But is it a good cult?

Rugby boys perform the slam ball ritual

People always joke that CrossFit is a cult. Depending on your definition of what a cult is, this may or may not be true. According to the Webster dictionary the definition is:

1 : formal religious veneration : worship
2 : a system of religious beliefs and ritual; also : its body of adherents
3 : a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious; also : its body of adherents
4 : a system for the cure of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator <health cults>
5 a : great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (as a film or book); especially : such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad b : the object of such devotion c : a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion

I guess technically CrossFit isn’t a cult since we have no ties to reglion or partake in any ritual (except for our warm-ups, but even that is questionable with some of you). To answer the question if CrossFit is a good cult, you first have to understand what a bad cult is. Most of us have never had any kind of experience with cults (be thankful), unfortunately, I have.

Courtney offers the goblet to the gods.

It was 2004 and I was in my second year of working in corporate sales for FedEx. I had to constantly tell myself that I loved my job and that I worked for Fortune Magazine’s Best Company to Work For. I had to tell myself that because I hated it. I just decided one day that I was going to try and get paid as much as I could in bonus with doing as little work as possible. I identified three major accounts in my territory and just decided to go after those and only those. In the first four months I won over the second and third largest accounts and looked like a superstar. I was only working about 2 ½ hours a day and playing volleyball the rest. The last account was gonna be a little bit tougher but it was worth it. It was the Church of Scientology.

I made a few calls to the Scientology headquarters in Hollywood and didn’t get anywhere with them. Finally they agreed to talk to me as long as I took a tour to learn more about “positive thinking” and L. Ron Hubbard’s life. Of course I agreed, but I decided to take my friend and fellow co-worker, Amy, along with me. We participated in about a two hour long walking presentation about L. Ron Hubbard full of stories about him like: (courtesy of Operation Clambake)

• He was a nuclear physicist.
• At the age of six, he was honored with the status of blood brother of the Blackfeet in a ceremony that is still recalled by tribal elders.
• He was up and down the China coast several times in his teens from Ching Wong Tow to Hong Kong and inland to Peking and Manchuria.
• He was the youngest Eagle Scout in the history of the Boy Scouts.
• The following years, from 1925 to 1929, saw the young Mr Hubbard, between the ages of 14 and 18, as a budding and enthusiastic world traveller and adventurer. His father was sent to the Far East and having the financial support of his wealthy grandfather, L. Ron Hubbard, spent these years journeying through Asia.
• With virtually no training time, he takes up powered flight and barnstorms throughout the Midwest.
• His family owned a ranch 1/3 the size of Montana.
• His first action on leaving college was to blow off steam by leading an expedition into Central America. In the next few years he headed three, all of them undertaken to study savage peoples and cultures to provide fodder for his articles and stories. Between 1933 and 1941 he visited many barbaric cultures and yet found time to write seven million words of published fact and fiction.
• He has published some fourteen movies.
• He served in the South Pacific, and in 1942 was relieved by fifteen officers of rank and was rushed home to take part in the 1942 battle against German submarines as Commanding Officer of a Corvette serving in the North Atlantic. In 1943 he was made Commodore of Corvette Squadrons, and in 1944 he worked with amphibious forces. After serving in all five theaters of World War II and receiving 21 medals and palms, in 1944 he was severely wounded and was taken crippled and blinded to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital.
• He spent 11 years researching Dianetics

Daylan prepares the sacrificial kettlebell

None of these claims were verifiable or true. After all of the videos and animatronic aliens waging an intergalactic war, we were ready to go home, but the scientologists had more in store for us. We were to get a free audit of our thetan levels. In short, they hook us up to a machine to tell them our “body thetan” level. Thetans are the souls of a murdered alien race by the evil lord Xenu. Makes perfect sense right? The more thetans you have the less likely you are to be a good scientologist or maybe it’s the other way around. You can read more about it here. Amy and I were fit to be pretty good scientologist so they gave me my first bit of business. Over the next few months, I would just arrange for groups of FedEx employees to take the tour and every single time I did I got more business. It was like selling my soul one chunk at a time.

Fast forward one year and I was one of the top sales reps in FedEx. I won awards for being the top sales rep. I should have won awards for figuring out how to only work about three hours a day, but I don’t think they hand those out at sales conventions. I got an invitation from the Church of Scientology for their annual Christmas party held at the Celebrity Centre on Franklin St. in Hollywood. This place was creepy. Think of a place where vampires sleep mixed with the movie SAW mixed with an insane asylum mixed with US Weekly. Of course I made Amy come with me to the Christmas party. It all started off like a normal Christmas Party with stupid small talk, lots of sugary food and bad music. Then we decide to leave and they want to take us on a tour of the building.

Hourly praying sessions to the gods of fitness

First they take us in to separate rooms and show us music videos on positive thinking. Mine was a hip hop scientology video about kids in the ghetto and Amy’s was a pop, bizarre Britney Spears video. Now that I was thoroughly creeped out, I texted Amy that it was time to go and she agreed. As we were leaving two scientologists intercepted us to show us “just one more thing”. They separated us again and we ended up going on a tour of the rest of the building…that was four stories underground.

It would have been nice if we knew we were going underground. We kept walking down these ramps and the halls actually had windows in them with scenery even though we were underground. Here is the breakdown of the four layers of scientology hell:

• Bottom Floor – This is where you start when you decide to become a scientologist. It’s four stories underground and it’s full of meditation catacombs. Picture long dark halls with lots of doors and people inside of them. Yeah, I have that same reoccurring nightmare too. You go in these rooms to cleanse your mind and separate yourself from the rest of the troubles of the world. I remember thinking to myself that the only trouble I had was that there was no cell reception down there. I think I pee’d myself a little.
• 3^rd floor – This is the exercise room. No, it’s not like CrossFit, it’s some sort of 24 Hour Fitness meets the end torture part of Braveheart. There were all kinds of crazy machines in there. Way crazier than the hip adductor and that weird donkey kick machine.
• 2^nd floor – This was the temperature control room. There were rooms that were really cold and rooms that were really hot like saunas. Sounds actually relaxing right? What if you had to go between an ice box and a sauna for 8-10 hours a day and then put back in solitary confinement? Not so relaxing.
• 1^st floor – This is the medicating floor. They fill you with tons of pills they call “vitamins” to clean the toxins from your body. I asked them what was in the pills and they got really defensive. Fearing for my life, I decided to stop with the questions.

I finally met back up with Amy as we were getting our copy of Dianetics. We both gave each other the lets-get-the-fuck-outta-dodge look and did just that. We took off for our car like it was the last 15 feet before the toilet when you have diarrhea. We made it out safe and never went back.

I ended up taking about $5 million of business from our competitors. I quit FedEx not too long after that, not because of Scientology, but because I was sick of whoring out my soul to make a buck. It took about three years for Scientologist to stop stalking me, but they finally gave up.

If CrossFit were a cult, it would definitely be a good one. True we have our own language, diet and philosophies, but we don’t have all the other crazy shenanigans. On second thought, it might not be bad to have a four story, secret underground CrossFit lair…

WOD 4/27/2010

A. 300M Run Max Effort x 4
3 minutes rest between each run. Try to make each run + or – 4 seconds from fastest time.

B. “The Chief”
5 Rounds
Max rounds in 3 minutes of:
3 Power cleans (135/85)
6 Push-ups
9 Squats
Rest 1 minute