Blog 6 John Wang

A current case of anticipatory strategy adopted by dominant groups I can speak of exists in the gym community. The gym world is sectioned off into a spectrum from those who exercise for performance reasons and those who exercise for cosmetic reasons. In the performance category you will find your mainstream sport athletes, power lifters, Olympic weightlifters, and strong men. In the cosmetic category you will find bodybuilders. All these groups of people who deal with weights have very singular goals whether it’s to lift as much weight as possible, to run faster, or to look a certain way. Recently, a strength and conditioning regime called cross fit has been sweeping across the nation. I actually lied earlier. There is a third group. It is made up of recreational gym goers that do not have an opinion of their own. They definitely want to kick ass and look good while doing it but they do not claim allegiance to anything like being a power lifter or bodybuilder. This pisses everyone else off to no end mainly because they all have different definitions of kicking ass. To a football player, it’s being the big, bad and fast, to a strong man it’s being strong as hell, and to a bodybuilder it’s getting your body to look like a V. To a cross fitter, it’s about “elite fitness” it’s about being above average in many categories but being extraordinary at none of them except at being pretty good at all of them. To the dominant group of gym folks, this is a slap in the face with a wet noodle. They spend all their days pissing blood driving towards one end goal and here come the damn cross fitters with their vibram five finger toe shoes making a bastardization of everything everybody usually does. What the dominant group doesn’t realize is that times are changing and they are the last of a dying breed. Cross fit is extremely appealing to the general public and is converting multitudes of traditional gym goers. It promises people that they will epitomize elite fitness and they will look great doing it. Well they do not explicitly say that you’ll look great but there is a huge cross fit culture, where the men and women tend to be attractive, elitist, and somewhat hipster. Yeah by the way cross fit costs a lot of money despite minimal equipment. For those of you familiar with fishing, think of it this way, you can pay a couple hundred for a surf rod and catch some huge fish when they run up or down the shore, or you can pay a couple thousand for a fly rod and a boat to catch the same fish, only smaller, with much higher potential of losing the fish, but fly fishing is sexy. Anyways, back to my point. Cross fit sells. It’s exciting, it’s new, and even better, it delivers quick results. The dominant groups can see that through cross fit, these cross fitters will never get the strength of the strongman or the physique of a bodybuilder or fitness model. To the dominant groups, it is mind blowing people who work with weights do not want what they want. However, to the cross fitters, it’s okay. In fact it’s more than okay. It’s great and they love it. Most are not in it to be the strongest, or the biggest, or the leanest. They are in it for the sake of going far beyond what they imagined their fat asses capable.  The people who are good at cross fit go on to compete at cross fit competitions. Less than a year ago cross fit sold a 50% stake for 20 million. The dominant groups can feel it breathing down their necks but most don’t want to admit it. Mainly they keep it down with the anticipatory strategy of verbal and typed communications over the internet feminizing it and calling it gay. Personally, I like to compare cross fit to a mustang with a v6 engine. Cross fit gives the directionless direction which is extremely attractive.  However, since it is not the direction of the main group, they try to tear it down. Unfortunately for them, all they can do is do it verbally because cross fit just took all their money.