Crossfit - herd mentality

Calling Crossfit a cult is giving it way too much credit. It is only the next thing on a long list of herd mentality, group driven exercise programs. Remember the water aerobics classes Mom used to teach to all the blue hairs in the junior high pool with their milk jugs? Total cult. Jazzercize, Spin classes, Les Mills, Ferrell's extreme fitness? All cults, at least by your definition.

Crossfit is simply the herd based, training reflection of people's increasing desires to do something edgier. As we migrate away from Fun runs and poker rides towards mud runs and polar plunges, the training tools simply move to continue to reflect this interest. Purely from economic/business terms, crossfit isn't a cult recruiting to its cause, its a business identifying a need in the marketplace and providing a service to fill that need. It only costs $200 a month to go to an empty room because that's what the market is willing to bear. Crazy, I agree.

I find it particularly interesting that I'm the brother identified as being most connected to this type of crazy stuff. I've done exactly the same number of mud runs as both my brothers. I've not participated in any off the wall training regimen or race. While my interests may be towards more physically intense activity, I am no more than a 7.5 on the nutjob scale of fitness crazes. I only look extreme because you sit downward on the continuum in range of a 2-3. One last note, in my immediate family it is my wife that is currently considering a crossfit membership. And ugh...gasp, she ran a 5K yesterday. What a crazy!

Isn't is a bit like casting stones in a glass house when we all sit at our computers lamenting our difficulties in maintaining fitness while deriding the chiseled, high energy crossfitters?