A NOTE ABOUT NOSTALGIA AND PROGRESS

You can read announcements and updates in our weekly newsletter HERE. Below are TJ’s thoughts for the week.

What does My Wedding have to do with Hero Workouts?

Past, Present and Future

I feel like I’ve shirked my responsibilities as gym owner by not communicating something like this sooner.

Last week, one of our great long-time members asked me something along the lines of this:

"What do you think about offering an old-school CrossFitTM class once per week, with “Hero” workouts etc."

Side note: hero workouts are super tough, long workouts named after military and other heroes in the world of CrossFitTM. For many years, we were a CrossFitTM affiliate, but we no longer are.

This is not the first time a suggestion like this one has come up in the last ten years, and I completely understand why. The energy in the room during those types of workouts was electric for some people. Not so much for others.

I want to talk about why we evolved, and I also want to write about the struggles we’ve had in not being able to crack the code that philosophers and scientists also can’t crack: 

How to bring nostalgia to present-day life.

Today

Recently I wrote about Zombie Gyms and the need to evolve.

I would love to say that we consciously made decisions in the last few years to move to the model we use today, but that’s just not true. We evolved because of data—quantitative and qualitative.

Group Fitness in 2019 made up 51% of our revenue. In 2021 it was 29%.

Programming and Open Gym memberships have doubled in revenue since 2019.

Personal Training has increased by 25%, with half the number of coaches as we had in 2019.

We have done next to nothing to actively create these changes, other than respond to what clients and members were requesting, before, during, and after they joined us.

This brings me to the original question: How 'bout that Old School CrossFitTM-style workout?

Why We Evolved

Nobody wants to coach those workouts.

Interacting with an athlete whose sole goal is to finish a workout or be damned, even with crappy movement, isn’t fun for a coach.

Of course we “shouldn't” let people move poorly or behave badly, and we “should” step in and stop them in the middle of their reps. We “should” take away their wall ball or barbell and reason with them. Because, as professionals, we “should” be the gatekeepers to members’ health and well being.

Right?

After 20 years of doing this stuff, here is what I have personally encountered and witnessed happening to my staff during competitions, hero workouts, or other community fitness events.

Members have broken into tears and quit on the spot. Coaches have been cursed at and physically pushed aside or threatened. Even worse than that? Coaches have been waved away and dismissed like fitness servants by the self-appointed exercise nobility in the heat of their moment.

Would you want that job?

People get hurt.

You've heard me say it before. Dopamine increases 100x faster than tissue.

Once certain people get that hit, they will run through brick walls for it. It's not until they can't brush their teeth or put their socks on the next day that they even think about it. 

Fitness addiction is no joke. And when moderately fit people take on a dumpster-fire workout for which they are physically unprepared, it can be downright scary.

Developing the ability to do pull-ups, snatches, and kettlebell swings doesn’t give you physical license to then do those movements by the hundreds in a single sitting, under time pressure. Not even on a sunny Memorial Day because you're feeling patriotic and the workout is “Murph.”

We just couldn’t stomach it any longer.

The time has come and gone

The market for dumpster-fire workouts is dying.

There's a reason it's so hard to find CrossFitTM competitions or throwdowns or even Hero workouts at any of the 15000 CrossFitTM gyms in the world, compared to five years ago when they sprang up all the time. It’s not just because of Covid.

The demand just isn't there.

People are looking for health and longevity for the next 20-50 years.

Chalk handprints, sweat angels, bloody party parts, and screaming obscenities have literally cost me members who either burnt out or ran screaming from the room. More importantly, that sort of intensity-or-bust approach to fitness is unsustainable, and its most ardent participants generally aren’t doing much X number of years later. 

Our Current Approach

Once you've gained the basics in strength, lean-body mass, and aerobic capacities, you might be ready to access the varied intensities of fitness.

I truly believe that we have become the best local collective of fitness professionals who provide coaching in strength development, body-composition change, consistency, and accountability.

We have listened and evolved and will continue to show up for this community and provide you with what you ask for and what we know will work.

The Lament of Nostalgia

Our wedding (mine and Allison’s) was something to behold.

Multi-generational Irish Catholics colliding with Ashkenazi Jews in a super-fun celebration with Jersey bookmakers dancing maniacally alongside Ivy League hedge-fund managers.

Dartmouth meets Jersey Shore. San Francisco meets Jerusalem. Tahoe unites everyone.

It was a time and place that will be forever remembered by those who attended.

Awesome and memorable, but not repeatable.

In the old days at the gyms when we had a large group doing a monster of a workout, it was fucking unbelievable.

The energy, camaraderie, and community was unmatched.

People sharing mutual suffering created connections and dopamine surges that changed us all.

It was a Super Church meets Super Bowl, except we were pastor, parishioner, and player, all of them.

Over the past few days, I’ve reminisced with many vets about those times, mostly because I wanted to get their perspective.

Yes, it was magical. More than that, they want it back.  

We would have kept feeding that beast if we could have. Unfortunately people grew weary. Beatdown workouts slowly became less attended. I asked some long-time members: “Why did you stop coming to those sorts of workouts?”

“It’s just too much for me right now.”

We’ve listened. We’ve done our homework, and we have data.

Which got us to where we are now: helping more people with more consistency than we ever have.

This evolution was the best thing for our members and for us, and at the same time, I, too, am wistful for the past.

The good news is that there are people and groups in the gyms now who are finding the exact same energy and connection as we offered in 2014.

What’s different is that they are getting a more clear message from us now: consistency, moderation, and individualization.

I think about our wedding often, and not just because of the pictures on my nightstand. Thinking about it brings me joy every single time.

I hope you can think back on those old gym days and find joy as well, and then come back into the same arena and find strength, hope, and desire.

We still get all the benefits of showing up, even when it’s not the same as it used to be, because nothing is.

~TJ