Many of us have never attended a CrossFit class in a local park or trained with a coach in a back parking lot pulling equipment off a pick up truck. To that point many of today’s CrossFit coaches have never coached CrossFit in such conditions. But that was in fact the status quo for starting an affiliate for many years. Start hosting park workouts, overtime you’ll grow to where either the police kick you out or your following starts demanding you get a building and boom, your membership base is born.

This opportunity to return to the basics holds benefit for both athletes and coaches. Athletes get to focus more on community, fundamental movement, and adapting to the weather (which is proven to hold multifarious benefits physically and mentally), without the distractions of kiosks and the rituals of claiming gear and putting on all those accessories. Coaches have to think on their feet, adapt to ever evolving circumstances, and perfect their ability to scale and cue on the fly given that 5-20 different athletes could potentially be doing 5 different exercises all with different equipment simultaneously.

So athletes: Focus on the friends around you and the fact that you are advancing your health immeasurably by showing up and putting in the work regardless of whether you can perfectly enter your score into Wodify or not. And Coaches: It’s about them, not you; give your clients all of your attention and adapt the situation to get them a great workout even if it bares little resemblance to the ultra detailed lesson plan, preserve the stimulus and give athletes the best hour of their day.