CrossFit and community in liquid modernity

A globally successful enterprise with over 4 million members across 13, 000 “boxes” (individual gyms) in over 150 countries; to its followers it is superior to other exercise programs, and certainly mainstream gyms, due to the intensity and effectiveness of the approach and the support and camaraderie offered by trainers and fellow members. To some critics, however, it is an extreme form of training which normalises pushing the body to its limits (and perhaps beyond) and shares similarities with cults.

Our project was not interested in assessing the health, fitness, or performance benefits of CrossFit but rather focused on the impact which participants saw it having on their lives.

Across a series of qualitative interviews with participants at four different boxes across the UK we found an overwhelmingly positive attitude towards CrossFit with a sense that the exercise program not only has a good impact on their fitness and physical attainment but on other areas of their lives as well. We often found positive impacts on study, work, and productivity.

Participants also tended to express strong and meaningful connections with other members of their box and participants in CrossFit more generally (e.g. developed through local, regional, national, and international competitions). Initially, this seemed like a strong and conventional sense of community and the connections people felt was certainly important to them.

However, when analysing our data through a sociological lens we came to think that the collective feeling expressed is not quite that of a traditional community but rather a form which is specific to, and consistent with, contemporary, modern life. Specifically, we found Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of “peg communities” to be useful in making sense of the CrossFit community.

This form of connectivity is, like many things in modern life, intense but temporary. It is a context in which individuals can hang their identities, life projects and goals on a common “peg” and benefit from the mutual support of like-minded fellows. But unlike more traditional and all-encompassing forms of community the transformative potential to change societal structures is limited. Nevertheless, “peg communities” like CrossFit are “real” and help individuals to negotiate the pressures of contemporary life.

The full paper contains quotations from our interviews and more detail on our analysis.