Four Years or Bust

As a calculated coaching strategy, we ask all new students to enroll in at least a three-month commitment here. This isn’t a business decision. The structure of our program is a coaching move to help people that haven’t found success in fitness to grasp it for the first time. Believe me, we don’t need to charge unmotivated individuals’ credit cards to make ends meet around here, but we do know that starting something new and quitting looks a lot like never starting at all. So, a three month minimum it is..

To be honest, based on the nearly unanimous attendance issues we see in people, I’d argue that CrossFit isn’t expensive enough. It’s amazing to me how many people say they can’t afford quality training who pay memberships that they don’t show up for. Most literally, it’s clear that you not only can afford it, you can afford to set two hundred bucks on fire and have nothing to show for it. Some would call that wealth.

That’s a rabbit hole I won’t go down, because there’s a similar phenomenon that happens with our time commitment. Our three-month minimum commitment may seem like a lot, but I’d argue it is a polite gesture towards what it really takes. If I didn’t think zero people would ever sign on for it, the minimum commitment for this would be four years.

That’s not a typo. Four years.

If you aren’t willing to take on a physical practice for four years, I think you should quit and do something else. Don’t even start. Just starting jujitsu, I’ve never felt more confident about this. I’ll spend the next three years trying to get my second toe in the water. Similarly, I think we need to reframe our minds about health and fitness, people. We’re so quick to put in a handful of weeks of uneducated, testing-the-waters-type effort, and start looking in the mirror like, “Am I different yet?”

Stop it.

Four years of unabridged commitment grants you a chance to tweak, have opinions, and evolve. Until then, we’re just doing all the hard stuff (i.e. courageously trying something new, being new guy/girl, etc) without reaping the benefits of being an intermediate. Believe me, the multi-year training plan is a worthy mindset.

Want to try this out? Let’s talk about the next four years together. Want to get fit? See you in ten years.

 

 

Logan Gelbrich

@functionalcoach