“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek.”- Joseph Campbell
LIFESTYLE
The Case For Hosting A Pride Workout
June 28th marks the anniversary of Stonewall Uprising, a multi-day rebellion that is credited for being a tipping point that propelled the modern LGBTQ civil rights movements.
The short of it: The push-back was a response to the regular raids and harassment the queer community faced in communal spaces (like at gay bars), as well as in public.
Society at large commemorates these activists’ bravery with a month-long celebration, rainbow-washed paraphernalia, workshops, memorials, and the age-old tradition of keeping our introverted asses home and watching Golden Girls reruns.
But in CrossFit, we honor this iconic moment in history — and celebrate the LGBTQ community as a whole — with a pride workout, known aptly as a ‘Stonewall’.
“Stonewall” is a15 Minute AMRAP that can be completed as an individual, as well as a partner, workout.
AMRAP 15 Minutes:
6 Squat Cleans 135 (Marsha) / 95 (Sylvia)
28 Double-Unders
6 Shoulder-to-Overheads 135 / 95 pounds
9 Burpees
The girls: While traditional CrossFit Rx workout weights are demarcated as ‘men’ and ‘women’, the suggested loading weights for Stonewall named ‘Marsha’ and ‘Sylvia’.
Why? To honor the two transgender women of color who led the uprising: Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera.
“If you are a gym owner or programmer, hosting a Pride workout is an opportunity to show your members that being inclusive is important to you,” says 2018 CrossFit Games athlete Meredith Root, founder of Tactic Functional Nutrition.
For the LGBTQ+ members of your gym, the power of this inclusive display cannot be understated.
“CrossFit’s methodology is marketed as being inclusive of and for all people,” says Root.
The first sentence of the CrossFit Training Guide, after all, states: From the beginning, the aim of CrossFit has been to forge a broad, general, and inclusive fitness.
“But on the ground and online it can feel like CrossFit is only for a very specific crowd,” says Root. More specifically, a crowd that does not include queer, questioning, and gender-expansive folks.
Indeed, while the people who are prejudiced against queer people are just a small portion of the CrossFit community, they are very vocal online. (Case and point).
“This very vocal online minority scares queer and non-binary people away, and makes them feel like the sport isn’t for them,” she says.
But it is.
People all across the gender and sexuality spectrum can benefit from safe, effective evidence-based fitness, community, and sound nutrition.
“Hosting a Pride workout is also an opportunity to educate members who hold a more negative opinion about the queer community or about Pride Month as a whole,” says Root. And maybe even soften those opinions, she says.
It takes guts to stand for something: A lot of gym owners shy away from programming “Stonewall” or otherwise hosting Pride events because they are worried that some community member is going to say that sexuality doesn’t belong in the gym.
But, it’s not really about sexuality, says Root. “At the end of the day it’s about love and community,” she says.
It’s about loving thy neighbor.
“As much as I understand that being a business owner is hard, programming a Pride workout helps your community inside the gym and shows the greater LGBTQ+ community outside of the gym that your space is inclusive,” says two-times CrossFit Games athlete Meg Lewis-Reardon, founder of Wags & Weights.
“People who have never stepped foot in a CrossFit gym may hear that you’re hosting a Pride workout and feel like they can give it a try,” she says.
In other words, the idea that hosting a pride WOD is bad for business is hogwash.
Inclusivity after June: Supporting LGBTQ+ portion of the CrossFit community doesn’t stop being important when you flip the calendar page.
“A CrossFit box can and should work to be inclusive 365 days per year,” says Root.
What does that look like, exactly? For starters, that means not tolerating hate speed amongst your membership or coaches.
It also means doing little things that aren’t actually so little. For example:
hanging a Pride flag
putting a rainbow bumper sticker on your front door
including a pronoun section on intake forms
de-gendering single-stall bathrooms
hiring queer couches
putting people of all genders on your marketing materials and walls
The bottom line: “LGBTQ+ people are still being denied human rights and getting killed for being LGBTQ+,” says Root. “Inclusivity and visibility matters as much, if not more, now than it ever has.”
In one million ways both big and small, CrossFit has the opportunity to provide inclusivity, support, and invisibility — and should. Not just because the sport posits inclusivity at its center, but because doing so can literally save lives.
SPONSORED
Does That Red Light Therapy Device Actually Work?
You’ve seen elite athletes like Brooke Wells, Sara Sigmundsdottir, and many more posting about the MOVE+ Pro, and how much it has helped them in their recovery.
The MOVE+ Pro can be a helpful tool, whether you’re:
As one of the last Semifinal articles of this year, we are going to show you which event was the fittest overall based on average test finishes.
After gathering average event finishes, each Semifinal region will receive a rank between 1-7 and corresponding points determined by their placing compared to other regions.
The Semifinal region with the lowest amount of points will be considered the fittest.
Cole Sager, Noah Ohlsen, and Bjorgvin Karl Gudmundsson Head to the CrossFit Games for 10th Consecutive Year
The sport of CrossFit wouldn’t be what it is today without the trifecta that is Cole Sager, Noah Ohlsen, and Bjorgvin Karl Gudmundsson (in no particular order). These athletes have qualified for the CrossFit Games 10 years in a row, which is an impressive feat, seeing as the sport has only increased its level of difficulty and skill set immensely over the last decade.
The 2023 NOBULL CrossFit Games will be a momentous occasion for these athletes who are approaching their early to mid 30s, which is a relatively older age, compared to many of the newcomers on the scene who are fresh out of their teens.
CrossFit in the last decade has changed in many aspects, but something remains constant, and that’s the relentless work put in by Sager, Ohlsen, and Gudmundsson. While they all began the sport for similar reasons, the reason they continue to push now, ten years later differs for each of them.
Sager, a father and husband, retells the story of his son who was born three months premature and spent months in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), “It was one of those scenarios that just put perspective and brought perspective to everything. It put competing in the place that it should be and brought a fullness to the picture of life.”
He also shares the recent loss of his best friend Cody, who was actually the one to introduce him to the sport more than ten years ago now.
When he passed, “It was almost like meeting the beginning again. And so there have been some really deep, heartfelt reasons that kind of came up in the season and in a hard way it’s been a gift for me and my CrossFit journey, obviously hard in life circumstances though,” said Sager.
Ohlsen, 32, known as one of the most friendly and welcoming elite athletes in the sport, speaks to the pressure of coming out on the competition floor after training in a “safe, comfortable environment.”
“The moment of high pressure and high stakes of the Games and the qualifiers and anything else that comes along with that they’re definitely tougher to deal with and I think some people that haven’t competed at that high of a level may not be able to fully grasp what it feels like to be a couple of days out from, quote unquote, the most important weekend of your life,” said Ohlsen.
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Is today one of those “blah” days where you aren’t motivated to do much of anything, let alone work out? Use these five tips to motivate yourself to go workout.
Celebrating a PR, hosting a fundraiser, this, that, or otherwise. Send us a tip.
⚾️ Congratulations to Jeff Welsh from CrossFit Mile Zero in Key West, FL for helping out the Conch Baseball Academy with their training and getting a shoutout in the local paper.
Congratulations to Games athlete Seung-yeon Choi from Korea on the 185 pound/83.9kg snatch.
Semifinalist Isaac Campbell from CrossFit Verdant took functional fitness to the next level, climbing three miles up Cervidae Peak in Boise County, ID.
🐷 Worlds Strongest Man, Mitchell Hooper, spends some time flipping the pig at HWPO HQ as Mat Fraser reflects on his first experiences with the 660 pound/299kg implement introduced to CrossFit in 2015.
Fraser: “This thing destroyed me.”
😂 Mexico is introducing new spectators to CrossFit, one local competition at a time.
CrossFit Boston Iron & Grit in Boston, MAis hosting a cornhole tournament on Saturday, July 22nd starting at 5pm at the West Roxbury affiliate.
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