We often hear from our new members that they wish they’d tried CrossFit sooner, but delayed giving it a shot because of the price point… and we get that. Before we opened Saltwater Athletics: CrossFit, Strength and Conditioning, we were members of a CrossFit gym (and plenty of other gyms) too! As a result, we understand two things clearly:
- A low-cost gym membership is based on the idea that you’ll pay $15 for a service you won’t use (or won’t use often), but the cost of your membership is low enough that you won’t miss the money coming out of your bank account either. If you don’t show up to the gym, there’s less overhead for cleaning, equipment repair, etc. … there are YouTube videos galore about this business model!
- If you’re going to make the financial commitment to a gym, it needs to add value to your life in a meaningful way. More on that below…
We want every person who walks into Saltwater Athletics to have the odds in their favor to find a fulfilling hobby that also improves their physical and mental health. Here are some of our tips for making the best of your membership at a CrossFit gym!
- Show up 4-5 days per week. If you whip out a calculator and do some simple math, you’ll find that only coming to a CrossFit gym 2-3 days a week (but paying for an unlimited membership) means that your cost per class is pretty significant… particularly if you’re only working out 8-12 days per month. But if you’re coming to 4-5 classes per week, the cost per class drops significantly, especially when you consider the amount of coaching & camaraderie you experience in class. A good coach’s goal is not to make you so sore that you need to take 3 days off for every day you exercise – this is why we scale and modify workouts… to encourage an athlete to keep coming back! Consistency breeds results. Make “showing up” part of your routine, and soon it’ll simply become part of what you do each day.
- Talk to people. We promise we know how daunting it can be to walk through the doors of a space where you don’t know anybody. But we also promise that if you let your guard down just a little, set your anxiety aside and chat with the folks in class, you’ll start to build some really awesome, unexpected friendships. Believe it or not, most members remember how it felt to walk into their first CrossFit class and want to help ease your anxiety!
- Communicate with your coach. Your coach’s job is to help you identify what your body can do and safely introduce new movements. At Saltwater Athletics, we make an effort to find out about your athletic history, injury history, mobility and more before you come to the first class so that each coach is prepped with a little information about you. Your goals may be very different from someone else’s, and we want to move mountains to help you reach them!
- Use the tools at your disposal. If your gym offers an “On Ramp” or Foundational movement course, check it out! If one-on-one movement prep is available, take advantage of it. Remember that the class warm-ups are written to help improve mobility and mitigate injury – don’t skimp on this part of the one hour class! It will pay off in leaps and bounds.
If you’re new to CrossFit, chat with some of the members in your first class. We think you’ll find a group of people who were surprised to discover how much they enjoyed CrossFit, and we hope that some of these tips will be useful to you. We are firm believers that the mind and body are inextricably connected, and prioritizing an hour of movement will pay off exponentially physically and emotionally.