7 REASONS WHY BODYBUILDERS HATE CROSSFIT

That is a shocking title, right? “Wait, people can hate CrossFit?”, you think to yourself, “Bu–but how? Everyone I know loves it! We all spend hours every week doing it because we love the sport and we love the people who love the sport.”

We hate to break it to you, but there are reasons bodybuilders hate CrossFit.

Shocking, but true.

We CrossFitters assume that, best-case scenario, everyone loves CrossFit as much as we do, and worst-case scenario, everyone ranges between loving CrossFit and being impartial to it.

After all, how can something that brings us so much joy be disliked by others; especially people who have not even given it a chance!

There is a group of people who dislike CrossFit more than any others.

Bodybuilders.

Bodybuilders, despite never having tried or even seen CrossFit before, love to spend time talking trash about our most beloved sport.

Most of the time, this is due to a misunderstanding of what CrossFit is and bad information about how CrossFit works.

After all, it would seem that bodybuilders and CrossFitters have much more in common than what divides them.

Both groups love physical activity and pushing themselves both physically and mentally to be stronger than they were the day before.

As well, both groups’ sport is internally-competitive, where they are competing more against their past selves than anyone else.

Really, we CrossFitters and bodybuilders should team up to fight other sports, like tennis or maybe pickleball.

That would teach them for thinking they’re better than us with their fancy “rackets”.

Just kidding.

Despite the shared interests between the two groups, lots of bodybuilders have it out for CrossFitters.

Let’s take a look at why they claim to dislike CrossFit, and try to put some of these reasons to rest.

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CrossFit Grows As Bodybuilding Slows

You know when you first invited your little brother out to something you liked? It could be anything, but for the sake of this article let’s pretend it was rabid rat wrangling, because that’s highly relatable.

At first, it’s fun to watch your lil’ bro struggle to catch those rats.

Then, they start to improve and you feel proud because you’re the big brother in this scenario and that’s how big brothers feel when their little brother does something better than they used to.

Then, your little brother gets better than you. He’s wrangling rabid rats like there is no tomorrow. That’s when you stop feeling happy or proud.

That’s when you go “Hey, wait a minute, I’m the big brother, I should be bigger and better!” Then you get angry and a little bit salty.

For the last while, big brother bodybuilding has gotten outperformed in the fitness world by a new up-and-comer.

Take a wild guess who? You guessed it, little brother CrossFit.

Over the last decade, CrossFit has been the fastest-growing exercise regime in the world.

It is not only the greatest example of exponential growth in the fitness world, but also one of the top growers out of any corporation in North America over that time.

Bodybuilding is going in the opposite direction. It hit its peak in the 1970s and 1980s, where stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger were universal household names. Since then, it has been a dying sport.

Imagine if CrossFit was dying off. All of us CrossFit fanatics would probably blame it on the new ‘fad’ workout stealing our customers.

As CrossFit entered the mix for fitness programs, old guard bodybuilders feel like it stole money and business away from them.

But that does not have to be the case.

CrossFit and bodybuilding are not in direct competition with each other. Really, they are not even that similar. We can easily coexist without conflict

CrossFit Puts An Emphasis On Sport

One claim that bodybuilders make about CrossFit is that it puts too much emphasis on the ‘sport’ aspect of the fitness program.

In some bodybuilder’s eyes, this cheapens the experience that is weight lifting.

But we in the CrossFit community see an emphasis on sport as a good thing. We really lean into that side of exercise.

If you’re crushing your body and rueing the day you were born in a workout, it might as well be a little bit of fun!

That is why CrossFit strives to make each WOD as positive and fun as possible (even if you think that doing a few minutes on an Assault Bike is as far from “fun” as physically possible).

We want to have an environment where positive energy and cheering each other on is just second nature.

Just like the environments in basketball, football, soccer, and most other team sports you can think of.

Bodybuilding tends to be more like individual sports, where there is no team aspect, and all of your motivation to keep pushing yourself is internal, instead of the mix of internal and external motivation found at your local CrossFit box.

They Have Different Beliefs About Lifts

Bodybuilding is incredibly difficult. So is CrossFit. In that, they are similar. In how they are difficult, there is some variance.

Just like how eating 14 wedding cakes in an hour is difficult in a different way than cooking 14 wedding cakes in an hour. Similar, but different.

Building your body to look like Adonis (or, if you don’t know who Adonis is, Mr. T in The A Team) takes a lot of work. Like, hours upon hours EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

For a bodybuilder, each exercise can seemingly take forever, and with good reason.

Every rep has to burn. They slowly go through their bicep curl with perfect form, fully focused on straining the muscle they are working to the absolute limit.

It is not enough just to go through the exercise; perfect form is everything.

With that mindset firmly lodged in our brains, we can understand why something like a Kipping Pullup looks so wrong in the eyes of a bodybuilder.

It is not a perfect, strict form of a pullup. Lots of the movements that CrossFitters do are subpar in their minds.

CrossFitters are not as focused on perfect form as our bodybuilding brethren, this is true, but the lie that “CrossFit does not teach form” just isn’t true.

One of the biggest focus’ before any self-respecting WOD should be the form of the participants in the exercise taking place.

CrossFitters should only lift as heavy of a weight as they can with proper form. Once it starts slipping, the weight needs to go down.

Another issue between CrossFitters and bodybuilders is that they workout with different goals in mind. Bodybuilders chase physical perfection.

They want each muscle to glisten in the sun, perfectly shaped and amply filled.

Each muscle should be able to hold up the sky and gain sentience of its own, or at the very least be able to lift heavy weights and put them back down again.

CrossFitters’ goals tend to be for more functional strength. They want to be strong and ripped, yes, but also able to run fast and jump high.

This ties back to the ‘sport’ aspect again.

A functional muscle with a full range of motion is of the utmost importance, whereas professional bodybuilders tend to get so strong and large that they struggle to do simple things like put on a coat and fit into average-sized cars.

Neither of these goals are inherently better than the other. They are just different.

CrossFit Said That Bodybuilder’s Mom Is Ugly!

That’s not true! We were there and CrossFit said that Body Builder’s mom’s hat was ugly!

There is a big difference between calling someone’s mom ugly and someone’s mom’s hat ugly.

Anyways, Mrs. Builder is a lovely woman that CrossFit has only the highest respect for.

No way would they call her something that rude.

So now that that’s all cleared up, can’t we just be friends?

Yes?

*Cue “Why Can’t We Be Friends” Song*

They See It As A Cult

Bodybuilders look at the enthusiasm and community surrounding CrossFit and can come up with only one possible reason for it: CrossFit is a cult.

If you have been in CrossFit for more than a few days, odds are you have been asked whether it is a cult.

No, it is not. It isn’t even close, like Lululemon.

CrossFit does attract like-minded individuals who like pushing themselves, physical fitness, and the type of circuit exercises that make up most CrossFit WODs.

This usually leads to a CrossFit Box being a great community of friends who spend lots of time together and share a lot of interests and passions.

But that is just a normal friend group.

People tend to spend time together because they love the same things and think along the same brainwave, and the shared physical anguish of CrossFit only brings people even closer together.

If any of that sounds culty, know what else seems an awful lot like a cult? Bodybuilding.

It is a bunch of massive piles of muscle spending hours a day in the gym, narrowly focused on one thing and trying to hone themselves into the perfect physical specimen.

They also spend a lot of time together, talking about their shared interest in looking like Channing Tatum on steroids.

Still not a cult.

Well CrossFit is not a cult, but it does change lives.

They Think You Will Get Rhabdo

What is Rhabdo?

Rhabdomyolysis, commonly shortened to Rhabdo, is a condition that arises when muscles are too overworked. The muscles, unable to recover from incredible strenuous exercise, breakdown and die.

As the muscle fibers die, they release their contents into the bloodstream.

As you probably guessed, muscle fibers dying and melting into the bloodstream is less than ideal. It can lead to renal failure, as your kidneys cannot process the contents being brought to them.

Bodybuilders believe that CrossFit, due to its emphasis on physical exertion, can get Rhabdo and die. This isn’t really the case.

People can get Rhabdo from just about any physical exercise. It is just quickly working your muscles much more than they are used to.

CrossFit does promote pushing yourself physically and mentally, but it also promotes self-regulation.

There is a difference between pushing yourself hard and pushing yourself past the point of reason.

Nobody can walk into a CrossFit gym and expect to put up Mat Fraser-like scores on their first day.

By slowly building up your ability, you save yourself from getting anywhere close to Rhabdo.

They Think CrossFit Is A Rip-Off

To the outside world, CrossFit seems like a bit of a rip-off. It can cost hundreds of dollars or more a month.

To most people, that seems like a lot of money to physically torture yourself.

Bodybuilders, who usually pay a fraction of that price for their gym membership, may see it as a quick, overly-expensive aerobic workout.

But that is not what we pay for.

CrossFit is, first of all, a very high-skill sport. It requires proper coaching and equipment to be considered safe.

If we wanted to spend less money, we could go injure ourselves at some CrossFit rip-off with a trainer with no coaching expertise and the equipment from when Rocky trains in Russia in Rocky 4.

Another reason is the community. We are fine with paying good money for our gym because we spend an obscene amount of time at it.

If you are going 4 times a week, that is barely over 10$ per session!

These are all reasons why bodybuilders dislike the sport of CrossFit.

If you flip most of them, the same could be said for why CrossFitters are opposed to bodybuilding.

The problem is, most of these issues with CrossFit come from a lack of understanding.

By simply looking into the issues we have, we could probably come away realizing that we have a lot more in common than we previously thought.

The same could be said about most issues we have in life, whether that is racism, sexism, or whatever other prejudices we may have.

Wow, that got really deep there at the end.

You’re welcome.

Wrapping Up The 7 Reasons Bodybuilders Hate CrossFit

As you can see, there are definitely differences between the two worlds.

But in all seriousness, we love and respect diversity, and we applaud anyone who chooses health over not being healthy.

Our body is our temple, and we only get 1 of them... so take care of it!

Our world is already filled with enough division as it is.

While this article is meant to have a little humor with the subject, we have a bigger and stronger calling to get more people off meds from Big Pharma, and to help people enjoy their lives again free from chronic pains, chronic illnesses, and chronic disease.

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