CrossFit gyms are now offering preschool programs:
In preschool CrossFit, dangling off hanging bars is likened to being a monkey. Squats are frog-inspired. Box jumps, plyometric leaps long beloved by elite athletes, are smaller and rebranded for kids as superhero leaps.
In Long Island City, a tunnel constructed from red tumbling mats inspired comparisons to snakes and worms. Games and exercises were punctuated by water breaks and doodling. CrossFit Kids instructors are discouraged from telling children to lift weights or move faster, Martin said. High-fives for effort are prevalent.
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For some parents and children, CrossFit has become an alternative to the travel teams and year-round youth sports schedules that can be so demanding.
This is so alien! Has the world moved on and left me behind that spending $260 a month to send your kids to this is reasonable? Is this a New York bubble thing?
My kids aren’t in any way special but they throw themselves off high places and climb where they’re not supposed to and build complicated bridges to cross. You should see the stupid things they do in the hay barn. I try not to look.
One thing I don’t like about it is this is yet another adult-supervised play time. How do they ever invent things? Make rules, solve problems, figure out how games work? The kids need unsupervised time to go and yahoo about. What about the yard? The local park, forest, vacant lot? The alley out the back? The furniture in the lounge? Don’t want them jumping off the furniture so I’ll pay $260 a month to have someone watch them jump on to nice safe crash mats. The price keeps the poor people out. Or maybe this is Hanson’s law and they’re just signaling how special their kids are and by extension themselves. This isn’t just exercise, this is branded CrossFit.
This cracks me up: “The class this month, which was punctuated by the occasional tear or a giggle, progressed from an obstacle course to a game of ‘farmers and lumberjacks,’ a contest to tip over kettlebell weights onto the ground, as a lumberjack would knock over a tree.”
It’s unfair to laugh at this since I’m a farmer and our huge, cold, massive-thermal-mass house is “heated” by wood stoves. The kids help me chop firewood and bring it in to the house to provide heat. The 3yo is assertive about doing her share of moving the firewood. It has a built-in reward: they get to stand in front of the fire and unfreeze their butt.
Heh, I just scanned the comments and my reaction seems to be boringly common. Which makes me think that was the intention of the author of the article.