Girl Power
I have not been to a traditional gym in ages, but when I did frequent the Y, I do not recall seeing women performing amazing physical feats. I remember some male athletes doing some impressive weight or pull-ups, but I really never saw women doing more than elliptical machines, spin classes or lifting dumbells of the size that I currently reserve for the kid’s class. It is not as though the women going to the Y cannot perform the same feats as their male counterparts, it is just that no one expects them to. It is the rare woman at a traditional gym who braves the free weight space normally occupied by males. At a traditional gym you are more likely to see:
Even though the above activities are not limited to women, this is where the marjority of women spend their time in a traditional gym. In a CrossFit gym there is nowhere to hide. The expectation I have of males and females are the same. I expect you to do RX ring push ups. I expect you to deadlift 2x your body weight. I expect you to do pull-ups, kipping and strict. I expect you to do Karen in less than 9 minutes. I don’t expect this from super human women- I expect it from the normal women that walk in the door. I know it takes time to get there, but I expect all of the women in the gym to get there eventually. We would never set aside movements for males only- as CrossFitters I know you think that is ridiculous, but just try to remember what it was like BEFORE CROSSFIT.
I was inspire to write this because I was flipping through the pictures on Facebook, and I realized that before CrossFit, I never saw pictures like this of women exercising:
Of course our CrossFit men are just as awesome, but I thinking the polarity of non-CrossFit women’s athletics and CrossFit women’s athletics is much more extreme. Our athletes did not come to us with all of those abilities, but they sure are standouts from the norm now. All they did was walk in, commit, and workout. Now they really are super women!
