Why Are So Many People Doing CrossFit?

The fitness methodology known as CrossFit has been exploding in the past several years. Going from being relatively unknown a decade ago, the CrossFit brand is now, according to forbes.com, a 4 billion dollar a year industry. That’s billion with a “B.” The number of CrossFit affiliated gyms or “boxes” as they are called has gone from about 500 in 2007 to over 11,000 today. CrossFit competitions are now aired on ESPN as a major sport and have acquired Reebok as a corporate sponsor. For a simply being a training methodology this begs us to ask the question, why are so many doing, and often times obsessed with, CrossFit?

If the political theorist Karl Marx were alive today, he would explain the CrossFit boom as a perfect example of commodity fetishism. Commodity fetishism describes the process by which the value of a good or service, in this case CrossFit branded products, memberships, and methodologies, becomes separated from the cost and effort needed to produce it. Boiled down this essentially means that if you get enough people pumped about CrossFit, see people on ESPN in insane shape with abs that could literally function as a washboard lifting over 300 pounds over their heads, people are going to want to get involved to become more like those people. People will buy CrossFit branded apparel, join boxes, and provided they like it, get others involved. CrossFit owners are able to profit immensely with little expenditures making the company, and ultimately the CrossFit craze continue to explode.