The $100M Workout
By the end of 2013, CrossFit will have 10,000 franchises and eclipse $100M in revenue.
These numbers are staggering when you consider CrossFit gives its workouts away for free.
Everyday, Pukie, CrossFit’s endearing mascot, posts the WOD (workout of the day) to their site, accompanied by a banal call for members to post their times.
~.001% of the total CrossFit population follows suit. The rest, spend serious money to sweat together in sparsely furnished “boxes” completing the same publicly available workout.
Peoples’ paying enthusiasm for workout companionship shouldn’t come as a surprise. 100 years prior, Psychologist Norman Triplett noticed that cyclists rode faster in groups than they did when riding alone. After testing his hypothesis elsewhere, Triplett concluded,
…[the] bodily presence of another contestant participating simultaneously in the [bicycle] race serves to liberate latent energy not ordinarily available.
We didn’t need Norman Triplett to affirm the power of having someone to workout with, yet we’ve been surprisingly slow to adopt this truth in our technology. We’ve seen rapid innovation in devices that quantify our activity levels with less vigorous attention paid to how we can use technology to augment the social side of fitness.
The real solution to our inactivity problem is not trapped in a yet-to-be quantified data point, but rather by technology that is able to mine peer pressure and exploit our root need for belongingness and validation.
If you’re curious about the type of social fitness I’m talking about, check out Yog or send me an email. I’m peter@getyog.com.
