Ninth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

This paper outlines the final results of a two-year ethnographic study of an American CrossFit gym and community. CrossFit is a world-wide sport and fitness brand, with over 13,000 franchised fitness affiliates around the world and an annual open sporting competition: The CrossFit Games. While CrossFit is beginning to become the subject of some ethnographic research, there has yet to be published a long-term in-depth ethnographic study of a CrossFit community and its participants. This study, which includes two years of participant observation, 40 interviews, and a body-idealization survey, reveals three major findings of great significance affecting theories and practices of gender, embodiment, discourses of health, agency, self-care, and community identity, all within the ideological framework of the Biopolitics of late capitalism. Key findings include the following: Female muscularity is greatly encouraged and valorized, within new limits, CrossFit discourses of health align with theories of Healthism and neoliberal values of individual responsibility, and the primary motivation of individual CrossFit participants is the pursuit of meaning-making and purpose through self-realization, a pursuit that is accelerated through the community experience.