Why I CrossFit (and Church)

For the last 12 years of my life I've paid much more attention to my physical well being than I have at any point in my life before that.  I remember the day I stepped on the scale at the doctor's office at the age of 25 to see it reading 240 pounds.  I remember the day my grandmother in her most well-intentioned but direct way told me that I was (how do I say this delicately?) more well-endowed than my sister.  Not long after that Rita and I found out that she was pregnant with our first child. 

It was a perfect storm of sorts for me.  I was terribly overweight, out of shape, and even my grandmother was making fun of my body.  Something had to change.  I went on Weight Watchers and lost nearly 40 pounds.  Then I gained a lot of it back.  Then I lost it again.  Then I started exercising in addition to dieting and I maintained my weight.  Then I gained some back and lost it again.  I started lifting weights at the YMCA with a friend, which made me feel stronger but when I had to start lifting on my own, I found my motivation lacking.

So about nine months ago, in hopes of getting stronger and more fit I walked into our local CrossFit gym (affectionately known as a "box") to see if this was what I was looking for.  From the first free introduction class on a Saturday morning I was hooked.  It was seven minutes of pure agony that made my hour long workouts at the YMCA seem like a Sunday nap.  I knew I was in for pain when the coach said to all the newbies that the "warm up" would be worse than our regular workout.  He was right.

But I came back.  I signed up for the On Ramp class to get introduced to the basics of CrossFit, and then I started joining regular workouts.  I had found something that I thought would make a huge difference in my pursuit of physical fitness.  And in the process I found some interesting parallels between what was happening in the gym and what happens in my life in the church.  The same reasons that I loved my church were the reasons I kept coming back to CrossFit:

• I needed a coach.  I needed someone to look at me from outside and evaluate what I was doing.  I needed help figuring out when my form would break down.  I needed another set of eyes to watch me as I learned how to lift in ways I'd never lifted before.  Sometimes I need the reminder not to burn through the beginning of a long workout too quickly.  Other times I need the coach to stand beside me and refuse to let me drop the bar even though everything inside me wants to.  In other words, I found that the coaches function like I want to function as a pastor in my church.  I pray for my words to be well timed and provide encouragement to those who are tired and challenge to those who need to be stirred up.  There are times that I want to just provide another set of eyes to someone in my church so that they can see the ways that God has been working in their lives.
• The Community.  When I worked out at the Y I drove to the gym by myself, put in my workout by myself with my music playing, and then walked out the door alone.  I've found that the sense of shared experience at CrossFit is a huge piece of what makes it meaningful to me.  We talk before a workout, then we experience the shared blood, sweat and tears of a workout, and when it's over we bump fists or shake hands and stack up weights together to get ready to do it all over again the next day.  While CrossFit supports my quest for physical fitness, the church provides the same sense of community for my spiritual fitness.  We share that Sunday morning experience or a small group environment together and when we do, we're taken to a place where we are no longer individuals, but where we are the church united in worship of our God as we move closer to him.  I grow more as a follower of Jesus in community than I ever would on my own.
• Fitness.  I've never been much of an athlete.  I played sports as a kid, but as I got older my life had gotten more sedentary.  CrossFit has allowed me the chance to compete (albeit against myself) again in a way that has felt more purposeful than spending 30 minutes on an elliptical machine ever did.  As a result I'm more physically fit and capable than I've probably ever been in the past.  I needed a push in this direction, and CrossFit provided it for me.  But more important than my physical fitness is my spiritual fitness.  CrossFit specifically doesn't train for specialization, but for being generally fit and capable of doing more work.  I think spiritual fitness is much the same.  Sometimes I think we can specialize in one area of our spiritual fitness to the neglect of others, and that doesn't prepare us well for actual life.  We need to be ready for the spiritual demands of a life that often presents us with challenges that we've never seen before, and my spiritual fitness community (a.k.a. my church) gives me the place to work out that fitness.