Do you go to a good crossfit gym?

I am Sorry!

Before we get into today's article, I owe you an apology. I did not have this ready for release on Sunday morning. I value every single person who opens these emails and I want to make sure I am not wasting your time. That is why it's being sent out Monday morning instead of Sunday. I easily could have scribbled some words together and got it sent out on Sunday but that is not fair to you all. As a thank you for understanding, I am offering $50 off 1:1 coaching for this week only (ending 6/18 at 8 am).

If you are unaware, the barrier to entry to start, run & own a CrossFit gym is extremely low. You need to be L1 certified, which is a weekend course. Besides that, you just need equipment and a space to work out. That is it. For such a highly skilled and demanding fitness style, it's stupidly easy to start a gym. This is why you see such high turnover in the gym or members constantly coming and going.

Signs of a good gym

Being in a good gym can change someone's life. This is not an exaggeration. A good gym can be the reason someone wakes up every day and is excited to go participate in fitness. Some signs you're in a good gym:

• When you first enter the coach(s) don't let you get more than 10 steps into the door before saying Hi and asking how you are.

• The coaches are excited to be coaching and they are eager to help members scale or adjust workouts appropriately.

• The programming is accommodating to everyone. This usually ties into the previous point, but programming for a class is hard. You have to account for every fitness level ( beginner to advanced), injury and make it fun for members. When the coaches can adjust the workouts so each member is getting a similar stimulus it's a perfect flow.

• The community is awesome. You'll see below how easy it is to have a BAD gym but when you have a good gym that almost always leads to a great community. A great community means people come back and tell their friends to come with them.

Want to see how I dropped 8lbs over the past 30 days without doing excessive cardio?

Well I will be discussing it in my FB group in the near future

You can join here!

Or you can not learn how to lose weight easily. That’s your loss

Now back to this weeks article

Signs of a bad gym

If you are getting to this section and you don't have some ideas of what I am going to talk about then I am incredibly jealous. You have not experienced a bad gym. You are a part of a small subset of the CrossFit population. Sadly the rest of us know all too well what a lousy gym is. The easiest sign that this gym isn't good is just by looking at the facility.

Are things falling apart?

Is the owner keeping it clean?

It should go without saying but if the owner is not taking care of the place, run. I've been to too many gyms where the owners don't care about the place, they are just happy “ to own a gym”. They cared more about their own workouts and making sure the equipment and bathrooms were cleaned. ( old equipment is a different story than broken/dirty equipment. Equipment is expensive!)

While bashing owners, talk to the current members to get a feel for the place. Is the owner too involved? Do they listen to their coaches or members when they bring up concerns or issues? Or does the owner just say some variation of “ we are doing it this way get ready for it”? Another crazy thing to look out for is how the owner ( specifically male ones) treats members of the opposite sex. Are they too busy trying to get their rocks off to focus on keeping the 99.9% of the gym happy?

Lastly, pay attention to the coaches! Do they look happy and like they enjoy their job? In CrossFit, it's very easy for coaches to be beaten down by the owner but they stick to coaching for their passion of helping the members. It's hard to see at first but once you see it one time it's easy to spot from there on. Also, are the coaches helping members or are they too busy on their phones?

I would not be here today as in love with fitness if it was not for the first CrossFit gym I went to back in 2019. That gym is honestly the gold standard for how to operate, build a community and help people get fitter. Since then I've been to some good gyms and some really bad ones. I never try to stay too long at the bad ones but sometimes it's all that is around.

If you arent sure if you're at a good gym or not, reply back to this and Id love to talk it through with you!

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Dont forget to call your mom

-Mike

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