Andres’ class has a certain responsibility. Usually it is your trainer’s job to help you keep on track with your goals and help you with accountability. But Andres has set himself an impressive goal of cleaning up the sailor language. The thing is, everyone loves a sailor, but this will be helpful for those of us trying to create family/work/safe video with Andres in it. I believe it is 5 burpees for each linguistic misstep. Last night, I think it was 35. I think your class should keep a total burpee count for the month for you. This will be interesting.
This is an interesting point, and something I worry about when I’m working out, because sometimes I let out a little sailor talk when a workout is hard, and then I realize that someone’s toddler is sitting off to the side and I feel really guilty! But on the other hand… I’ve seen trainers wearing “Unf*ckwithable” t-shirts, heard a song that includes the lyric “I wanna f-ing tear you apart” and we won’t even get into the language in the rap songs
So is the concern only making a family-friendly video, or should we all strive for a few less f-bombs around the gym?
CrossFit is absolutely designed to be hard, rough and real. Anyone bringing a child into our gym, and I lead that pack with my own two, needs to know that this place is for down and dirty hard work and I’m not about censoring people. We are not a spa, daycare or yoga studio, we are a crossfit gym. I can’t post videos to certain places that include x-rated language however, so we’ve been giving Andres a hard time about it!
Maybe we could get together some kind of affiliate challenge, like with the rowers: the affiliate with the most burpees in one month gets a massage therapist to stretch us out after our workouts. Although that would be paradoxical since we would still want Andres to cuss and do his burpees. Hmmmm?
Ellie- I don’t think you have to worry about Andres not doing burpees anytime soon. In fact, I find it hard to believe he only had to do 35 as I am in his class. Someone lost count I’m sure.
Dave’s “unfuckwithable” shirt is my favorite!! although dave is very f-withable… I’d kick his butt. Ha, I said Butt instead of A$$!
I’m of two minds on this. Sometimes, in some situations (at the end of one of Dave’s intermediate hurt seminars), there simply are no other words. On the other hand, CFW is a place in which all ages, body types, states of physical condition pursue goals of health and fitness and improvement together. This is a social place. My workout is not an isolated event, it is a cooperative enterprise. Pursuing goals together involves self-control and concern for others, and so while I am tempted to fight for the right to say “potty”, I admire and support Andres’s commendable goal. Andres’ fire and enthusiasm for crossfit is what inspires, not the occasional colorful word choice. Incidentally, when our kids were young, I pleaded with Midori to mind her sailor language until the kids reached age 5. She made it to their 4th birthdays. Homeric. Herculean. And now #1 son’s language now is, ummm, informative.
I see this as two potential avenues of self-improvement:
1) Less potty-mouth
2) Get better at burpees
Which is Andres really after? Has he been caught cussing about doing burpees yet?
The toddler in the corner is probably mine, cause I didn’t really pay attention in high school health class.
While I can’t speak for other parents, don’t worry about the “f” and “s” bombs in front of my brood. They unfortunately hear a little bit at home and Briar let’s them watch The Matrix.
The hardest six years of life was when I was teaching at a boys school and had to remind the boys that they simply could not shout out my “favorite words” in the hallways — because I couldn’t either. However, when literary analysis demanded it — such as in Salinger’s Rye, or a lot of the Latin American fiction (where it was necessary to translate and sometimes even conjugate for clarity) there was a sigh of relief as we all spoke freely and without prohibition. I just had to remember to erase it all off the board before the next class came in. I try in the gym…but sometimes outrageous utterance is the shortest distance between thought and action.