The true cost of CrossFit

"CrossFit is expensive – I can’t afford it."

A sentence you hear on a regular basis. And although the cost of a membership is certainly not small, it is vital to introduce context, weigh all the elements and understand what this amount represents. Let’s get one thing right, it should never be a deterrent to start your fitness journey or stop you from aiming to improve your life.

First, let’s look at the actual cost and what it means. A bit of mathematics (yours truly has never been great at maths, so we’ll keep it basic).

A CrossFit membership will on average cost around €115/month. That’s 12x€115, i.e. €1380 per year or €3,78/day for typically (it does vary depending on the box) unlimited access to a fully equipped training space. You can access this space either as part of a group or train on your own.

You get a cool, fun, loving, tight community around you (especially here at White Bull CrossFit), who pushes you on, who motivates you. But you also (hopefully) get a dedicated and committed coach to guide and help you. We keep you accountable and more importantly keep you safe as you progress. Add to that: events, perks, seminars, workshops, free advice, fun times, etc. for basically a Starbucks Late… or half a sandwich… or a quarter of a salad per day (life is crazy expensive now, everything has gone up *weeps silently).

In contrast, you decide to purchase a 'regular' gym membership (the contracts typically also keep you locked in for a year minimum) because you’re fed up with feeling like poop and being unhealthy, unfit, and unhappy.

A generic gym costs on average €25-30€/month, i.e. €360/annum, so essentially 1€/day. Yes, let’s not lie to ourselves it is cheaper (a third) … but what do you really get from it? Sure, the space is nice and clean with AC and loads of beautiful high-tech modern machines and equipment (not always!) … yet will you go regularly? Do you have fun there? Does it feel homely and welcoming? Where is the soul, the heart, the family? (he yells standing tall, fist high). More importantly do you have space or feel squashed like a canned sardine…

Don’t get me wrong, once every now and then I also enjoy going for a solitary, in-my-bubble training session, headphones on, head down and mind-emptying grind… but it gets repetitive and boring fast and that’s if you can get to a machine at peak overcrowded times. I’m not saying either it isn’t possible to create a nice group of gym bros and have fun and push together, but it’s different, harder to get… and more importantly it is trickier to fit in our daily habits and modern professional lives (particularly making contact and creating gym acquaintances).

"I got a gym membership, here I come beach body"

USA today reports[1] that a full 67% percent of gym memberships go completely unused, so essentially €360 thrown out the window, and this doesn’t even consider those who do use their gym memberships but very irregularly.

As per finder.com[2], 56% use the gym twice a week, 20% go once a week, 6% go once per month and 7.4% go less than once a month. In the USA, a gym membership costs $60, imagine the wasted cost. Statistically, Americans blow $397 million annually on gym memberships that they never use.

Now it is a fact that Europeans are fitter and healthier than Americans on average, but I am also certain that the same issue exists here. In the UK[3], although 23% of the population have a gym membership, only 12% go regularly, that’s half of the subscribers… The average cost of a monthly gym membership across the pond costs £35, more than £369 million (ie more than £4 billion a year) is estimated going down the drain.

“It’s not about ‘impossible’ or ‘cannot’ or ‘shouldn’t’. It’s about ‘not wanting’ and ‘will not’ and ’possible but you don’t allow it’."

"I hate the gym. But I have to stick to it"

According to NPR[4], traditional gyms specifically target people who don’t enjoy exercising as a strategic bet they will end up staying home, allowing the gym to then accumulate far more members than their facilities can reasonably hold at any given time.  Typically, gyms can accommodate 300 people at a time.

Example: end 2023, basic fit[5] operated 882 clubs with an average of 3283 memberships per club. Now try visualising 3283 members wanting to go to their local gym on a regular basis, so most days, at the same time in a 300-400m2 space… LOL. But hey, Basic fit group revenue increased by 32% to €1,047 million, you read that right, in 2022 they made €795 million.

This overselling strategy not only benefits the gym’s bottom line, it also benefits members who actually do go as the costs can be kept down. Because yes, a functional gym costs a lot of money. But what about all those other non-gym members that are subsidising the gyms? What about their health and fitness? Their wellbeing? Their happiness? Who cares, right? Capitalism rocks, dude!

"I work hard. I want to use my money for cool stuff"

Second, let’s look at what a typical person will spend. How that affects their everyday life and how a small extra monthly amount (big picture) can really impact your future.

The annual EC study for household expenses[6] shows that most people spend a good amount of money on “non-essentials”. Of course, expenses grow with the size of the household (a person living alone will spend/need less), the biggest chunk of our salaries go to housing and bills (32%) + essentials (4.9%), let’s take out 17% for food and non-alcoholic beverages and 10% for transport. In addition to that people spend on average:

Note how low education and health are… but I digress. That’s almost 30% for non-essentials… health is already 3.7% fine, let’s imagine that’s based on a lower/average income of €2000 gross/month (as of April 2024, statutory minimum wage in Belgium[7]), so 1400€ net, 3.7% of that amount is 50€/month… our unlimited monthly membership costs €99… just 50€ more to find.

I can guarantee that amount could easily be added by 90% of Belgian residents if they chose to prioritise their health, wellbeing; and as a bonus, it’s so much fun so also indirectly their recreational/entertainment time.

Should health & fitness even be seen as an extra cost or an essential expense?

Let’s not be disingenuous, it is a fact, adding this activity to your life is quite tricky for some, a single mom with minimum wage and 2-3 children is going to find it way harder to be able to afford any fitness activity cost-wise and timewise. Including this in a packed schedule is a challenge but it is not impossible! Make fitness an essential life-cost.

How is CrossFit different?

It is an investment, but one you will undoubtedly (or we’ll swallow our words - gulps) not regret. It will feed into every aspect of your life. For fewer drinks, one uber eats order or one night out less per month you’ll feel amazing and fit every day… (because it does affect the rest of your life… longevity is key)

CrossFit as a methodology arguably tailors to a more middle-class comfortable earner demographic. But by no stretch of the imagination does it only target super wealthy and snobs’ lesser incomes. As with everything in life, it’s all about perspective, choices, priorities, and goals.

Ours, as CrossFit box owners (and presumably many affiliate owners around the world) are to create a tight-knit healthy and happy fit community that looks forward to their hour of training as one of the best parts of their day, knowing that it will improve their mental and physical health and impact every single aspect of their daily routine.

"I don’t have the bandwidth. Time is money"

The rise of our modern societies has shifted currencies, time is valuable. Nowadays a lot of people might say they’re cash 'rich' but time poor. It is a growing disease that most of us struggle with daily, longing for those rare precious moments of idleness and “me” time… Mindsets seem to be shifting to more flexibility, self-awareness, and emphasis on personal time.

Be it a by-product of Covid times, let’s not forget how slowing down felt as opposed to our busy over-stimulated hectic lives. Is it really that difficult to squeeze some walking into our daily lives, and maybe a few functional movements? Make it your special little hour, 2 to 3 times a week, boom, done, dusted. Andale!

“CrossFit has entered the conversation… imagine you can get an intense, complete, and full (coach-led and guided) workout in 1h […] you WILL become fitter and healthier.”

Less can be more. Quality over quantity

The World Health Organization[8] prescribes 150-300 minutes of aerobic physical activity or at least 75-150 minutes per week of vigorous-intense aerobic activity throughout the week for adults aged 18 to 64 years… that’s not that much for long-term health.

Start by walking a lot more daily as a starter (be it walking, jogging or gym) and sprinkle 75-150min of vigorous-intense activity (aka CrossFit) in there. It is a small investment for health, longevity, and keeping diseases, illnesses, and degenerative issues away and diminishing their impact and consequences.

It’s about consistency and regularity. Not killing yourself in an overcrowded, impersonal gym for 1-month, 24/7 to get that beach body for the summer (which you will instantly lose as soon as you get back to your routine, soz), it doesn’t work. You cannot replace an unhealthy lifestyle with bursts of short periods of mad health dash.

Any busy parent who already juggles with social, professional, and family life will argue it is very difficult or almost impossible to find 20-30mins per day. CrossFit has entered the conversation… imagine you can get an intense, complete, and full (coach-led and guided) workout in 1h just twice or three times a week instead of 5h-6h.  150min or 2 days and a half vs double that if you go the traditional route – you save 5 days, and you WILL become fitter and healthier. Bam, see you later!

"You don’t know my life. Staying fit is IMPOSSIBLE"

'My schedule is insane, and I have no time at all’. We have classes early morning, lunch, and late evening… It is 100% guaranteed one option can work. Cancel that lunch once a week, go for drinks 1h later, take that extra 1h for yourself after dropping the kids off… “

'My boss won’t let me', it would be difficult for him to argue/go against your well-being and choose to be healthy if you prioritise that. Send him a study that shows working out in the day will increase your productivity and lead to better results. Or consider choosing a boss and a company that supports your health and wellbeing. You owe it to yourself (after all, you only get one life, and you won’t be buried with a chest of gold).

Stop a second and think about your day, the accumulated coffee or cigarette breaks, talks… Statistically that’s at least 1h in total over a day. We won’t even mention the 4-5h daily average of time spent on our phones. We apparently check/open our phones more than 2000 times per day. Take those 3 hours you spend bingeing on your favourite series or movie, the 1h listening to a podcast or music , the 1h you spend chatting,  the 2h on social media… the 2h spent playing a game, scrolling, procrastinating… by all means we are not trying to say this should change or be replaced or isn’t important… but accumulate this through a whole week, every day, surely changing those habits just 2 days out of the 7 days isn’t that much of a sacrifice or a stretch of the imagination, right?

Still not convinced? Open your phone and check your screen time. Look at the statistics to see how many hours you “lose” every day, it’s scarily eye-opening…

Get off your backside and do it!

There you have it, it’s not about 'impossible' or 'cannot' or 'shouldn’t'. It’s about 'not wanting' and 'will not' and 'possible but you don’t allow it'.

It might not be much but the ‘mutuelles’ in Belgium even pay you back between 40 to 100€ per year if you practise any physical activity in a club or gym. Take that, highest paying taxed country in the world… ha!

Where there’s a will… there's a way. And we’ll be there to help you find it and stay on it (until a second covid hits, please God no).

See you at the box!

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2016/04/27/your-gym-membership-good-investment/82758866/

[2] https://www.finder.com/unused-gym-memberships

[3] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6765171/Britons-spend-4-billion-year-unused-gym-memberships-new-survey-reveals.html

[4] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/12/30/373996649/why-we-sign-up-for-gym-memberships-but-don-t-go-to-the-gym

[5]  https://corporate.basic-fit.com/docs/Basic-Fit%20reports%20annual%20results%202023?q=60MqVkXIagkh909R9IYQIh

[6] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Household_budget_survey_-_statistics_on_consumption_expenditure

[7] https://www.fairworkbelgium.be/en/faq/what-salary-am-i-entitled-to/

[8] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/physical-activity

The Shift from Quantity to Quality: A perspective on CrossFit and Nutrition

In this article, we delve into the age-old debate of quality versus quantity, exploring how this concept applies to both CrossFit training and nutrition. Discover why focusing on the quality of your movements and food choices can lead to better results and long-term success in your fitness journey.

Quality vs Quantity

Over history, in many aspects, our focus as humans has often been about how we can get more, or less.

More money. More holidays. More power. More followers. More friends.

Less taxes, less work, less body fat, etc.

We focus on HOW MUCH.

CrossFit and Nutrition do follow the same trend.

We want more weight on the bar, more reps, and more 6-packs abs.

We try to get better, often by changing ‘HOW MUCH’ we do, over ‘HOW WELL’ we do.

“To get better at squatting, I must add weight on the bar!”

“To improve my gymnastics, I need to do more pull-ups!”

“To lose weight, I need to eat less food!”

While true, these statements are just one way to improve. Not the best one, if you ask me.

So, how can we shift our thinking from HOW MUCH to HOW BETTER can I do?

Let us look at Quality versus Quantity.

Quality Movement

CrossFit is a high intensity sport.

By definition, we are aiming to raise our heart rate, get our muscles to work hard and our bodies to adapt to new movements and positions. Intensity drives results – we know that much!

Intensity also comes last. Before adding intensity (which can be defined by weight, time, volume, complexity), athletes should develop good mechanics, consistently.

By good mechanics, I mean moving well and safely. I mean being able to squat your bodyweight with your chest up and your back straight. If you move poorly without intensity, you are likely to move even worse once weight or complexity is added. Then, what happens? You cannot progress because your foundations are weak. Worse, you can get injured.

Unfortunately, having good mechanics alone is not enough. It also needs to be sustained over time and volume. You need to show good mechanics under intensity A, before we get to intensity B.

Think of it this way: you can do 1 perfect Back Squat, with a rested heart rate, at 100kgs. Maybe even a set of 5. Then, we add a couple of double unders, running and GHD Sit-ups. How does your set of 5 Back squats at 100kgs look like now? Worse? Then, you are not consistent. Therefore, not ready for intensity.

Or you can row those first 400m with a resistance at 8, but on round number 3 your pace has dropped by half. Again, you were not ready for “that” intensity.

You will get infinitely better at CrossFit if you move consistently well, even if it means lowering intensity, for now. You will progress faster, stay injury free and, fear not, still get that nice sweat on!

You will often hear me say “A good scale is always better than a bad RX” – that is the message I want you to remember next time you show up in class.

Quality Food

Calories in VERSUS Calories out.

If you have been looking to lose some weight, or gain muscles, you’ve probably heard that before. This is as close a universal truth as we can get when it comes to nutrition. It is undeniable.

Eat more calories than you burn in a day: you will gain weight.

Eat less calories than you burn in a day: you will lose weight.

The problem is there are so many variables in that equation that we often think it is broken. It is not.

However, here are a few reasons why it is tricky:

There are more, but you get the idea.

So, instead of counting every single piece of food that enters your body, the best approach is to focus on the quality of food you’re having.

Eat more fruits, vegetables, lean protein, nuts, seeds, whole grains, legumes, and single-ingredient, whole, label-free foods. They are low in calories, and high in important nutrients (vitamins, minerals, fiber, etc…). Therefore, they will make you feel full, satiated, and satisfied much longer than other ultra-processed foods (which are, by the way, specifically engineered to make you eat a lot of).

You can easily understand that just increasing the proportion of such ingredients in your daily diet will likely reduce your hunger and make you less likely to crave other sub-optimal foods.

Naturally, when we want to lose weight, we tend to reduce the quantity of food we are already eating, or completely eliminate some food we enjoy. A more sustainable way is to ADD quality food as described above, and, trust me, naturally, you will be on the way to make profound, sustainable and powerful changes to your health.

Moving the needle towards Quality

I want to leave you with a few things you can already start doing to move your attention towards quality and not quantity.

In the weeks that follow, try:

Those seems trivial, but a small shift now may very well lead to a powerful change in 3, 6 months or even years from now.

Debunking: CrossFit is for fit people

Whenever someone tells me “I don’t do any sports, can I start CrossFit?”, my immediate answer is “Did you know how to drive a car before passing your driving license?”.

It’s a silly answer, but you get my point.

I recently came across a short video from a famous former CrossFitter / Fitness influencer (Marcus Filly, check him out @marcusfilly) who recommends building some kind of basic fitness level before jumping into our sport.

Although I usually agree with his approach, this statement made me quite angry as a box owner, since it obviously makes people doubt whether they should or shouldn’t cross the door of our gym.

However, I understand why he, and so many people, might think that way. But here is why he is wrong.

Understanding the methodology.

Functional movements, constantly varied, performed at high intensity. This is our methodology. And it works. It works if you’ve never trained a single day in your life; it works if you’re a professional athlete.

That sentence goes together with another famous statement: “Our fitness needs differ by degree, not by kind”. In other words, intensity (or difficulty) will mean something different for you, for me, for everyone.

The success of a good CrossFit session is not incumbent on the weight you put on the bar, or on how many kipping pull-ups you did. It is in the stimulus that specific training gave you. It is in the physiological response and adaptation your body will have in response to that stimulus. And you can achieve that adaptation through many different ways, depending on your level of fitness. And because CrossFit uses functional movements, it is infinitely scalable, which makes it the perfect sport for your 80-year-old grandpa or for your 18-year-old hyper-energetic cousin.

The “problem” of the CrossFit Games.

CrossFit is a new sport, and for a long time (you could argue it still is) has been quite unknown from the public. So, when someone enters a CrossFit gym and sees 15 people sweating, gasping for air, or lying on the floor, of course they will be intimidated.

Worse, someone may just google “What is CrossFit” and ends up looking at short videos of professional athletes during our worldwide competition the “CrossFit Games”. And again; you end up watching insanely fit people achieving amazing feats with their body, and that person will think “There’s no way I can do that!”.

No shit, of course you can’t. But is that your goal?
When you start football, do you expect to play like Messi or Ronaldo?
When you pick up a tennis racket, do you think that you can be as good as Federer or Nadal? And when you go for a Sunday run, do you sprint 100m in less than 10 seconds?

CrossFit may very well be the most holistic, hard and all-rounded sport on the planet, yet many people consider the elite as the norm, and therefore think it is not meant for them.

We can’t blame them. CrossFit has done an arguably terrible job marketing themselves over the years, and the CrossFit Games was the only lens through which you could get a glimpse of what our sport is.

But rather than being intimidated by what the 0.01% can do, let’s inspire people by what the other 99.99% are doing.

The responsibility of the CrossFit Coach.

We know the methodology works – now you need someone to apply it.
The methodology may be simple, yet its application is not. I challenge anyone who says coaching CrossFit is easy to run a class of 18 people with 2 trials, 3 relatively new members, a couple of experience athletes, a bunch of everyday gym-goers and a handful of members still thinking about their workday and making sure that everyone is SAFE, HAPPY and COACHED.

Every member should end a class fitter than when they started. A good coach will say everyone’s name at least once in each class (meaning, gave a cue to everyone), and will make sure everybody had a good time. By itself, this is already quite a remarkable achievement.

But the real art of coaching is in scaling the workout to the need and level of everyone. Choosing the right option for the right person is an art – especially for new people you have never worked with. And even when you found the perfect “scale”, you then need to convince your athlete to do it (wink wink to you and your ego fueled “I can do kipping pull-ups” memberJ)!

Unfortunately, the level of coaching throughout affiliates is too inconsistent. It only takes one inexperienced coach to apply the wrong level of intensity to a new member for that person to then speak shit about the sport to everyone around her. Yet, the problem wasn’t CrossFit, the problem was the coach.

We all drive cars, so we can all do CrossFit.

Nothing is comfortable at first. Nobody put on running shoes for the first time and went for a 42km marathon. But with proper coaching, and the right method, you can get there, in time.

Same goes for CrossFit.

CrossFit is for everyone, and you don’t need to be experienced to start. You need a great coach, the proper mindset, and an understanding of what CrossFit really is about.

Lucky you, we’ve got all this here at White Bull CrossFit.

Boris C.