know the crossfit gym in santa cruz which was the original crossfit gym of which there are now

00:15:45.820 like 10 000 okay and we'll talk a little about the business model because i think that's really

00:15:50.280 interesting about crossfit but so what role did you speak you taught about you just mentioned that he

00:15:55.340 trained uh leos law enforcement officials um what role did law enforcement military play in

00:16:03.460 popularizing crossfit so first responders i guess broadly defined were some of the first early adopters

00:16:12.480 of crossfit because these kinds of high intensity bursts of strength and speed were what they needed

00:16:19.420 for their job so the archetype of that would be a fireman right and that guy needs to be able to run

00:16:25.100 into a burning building carrying all this gear right the the equipment the oxygen mask the

00:16:30.440 everything up a flight of steps right because you're not taking the elevator you're a firefighter

00:16:34.840 maybe get an unconscious person sling that person over your shoulder and carry them out so you're

00:16:42.120 moving heavy weight quickly and crossfit is perfect for that right so if you're a police officer you have

00:16:50.200 to chase a criminal you might get into a scuffle with one of them um that's that's very taxing it's

00:16:56.460 the kind of high intensity functional movement that crossfit trains also a lot of mma guys right so

00:17:02.500 very very early adoption mixed martial arts for exactly the same reasons it was a great form of

00:17:09.400 conditioning for these things that you would do where you had to move heavy weights where that would

00:17:16.340 simultaneously also get you out of breath uh at the same time we had a you know bunch of people

00:17:21.600 moving into iraq moving into afghanistan military guys deploying they didn't have a lot of expensive

00:17:28.900 equipment out there to work out so you needed something you could improvise just with yourself

00:17:34.280 and then you know fill a bunch of ammo cans with sand and walk them around and or you know there's a

00:17:41.480 great chapter in the book about how these guys in iraq were improvising weight training equipment from

00:17:48.000 like the shells and husks of exploded cars and you know trees and you know anything that you could

00:17:55.540 kind of find to move and you know during fallujah i mean marines were literally you know stepping out

00:18:02.780 into the night to hit a workout of the day just to keep themselves primed for what was going down

00:18:09.740 in fallujah yeah and a lot of the response that i've gotten back from the book i mean from marines

00:18:15.720 and from special forces guys i mean who've told me the book made them cry because it it really did

00:18:22.880 speak to the experience of these people for whom you know high intensity movement was not just a way to

00:18:29.660 look better naked it was survival survival because that's yeah you're right because like one of the

00:18:34.420 emphasis on fitness nowadays is sex right like you exercise so you look good so you can get sex

00:18:41.000 crossfit doesn't really have that ethos i mean i guess um the benefit of it is that yeah you will get

00:18:47.040 in shape but that's not the primary not you'll look good naked but that's not the primary reason why you

00:18:52.760 do crossfit yeah no i mean it's it's a functional it's a functional movement right so it's the difference

00:19:01.500 between sexy because you have the six pack and you can flex your muscles and sexy because you can help

00:19:07.300 someone survive the zombie apocalypse right so in in a way to you know the art of manliness

00:19:14.180 it it it speaks to a kind of deep sexiness which is the ability to help protect people

00:19:25.220 in the real world to actually respond and be responsible for your survival and other people's

00:19:32.960 survival so you know being able to flex your abs is one thing you know being able to actually you know

00:19:41.460 take your lady friend and throw her over your shoulder like a sack of potatoes and run at an eight 1.00

00:19:47.840 minute mile pace i would say that is more sexy more sexy okay so let's talk about uh some of the

00:19:55.200 criticisms of crossfit because it's a it's a hot button topic anytime it gets brought up

00:19:59.620 um and one of the criticisms levied at it is that crossfit is dangerous right especially for beginners

00:20:07.180 um because you know some people say there's not an emphasis on form and because of that you know

00:20:12.720 you're doing these very complex exercises olympic lifts with heavy weight very fast there's a tendency

00:20:18.920 to you can you know injury drop a weight on your head um and then there's also some like

00:20:24.600 health risks that have been in that always gets brought up in the news uh uncle pukey you can

00:20:29.560 talk about that and then like what's the no it's pukey the clown right and then yes uncle rabbo

00:20:35.680 uncle rhabdo rhabdo there's this issue about rhabdomyolysis yeah what is rhabdomyolysis so

00:20:41.840 it's kind of scary it is kind of scary um it it's basically what happens when

00:20:47.400 you do so many repetitions of you know of of a movement of a heavy movement and workout that your

00:20:56.100 your muscle starts to wear down and the particles of muscle are released into the blood you call it

00:21:01.920 muscle damage your kidneys and the the place where we traditionally see the highest rates of rhabdomyolysis

00:21:09.200 which happens in almost every sport but it has very high rates in pre-season football camps

00:21:16.320 both in the pro leagues and unfortunately in high schools and what we learn from that is that it's not

00:21:24.700 the the weakling newbies who get rhabdo like no person off the street who wanders around who doesn't 0.99

00:21:31.080 do sports and you know isn't very strong is going to get rhabdo it's the people who are very strong

00:21:38.160 they're strong enough to exert significant amount of effort but they're also out of shape so they

00:21:44.960 pick up and they go like they just stopped doing it yesterday or last week but they're actually

00:21:51.460 deconditioned so it's usually the difference between what you were able to do three months ago

00:21:57.360 or a year ago and what you're trying to do now and if you throw in a little bit of heat in there

00:22:04.520 um you know it's it it's risky and there are you know there's a risk of of of rhabdo for for athletes

00:22:13.920 and for former athletes who go in and hit it like they never stopped and that's real and how do you

00:22:22.080 how do you prevent that it happens in sports is there anything you do to prevent it the thing you need to

00:22:28.960 prevent it is to check your ego at the door if you think you're billy badass and you used to run

00:22:34.220 triathlons and you go and there's a whole bunch of guys around you who are doing crossfit three or

00:22:40.840 four or five times a week the the the thing you could do about not getting rhabdo is not try to

00:22:47.040 copy exactly what those guys are doing at the weights that they're doing them right when you get

00:22:51.100 gotcha okay what about the uh the criticism about form you know that they're crossfit is teaching

00:22:57.540 all these beginners bad form and they're hurting themselves as a consequence i have never seen a

00:23:04.740 crossfit gym and i've traveled to a whole bunch of them where beginners are not put through a foundations

00:23:12.640 class or an elements class where they're taught the proper form for all of the movements that said

00:23:20.380 as the number of crossfit gyms expands so does the variation in coaching between crossfit gyms

00:23:28.840 right so way back when you know there were only a few crossfit gyms these people were all you know

00:23:34.220 very experienced true believers you know very attentive coaches uh and now i mean there's 10 000

00:23:41.360 crossfit boxes yeah there are there are going to be some bros who go get their level one certifications

00:23:47.000 over a weekend and then they're going to pop up their crossfit boxes and so i think it now behooves

00:23:53.780 the individual to look at the coach profiles and say how long have you been doing this and what were

00:24:01.440 you doing before and you know it's a sport i mean i think you have to look at it like a sport if you

00:24:08.520 go get on a snowboard and you throw yourself down a mountain you're going to get messed up

00:24:14.080 and the the the kind of disconnect in terms of the people saying oh crossfit's dangerous

00:24:19.520 and people say no no no you know you just have to learn what you're doing is between the people who

00:24:26.020 are talking about crossfit in the context of you know exercise like you would get on an elliptical

00:24:32.740 at the gym you know all these gym activities are purposely designed to not have any risk of injury

00:24:40.920 right there's an expectation that if you get on a piece of machinery in a standard gym that the risk

00:24:48.480 of injury is going to be zero versus if you play any kind of sport and i don't care what it is

00:24:53.860 you know whether it's basketball um you know soccer rugby all of these sports have

00:25:01.460 injury rates and if you look at the epidemiology of sports the interesting thing you find is that

00:25:09.620 the injury rates for practice are about a third of the injury rates for competition

00:25:16.140 and so the observation i would make is all right so um the injury rates for practice uh for all of

00:25:25.360 these sports are actually a lot of them are higher than the crossfit injury rate that we think

00:25:30.420 that crossfit has but then when you go to competition it leaps up and i think the critique

00:25:36.440 of crossfit is what happens in a sport when every day is game day right if you're if you're in

00:25:45.760 competition if you're in competition mode like you hit a wad and you want to get on the whiteboard

00:25:49.720 and you're you know you act like you know this is your competition this is your game day

00:25:54.400 you've essentially got a sport where there's no practice it's all competition and the the injury

00:26:02.520 rates for competition for any sport are always going to be higher in in competition than they are for

00:26:07.760 practice okay so the risk factor in crossfit it's a feature not a bug that's like just no i i don't

00:26:14.200 think it's a feature i think that you just have to go into it understanding that this activity has a

00:26:22.420 a skill associated with it a skill level associated with it and so you have to

00:26:26.740 you have to treat it like a skilled activity and understand that you're yeah i have to learn how to

00:26:33.580 do this at a low weight or no weight before i start piling on weight and that requires a little bit of

00:26:40.620 judgment and i think to the degree that there's a legitimate critique of crossfit it's that you have

00:26:48.840 this skilled activity where you have to learn form and technique and all this other stuff at the same

00:26:54.360 time as you have a culture that says high intensity go go go get on the whiteboard gotcha that's where

00:27:03.280 the risk comes from yeah okay um so let's talk about the other criticism that people throw at crossfit

00:27:08.920 and you've we've sort of addressed it already um is this this cultish aspect or tribal aspect of

00:27:14.440 crossfit um yeah so you know crossfitters they call their place where they work out boxes they

00:27:20.180 have their own lingo they even have like a way to dress i mean it's almost like a in the way they

00:27:25.700 talk about it it's like they're you know newly converted evangelist or whatever um why why do you

00:27:34.220 think that i mean is it bad that crossfit is sort of cultish or is it something good that there's

00:27:39.060 sort of like this tribal mentality to and maybe has that contributed to its success

00:27:42.820 oh the tribal dynamics and crossfit have definitely contributed to its success because each box is

00:27:50.560 its own little community right and people they make friends with each other right it's not

00:27:55.080 like when you go to the gym and you kind of work out you put on your earphones and you're all kind of

00:28:00.380 trudging to nowhere on the elliptical kind of alone together right yeah it's a it's a group activity and

00:28:07.320 people bond and they bond for the same reasons that marines bond which is you're getting together

00:28:13.960 to do something very physically difficult and uncomfortable and you're proving to each other

00:28:21.760 and to yourselves that you can all do it and you've got this kind of shared suffering going on

00:28:26.220 because you're all on your backs in the end breathing hard and saying man did that suck oh my god that was 0.92

00:28:32.720 terrible uh and anytime you make people do this and this is outward bound this is like all the stupid 0.74

00:28:39.320 corporate retreat stuff anytime you get a group of people together and you make them do something

00:28:46.260 difficult and physically uncomfortable they're gonna feel like they are a group like they belong

00:28:53.000 together it's like this band of brothers phenomenon in this case it's kind of interesting because it's

00:28:57.640 kind of band of brothers and sisters because it's co-ed um and if you get into you know the military

00:29:05.040 right this is this is the standard experience what's different about crossfit is this is the first

00:29:11.200 thing that allows joanne from human resources to feel like a marine three times a week that's what 1.00

00:29:18.860 makes it sort of new is that people who are not part of these kind of first responder you know elite

00:29:26.880 special forces or marines can have that same kind of group bonding experience and that's that's

00:29:34.940 really different yeah i'd like to get your insight onto this um why do you think because you're you do

00:29:41.040 this for a living you analyze culture and uh i mean why do you think crossfit has resonated like

00:29:47.840 it's feeling it's struck a nerve in our culture um why is that why is it that people are drawn to that

00:29:54.280 and feel like they need to be a part of that i mean what's going on do you think well i think there's

00:29:59.320 two things one is just it flat out works in terms of the physical result so you have a whole bunch of

00:30:06.360 people who've tried this you've tried that have kind of bumped along from workout to workout different

00:30:11.800 fads and they find something where they get physically strong and they drop weight and it actually works

00:30:19.620 so you can't really underestimate the impact of that on the other hand you have this kind of

00:30:29.260 combination of this kind of tribal social experience and and and you know rite of passage group bonding

00:30:38.120 marine hooah stuff and also a sense of kind of progress and competence that i can actually do

00:30:46.500 something that i can be you know responsible for myself in an emergency this whole mystique of the

00:30:52.300 unknown and the unknowable and this is part of crossfit is this whole mythos that you never know

00:30:58.380 what life's going to throw at you so you want to be strong and kind of every way and prepared for it

00:31:04.620 and my joke that i make in the book is that you know secretly every crossfitter believes that the

00:31:10.080 people in his box will be the ones to survive the zombie apocalypse right so there's the sense of

00:31:17.140 being competent and capable and tough and in a fairly comfortable plush consumer society i think that

00:31:28.040 this speaks to something primal in people that they want to be you know stronger and more self-sufficient

00:31:35.280 and you see that play out in a whole bunch of places that are not fitness i think if you look at the

00:31:40.400 sort of maker movement right and that could be you know i want to make my own quadcopter or it could be

00:31:46.140 you know the people who are doing their kind of artisanal charcuterie or you know cheese making

00:31:52.020 pickle making jam making nouveau like who would who'd have thunk that like ball preserves would be

00:31:59.420 like the thing and so i think people generally want to feel more self-sufficient and capable and

00:32:05.840 competent and crossfit is one of the ways that you can achieve that in a very measurable fairly quick

00:32:16.680 you know high gratification way that you can feel stronger and i think that that's a general that's

00:32:22.600 something underneath the culture that people feel like a little bit nervous about the fact that we're

00:32:28.100 all hostage to these technologies that we can't see um and we don't know what it's doing to our brains

00:32:35.700 that we're kind of checking in on facebook all the time uh and our cars can't be fixed by a regular

00:32:41.360 human and so it's this kind of return to a sense of ruggedness and resilience which is a big part of

00:32:49.440 like the american frontier culture that's just it's buried below the surface but it's still there

00:32:54.580 yeah yeah and i think too you mentioned the the tribal as i think like i'm a big believer that

00:33:01.540 human beings are social creatures by nature like we want like we're wired for that and you said like

00:33:07.780 most gyms or way society is set up it's you're sort of alone together right and i think crossfit

00:33:13.700 provides here's a a community like a tribe that you can belong to where you actually interact with

00:33:18.380 people and you know the person and i think that's another big and you don't have to schedule it that's

00:33:23.340 the other thing is that people forget you know what we remember about high school and college

00:33:27.120 socializing that was so great was that didn't you didn't really have to plan it you didn't have to

00:33:32.640 arrange uh like a grown-up play date right to be with people and you could just hang out and it's that

00:33:40.940 third place right where you don't have to make such a huge effort to to be around people that you get

00:33:48.820 along with that you have shared experiences with you know people go they hit a wad and they'll like

00:33:53.920 grab a drink afterwards or they'll just hang out and shoot the breeze and you don't have to make such

00:33:59.800 a monumental effort you can just hang out and i think that's a little bit of a relief for people

00:34:06.620 too i mean it's great that there's communities that kind of band together they do fundraisers they do

00:34:10.880 charity stuff all the rest of it but part of it's just nice to be able to hang out with people

00:34:16.920 that aren't necessarily your co-workers because that's the default now is if you want to hang out

00:34:22.120 it's the people at work but sometimes you know maybe you don't want that to be your primary social

00:34:28.880 group maybe you want some other group of people who do other things to be your social group very

00:34:36.040 interesting all right so let's talk a little bit about the the business model behind crossfit because

00:34:40.580 it's really interesting um and i think it's plays a big role in how quickly it's spread um so how does

00:34:48.160 the crossfit business model work and i guess you can talk a bit about the sort of the libertarian

00:34:55.040 mindset that sort of uh filters out into that business model so greg glassman was the kind of guy who

00:35:05.280 really didn't want anyone kind of up the chain telling him the ins and outs of what to do what

00:35:12.420 to charge you know rules here's the color your t-shirt on down and so when lots of people wanted

00:35:20.040 to have a crossfit gym he made this conscious decision not to make it a franchise but to actually

00:35:26.440 make it into something he calls the affiliate model and the affiliate model is you have to be a certified

00:35:32.140 crossfit coach and this is how crossfit makes most most of their money is by certified coaches by

00:35:38.120 having people learn how to be crossfit coaches and you have to pay an affiliate fee every year which is

00:35:44.360 something like three thousand dollars and after that you decide when you're going to be open you know you

00:35:51.640 you are the the captain of your ship right so every crossfit box is a small business run by someone who

00:35:59.460 sets all their own rules and there's no other revenue sharing there's not like oh you know open

00:36:06.500 a juice bar or sell protein powder or equipment or apparel or anything and that gets cut back to some

00:36:12.740 central organization like you know you would in a regular chain gym if you want to sell t-shirts

00:36:19.500 sell t-shirts crossfit hq doesn't really have anything more to do with it so it allows people to be

00:36:25.400 more autonomous and this fits in with glassman's general political philosophy which is you know

00:36:32.840 sort of a radical libertarian you know competition even to the point of if a crossfit gym wants to

00:36:39.700 open right next door to you there's nothing stopping it and the answer to that and there are some people

00:36:44.840 who are really upset right who've had crossfit gyms for a long time and saying hey you know what are you

00:36:49.700 guys doing to protect us from you know the fact that someone could open up right next to us and

00:36:55.440 the crossfit hq response to that is if you're a great gym with great coaches whose athletes are happy

00:37:02.360 you don't have to worry about that just be excellent and you don't have to worry about competition so

00:37:07.740 it really is darwinistic in that way and you know the position there is that crossfit hq doesn't

00:37:18.060 quote unquote want to protect mediocrity like if a gym is not doing well it's losing members

00:37:22.540 coaches aren't that great and everyone wants to go next door that first gym probably shouldn't be in

00:37:29.000 business very interesting yeah i mean so that gives each crossfit box a different feel and so i guess

00:37:35.620 that may be um a suggestion would be if you're interested in crossfit like check out the different

00:37:40.620 boxes before you commit to one because you might find one that fits more with your personality

00:37:46.340 absolutely people say oh well there's five crossfit gyms within two miles of my house where do i go

00:37:52.260 and i i find myself feeling a lot like a college counselor you know it's it's like okay well you

00:37:59.340 have to visit them all and then you also have to figure out what your goals are um if you want uh

00:38:07.580 to if you want what i like which is you know i call it cheers with barbells you know that little place

00:38:13.940 where everybody knows your name um you probably don't want to go to a gigantic hanger size crossfit

00:38:21.300 gym um where with 600 members right because that's that's huge um and it's not going to feel as as

00:38:28.940 familiar and it's not going to have a stronger community however if you want if you are a

00:38:33.900 competitive athlete already or you want to be a competitive athlete or you want to be a crossfit

00:38:38.560 competitor and you need a olympic lifting coach and you you know want to work on gymnastics i mean

00:38:45.600 those large boxes have more to offer in terms of specialized training um and so you you know you

00:38:53.940 have to figure out what your goals are and then also what the experience level is of the coaches and

00:38:58.340 not just the experience level but what their preferences are because a lot of these people

00:39:03.020 come from sports you know some used to be gymnasts some used to be power lifters and weight lifters

00:39:08.860 and you know there are some crossfit gyms run by guys who are old power lifting guys and it kind of

00:39:14.880 makes me smile because 20 years ago these guys would be running a barbell club and this is just like

00:39:21.220 their barbell club except in between barbells people are jumping on boxes yeah but that works for guys who

00:39:28.460 really love barbells gotcha um well here's the thing to point out too is that crossfit is open

00:39:35.260 source right like you don't have to necessarily be a part of a box to do crossfit workouts correct

00:39:40.780 you can go you can go to crossfit.com and you can look at all of the tutorials to the videos of all

00:39:47.240 the movements and you can get the workout of the day from the main page and you can try to do it

00:39:51.360 so there's people in there they just they start a like a little crossfit box in their own garage like

00:39:56.380 just for them right yeah a lot of people do it i mean in the backyard we renovated our um little

00:40:03.980 garage and built a bigger garage and you know my husband works out there a lot i call it shed fit

00:40:10.120 um and yeah a lot of a lot of people do that either because they're still you know far away from

00:40:17.560 a crossfit gym or because they don't feel like paying for a crossfit gym they feel like they can do

00:40:23.100 it themselves or there's a group of folks that at a regular gym that'll let them do that kind of

00:40:28.320 stuff who just want to get together and do that kind of stuff very interesting okay um so one of

00:40:34.880 the fascinating things that one of the interesting chapters in your book was about the businesses or

00:40:40.100 the industries that have grown up around crossfit because like crossfit hasn't been around all that

00:40:44.260 long i mean when do you think a decade right um but in that time there's just businesses that didn't

00:40:51.320 exist that now exist uh can you talk a bit about some of those businesses so the number one would

00:40:56.940 probably be rogue fitness um which you know i think the shorthand for people who aren't familiar

00:41:01.880 with rogue it's like the apple computer of barbells you know they have this combination of like

00:41:06.660 technical expertise and then this kind of design obsession about making the best possible you know

00:41:13.860 gymnastic rings for the people who like to do muscle ups and there's there's a really interesting bit

00:41:20.480 in the book about the rogue factory and how they're actually doing manufacturing there in ohio right

00:41:28.960 so bringing manufacturing back to the united states um but doing it in a smarter way and doing it in a

00:41:35.580 way that where there's a lot of back and forth between you know the factory and the customers the

00:41:41.520 people who actually use the stuff um so for people who are gearheads there's a lot about you know the

00:41:47.600 the kind of the metallurgy of the barbells and i never thought that i would sort of geek out on

00:41:53.160 steel but you know i really caught um bill henniger the guy who owns road his sort of infectious

00:41:59.660 enthusiasm for you know like how you use steel in different ways and how the property of the metal

00:42:08.080 affects the performance of this different athletic equipment so there's there's some gearhead stuff in

00:42:13.820 there and then all the way from that which is literally steel to you know things like beyond the whiteboard

00:42:19.940 and all these apps that are um helping people track their performance um you know all the kind of online

00:42:26.640 stuff and you know apparel companies to say nothing of reebok uh which i mean the the nano which is their

00:42:33.940 crossfit shoe that's their best-selling shoe across the board for for anything and so crossfit sort of

00:42:41.880 saved reebok after they lost the nfl yeah and it seems like reebok is sort of embracing that sort

00:42:48.920 of like alternative fitness sport right so crossfit and there's like the spartan race they're doing

00:42:55.300 stuff with um which i think is yeah they're they're that's really interesting i think it's the idea of

00:43:00.600 and this is again sort of an art art of manliness thing it's the idea that the athlete that you want to

00:43:06.900 aspire to be is actually the better version of yourself it's not the celebrity million dollar

00:43:15.940 athlete on a billboard in times square it's actually the person that you could be in six months

00:43:22.160 if you really pulled out the stops very cool um so let's talk about the crossfit games because this

00:43:28.520 is where in your book where a lot of the the drama and the tension um existed because i i couldn't like

00:43:34.260 whenever i started reading like the crossfit games i couldn't stop reading because i wanted to see

00:43:37.120 what happened yes um it's sort of like their version of the olympics how do the crossfit games work

00:43:44.580 so the crossfit games is this really interesting process where there's tiers of qualifying events

00:43:53.300 right so the the baseline qualifying events called the open it's five separate workouts anyone can enter

00:43:59.480 and they had over 200 000 people last year participate and the workouts are announced on a

00:44:06.040 wednesday or thursday and then people have until the end of sunday to do the workout and they can do it

00:44:13.020 at a crossfit gym with people who are you know signed up as judges to you know authenticate their results

00:44:18.580 or they can do it uh they can videotape it post it someone will count their reps and they will enter their

00:44:25.360 time so anyone can do it of those they take the top 30 men 30 women and 30 teams in every region

00:44:34.200 and those people go to regionals which is a much more serious event for like more badass athletes to

00:44:41.900 actually compete to get the top slots in regionals and those people go to the crossfit games which is

00:44:48.280 the kind of international level competition with athletes from around the world and the fun thing about it is

00:44:55.240 it in some ways is closer to you know the original sort of greek olympics than it is to the modern day

00:45:01.820 olympics and there's just all this ritual of sport and one of the big themes in the book is the connection

00:45:08.260 between the kind of ritual intensity of crossfit and the genesis of sport in ancient human society

00:45:14.840 so part of the book's quest and what makes it fun to read for people aren't necessarily fitness

00:45:19.940 enthusiasts is this question of what is sport why why did we come up with it in the first place

00:45:26.400 why would a bunch of people run out onto a field set rules and expend calories gratuitously when food

00:45:32.960 is scarce like why do we do that and why do we still do that and so the book becomes this investigation

00:45:39.400 into the the ritual power of athletics and the sort of genesis of athletics in in the history of

00:45:48.280 human beings as a species and that mystery that kind of cultic practice the ritual of athletics

00:45:55.360 is something you see in spades in the crossfit games and that's part of what makes it so mythic

00:46:03.080 um to to to view and also to write about my editor was teasing me about the sort of because the game

00:46:09.700 sagas kind of take on this mythic tone so he's like it's like barbells at the gates of troy

00:46:14.560 um but it really goes to that um sort of the ritual sacrifice of human energy that defines sport and

00:46:23.600 this kind of primal competition which is very close even though it's on television right and even though

00:46:30.920 it's a very modern online social media phenomenon it's very close to how sport began yeah i love that

00:46:38.380 that last section in your book about that sort of sport as a an embodiment of you know yeah ritualistic

00:46:45.720 living sack like we're we make ourselves human sacrifice living sacrifices in a sense yeah we

00:46:50.720 sacrifice our energy because when we're hunter gatherers we would sacrifice our animals to our

00:46:55.340 gods so that we would have the animal again in the future and that's what sacrifice is about it's kind

00:46:59.360 of paying it forward and we sacrifice when we hunted an animal two things one was the animal and the

00:47:06.020 other is the energy it would have taken to hunt that animal because hunting takes a lot of energy

00:47:10.640 and then we become neolithic farmers and we still want to sacrifice an animal to our gods because

00:47:16.180 that's what neolithic religion is all about but then we have the animal right there in the pen 0.98

00:47:20.560 because we've domesticated animals because we're farmers and this is when things like foot races

00:47:25.940 become associated with religious festivals so we sacrifice the energy of the hunt alongside of the

00:47:32.860 animal and the original olympics the foot race started at the end of the at the finish line

00:47:38.560 the winner would actually take the torch and go up the steps to the statue of zeus and light

00:47:44.060 not an ornamental thing to say yay we're in the olympics but it actually was the animal it was the

00:47:49.400 burnt offering so the energy of the hunt was reunited with the animal as a form of sacrifice

00:47:56.680 and that's the sort of deep mystery of sport that we we deep down kind of know but we've forgotten on

00:48:04.920 a conscious level i love it i love that sort of stuff um okay so last question what do you think

00:48:11.960 the future of crossfit is um you know will it continue to get more and more popular or have we

00:48:16.180 reached peak crossfit i think that it will continue to grow and simultaneously that people will talk about

00:48:24.960 it less and less i think it's like yoga right so 10 years ago everyone was talking about yoga

00:48:31.840 and now no one's talking about it but everybody does it and it's the same about jogging running in

00:48:38.860 the 70s right there was a point in the 70s when running and jogging was all anyone could talk about

00:48:45.620 yeah and then more and more people started doing it but less and less people were talking about it and

00:48:51.200 i think crossfit and things like crossfit become like that we realized that this is a it's it works

00:49:01.300 it has all these benefits you know more and more and more and more people do do it but fewer and fewer

00:49:08.780 and fewer people you know sort of talk about it which is why i think it's a good time to have a book

00:49:14.100 out about it because the history of it is very interesting and already the number of new people

00:49:21.080 doing it completely swamps the people who are around back in those early years who actually remember

00:49:25.900 what happened and so what i've tried to do with learning to breathe fire is sort of do this kind

00:49:31.540 of deep anthropology but also to chronicle sort of the lore for all the people who you know don't know

00:49:38.500 how it began or don't know what was going on in iraq when people first started doing it out there as as

00:49:46.020 as military um and it's it's a really fascinating history it is all right well jayzy hurts thank you

00:49:52.160 so much for your time it's been fascinating and a pleasure and uh learning to breathe fire is on

00:49:57.380 facebook so if you search for it on facebook we've got a very very lively uh and passionate reader

00:50:02.680 community and we have a lot of crossfit humor we come up with uh self-deprecating quizzes

00:50:07.740 about crossfit in case you think that people who do crossfit never make fun of themselves

00:50:12.100 all right so that's all just search learning to breathe fire on facebook very good all right well

00:50:17.180 thank you so much jayce thank you our guest today was jayce hurts she is the author of learning to

00:50:22.380 breathe fire and you can find that book on amazon.com and you can also check out her facebook page it's

00:50:27.820 facebook.com learning to breathe fire where she posts updates about the crossfit community in the

00:50:34.100 crossfit world a lot of fascinating stuff well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness

00:50:41.080 podcast for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at

00:50:45.240 art of manliness.com we have a store store.artofmanliness.com we got a really cool camp coffee mug there we've

00:50:52.700 got tie clips posters t-shirts lots of great stuff if you're a big art of manliness fan it's a place

00:50:58.400 where you can get some swag um i'd really appreciate if you pick something up uh your purchases will

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00:51:10.380 and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - September 26, 2014

#83： Crossfit & the Primal Future of Fitness With J. C. Herz

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