I Survived 4 Days at Sea With Thousands of CrossFit Fanatics
“Tell me something scary.”
I type the first thing that comes to mind:
“I do CrossFit. And I’m on a CrossFit cruise.”
“Yup, that worked,” replies the rando I matched with on Hinge.
It was the first night of the WOD on the Waves fitness cruise, and I kill time between events the way every singleton does: swiping.
Admitting you participate in CrossFit is akin to saying you don’t like puppies– prepare for some major judgement. I can’t say the disdain is completely unwarranted. CrossFitters obsess over their PRs, the “box” (that’s "gym" in layman’s speak), and “The Open."
Those words just aren't in my vernacular, which is why I don’t consider myself a member of "the cult"-despite going to a box for more than a year. Most diehards probably nixed their Kettlebell Kitchen memberships to save up for the CrossFit-themed cruise, which the founder stresses is not affiliated with the official brand. I geared up for the excursion by taking more rest than gym days.
Compelled to see what kind of person spends upwards of $600 to work out on a ship, I received a press pass to go on the four-day journey to the Bahamas . Advertisements promised beachside burpees, traditional island activities like snorkeling, and WODs instructed by CrossFit athletes. I couldn't imagine anything worse than ruining beach time with squats.
What set this voyage apart from your standard trip were the rows of expensive fitness equipment lining the pool decks. Pullup stands, TrueForm treadmills, assault bikes, rowers, and ski machines transformed the boat into a seafaring gym.
At the welcome pool party, I watched a few fiendish travelers test them out while hundreds of hard-bodied young'ns danced and drank to top 40s music. It's a common stereotype that cruises are only for people active in the bingo circuits, but everyone here looks like they're barely out of college.
Earlier in the night, I ducked out of the party passed and passed the time on my phone. It finally hits me that as a solo traveler I have no one to party or eat with. I Google, “What to do on a cruise by yourself,” and read a first-person essay in which the author details the judgement she faced for traveling alone.
Damn, I'm even more panicked. I cheer myself up by going to dinner because I’m excited (and scared) to see what’s CrossFitters eat on vacation. Disciplined athletes only care about consuming enough protein, whether it’s in liquid, powder, or ground beef form. That mentality is a wild contradiction to the traditional over-the-top dessert bars associated with cruises, and I wonder if some freaky protein-chocolate-cottage cheese concoction has been developed to marry the two.
I bypass the buffet for the restaurant, where the host asks whether I prefer to sit with others or alone. Although it’s tempting to eat by myself, I join another group.
He leads me to an eight-person table already filled with three couples.
The first are Marta and Junior, who are professional cruise-goers with 30 expeditions under their belts. Marta loves CrossFit, so there was no question they’d attend WOD on the Waves. Unfortunately, she fell and injured her ankle just before the trip, so any physical activity is out.
I’m disappointed to see that the menu is all pretty normal American-style food: grilled salmon with vegetables; pasta; chocolate cake. However, there are a few items with a designated kettlebell icon that signifies it’s a healthy option.
Dinner is surprisingly not awkward, thanks to the one thing most of us have in common: CrossFit. I mainly chat with Jennifer and Michael, another couple, about their favorite athletes, fitness, and nutrition. My CrossFit knowledge is limited, but I fake my way through the murky world of AMRAPS and athletes as they name drop unfamiliar terms.
After dinner, I check out the solo travelers’ event, where I meet Cydnee and Sarah. Cydnee flew all the way from England, because yes, she adores CrossFit. And get this: She’s still in college. The look of shock on my face must be evident because she says, “Yeah, I know I look old.”
I assure Cydnee that she looks great. The real reason I’m stunned is because I could barely afford to buy Taco Bell as an undergrad, let alone go on a cruise.
Sara is in her mid-20s and has never been to CrossFit, but loves working out and traveling. Combining the two only seemed natural. She found the trip through a Facebook ad, and was initially scared the whole thing might be a scam.
“I was scared to pay for it,” she says. “It just seemed weird.”
I mean, yeah.
Sara and Cydnee are natural socialites, so I stick with them. As we worm our way into conversations, I ask everyone the same question: “Why are you here?”
I learn several things. First, nearly everyone at the mixer is young-like, Cydnee young. And second, there are four types of CrossFit cruisers: social media influencers, Instagram contest winners, military members (all who scored a free or discounted trip) and then actual CrossFitters.
Surprised by the sheer number of people on board for free, I asked Christopher Brauser, WOD on the Waves founder, about this after the trip. He explains that WOD on the Waves donated extra tickets to the Northeast Ohio Foundation for Patriotism, an organization that provides resources to vets and their families. The large Instagram crowd is attributed to Brauser’s partnership with Datefit, an app where fitness fanatics can swipe for potential swolemates. The app purchased tickets to invite social media influencers, who then held giveaways on their personal accounts.
Back at the mixer, people are excited about that night's Crazy Quest scavenger hunt, which I imagine to be like those grade school ice breakers. You know, the kind where you find people with specific traits, like someone who shares your birthday.
Instead, Crazy Quest is more like a game show. The audience is divided into four teams, each led by a CrossFit athlete, and the cruise director poses a challenge. She starts by asking each team to find someone wearing a hole-y sock. Requests get more scandalous, and before you know it there’s a bunch of guys bearing six packs stripped down to their skivvies. It was almost like watching Magic Mike, if the strip club relocated to a Caribbean ocean liner.
“Usually things are hanging,” the cruise director comments. “I’ve never seen so many young guys.”
The next morning, I wake up in time for the ship-wide workout led by Rich Froning, Brooke Wells, and a couple of guys I assume are CrossFit famous. But it’s only 8 a.m., and I’m not ready to do burpees, so I watch other people do them instead.
“How many of you, this is your second or third class [of the day]?,” asks one of the athletes.
People cheer, and I hear some guy mutter exactly what I’m thinking: “These people are crazy.”
After downing some coffee, I’m ready to tackle the 9 a.m. bootcamp session led by Annie Sakamoto, a four-time CrossFit Games athlete. She explains the exercises, which include throwing a medicine ball to the ground. As Sakamoto demos the move, a frenzied blonde races up the stairs to tell us we’re killing the vibe in her spa.
“I’m sorry, I cannot have you throwing things around,” the spa manager says. “Absolutely not.”
She’s livid, and I wonder why this wasn’t accounted for on a boat filled with large weights. But Sakamoto obliges and swaps in medicine ball side passes instead.
We quickly pair up, and a pretty, toned, blonde with a southern accent very sweetly agrees to be my partner. Turns out, she’s a trainer and owns her own gym.
I immediately panic. How am I going to keep up with a professional? Back home, I’m always the last one to complete a timed workout. Thankfully, my perky partner is 100-percent supportive.
“You’re doing great!,” she yells. That’s a pretty generous assessment considering I complete one burpee for every two of hers. Still, I appreciate the encouragement.
We move through the workout, consisting of burpees, box jumps, and side passes. It’s rumored that burpees get easier with time. They don’t. A year into CrossFit and my body still pleads for me to stop the nonsense every time it's hurled onto the ground. But I make it through the workout, thanks to my partner who is also my personal cheerleader.
After that I complete two more classes–a kettlebell-dumbbell combo that includes too many freaking snatches, and HIIT. I’m relieved that neither are overly challenging or require a partner. After more than an hour of burpees, lunges, and cleans, I break for lunch and decide on my fourth workout of the day, a barbell class held in town, while downing an omelette and fruit. We are now docked in Nassau, Bahamas, and I figure I might as well get off the ship. I’m told by cruise staff that it’s only a 15-minute walk.
In reality, it takes 20 minutes, which means everyone is done with the warmup and have already loaded weights onto their bars when I arrive. I apologize to the coach for being late, but he is exceedingly nice and pairs me up with a girl who's around my size.
Except this teen–yes, teen!– is deceivingly strong. I can’t even complete one clean and jerk, let alone 30, using her weight. I strip everything off and breeze through 30 reps using just the bar–which probably explains why I lose my mind and tackle a fifth workout.
Ending with such a lackluster workout annoys me, so I go for a jog. It only takes a few seconds on the track to realize this was the opposite of a good idea. My legs feel like there's a kettlebell from the morning workout strapped to each ankle.
All around me, people are going hard. A group of shirtless men are doing pullups. I focus in on a couple biking in sync. I spot the toned gym owner sitting on a pool chair with her mom. She waves, and now that someone’s noticed me, there’s no way to stop without feeling like a fool. I finish one mile and let myself collapse into a chair.
The alarm goes off in time for yoga at 6:30 a.m. I skip it. And then I ditch the 7 a.m. technique class too because my body is too weary from the previous day’s workouts. I finally get out of bed to have breakfast with Cydnee and Sara, who I met for drinks at the previous night’s Toga party. Although there are people of all ages on the cruise, it seems like only the youth show up to play. Compared to Cydnee, I feel like a Golden Girl, but she and Sara are becoming my new cruise ship BFFs.
There’s a Fireball 10k that Cydnee and Sara are determined to complete. Essentially you do shots of fireball while on a row, bike, or ski machine for 10 kilometers in a group of four. I make some noncommittal remarks about joining and plot how to get out of exercising on a fitness cruise.
At the event, we run into Meredith, a New Yorker I met the day before. She’s here with Anna, another journalist covering the cruise. Meredith and I bond over being casual CrossFitters in a sea of Kool-aid drinking enthusiasts.
People begin forming teams, and Cydnee and Sara pair up with two guys from the Toga party. My muscles are looser, and I don’t feel quite as stiff, so I reluctantly join Meredith and Anna’s team.
While we wait, I ask if anyone else noticed that most people seem to be on the trip for free.
Anna immediately agrees. “You’re dumb if you actually paid for this,” she says.
There’s an awkward pause, and then Sara says, “I paid.”
I am so uncomfortable. Anna quickly apologizes, and the snafu is immediately forgotten once a rower opens up. As a team of three, we'll each row a couple of miles and switch places every two minutes.
The first few rounds are surprisingly easy, but I’m soon ready to give up and ponder faking an injury. Is that even possible on a rower?
Finally, there are only a few hundred meters left.
I push back with my feet and pull the handle to my chest. My legs burn. My hips are tight. I just want it to end.
A guy from Sara’s team cheers me on.
“You’re almost there! You’re doing awesome,” he shouts.
I know he’s lying, because the display reveals I’ve only gotten slower. I look at what’s remaining and do a little countdown in my head.
“40 meters left,” I think. “That’s only four more sets of 10.”
And then I’m done.
Everyone is wiped, and we cool down by watching the other teams. A girl next to us is frustrated because her rower isn’t working. She jokingly demands batteries ASAP, but Meredith takes this seriously.
“That was aggressive,” she says. “These people terrify me.”
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If Meredith was terrified by the overzealous rower, then there’s no way she could handle the crowd at the athlete Q&A later that night. It was a Froning fan fest.
As an outsider, it’s hard to follow the discussion since everything centers around training, the Open, and the guys’ achievements.
One man in particular captures my attention, since he cheers every time Froning speaks, and even belts out an occasional “Hell yeah!” His enthusiasm can only rivaled by my own shrill screams during a Backstreet Boys concert.
I need to meet him.
Following the Q&A, I head straight for the fanboy, who unsurprisingly, sits in the front, and lurk while he chats it up with Froning.
“Hi, I noticed your excitement during the panel,” I say, swooping in the moment he steps away. “Do you have some time to talk?”
I lead Eric and his wife Lauren to a quiet corner.
“So, what brought you on this cruise?” I ask.
“We booked this for a honeymoon,” says Eric.
I have so many questions. When did you get married? Wouldn’t you rather sip Mai Tais on the beach? And more importantly, what does Lauren think about this?
Turns out, it was her idea.
They explain that three years ago, a motorcycle accident left Eric with a broken back and a permanently paralyzed hand. Lauren’s brother is a next-level CrossFit advocate, and she thought the community would be good for Eric, a former Marine.
“I didn’t think I could do something like CrossFit,” he says.
About seven months ago, Lauren finally convinced Eric to try a Memorial day WOD. He was hooked.
“They were so warm,” he says of the people at his local box in San Diego.
One day, Lauren was browsing Instagram and discovered their favorite athletes, Bridges and Froning, would be on the cruise. They didn’t hesitate to book the trip for their honeymoon.
Eric says he feel especially connected to Bridges, a former serviceman.
“He was our first crush,” he reveals.
They began digging Froning after watching The Fittest Man on Earth, which chronicles the athlete’s career.
“He’s such a God,” Eric gushes. “I’m telling you, watch The Fittest Man on Earth.”
Meanwhile, Lauren fawns over Froning’s more virtuous attributes.
“He’s all about everybody else and that’s what CrossFit is all about,” she says. “We’re all out to help each other and get better.”
Eric hopes to be like Froning in that way. He wants to open a gym tailored to adaptive athletes like himself because the CrossFit community has been a constant source of support.
“They keep us going everyday,” Lauren says.
I skip the workouts for the remainder of the cruise. Instead, I do some poolside people watching, catch up on work, and make new friends. I meet Bill from Florida, who also chose this excursion as a romantic honeymoon. He is looks incredible and repeatedly humble brags about being 50-something. I chat with Brian, a 20-something bartender who traveled alone because his friend stayed at home for a family emergency. And I meet CrossFit athlete Elijah Muhammad, who asks to be included in this story because it would be a cool to tell his kids he was featured in Men’s Health.
It’s clear they’re all overzealous about fitness, though none are particularly obnoxious, or in Meredith’s words, terrifying. And no matter how much I side-eye people who obsesses over their PRs or refuse to eat cake, I have so much more in common with them than I think.
Confession: I spend hours chatting–mostly about health and nutrition–with Brian, Dana, and Matt, three CrossFitters I met through Cydnee. And I really enjoy it. In fact, I need people like them. Because yeah, they’re kinda obsessed about fitness, but their positive attitude keeps begrudging gym goers (like me!) motivated through hard workouts. They get me to show up when I’d rather skip leg day to binge eat ice cream on the sofa.
Besides, spending your waking hours talking about CrossFit is no worse than droning on about Game of Thrones spoilers: an argument I never considered until chatting with Jason Ackerman, a gym owner based in New York.
“Yeah, we’re crazy,” Ackerman admits. “But you know what, I think we’ve all been passionate about worse things. And if we’re passionate about health and fitness and being the best version of ourselves, that’s a pretty cool thing to be passionate about.”
A month after the cruise, I receive a Hinge notification that Brandon, a video editor in Brooklyn, liked my profile. Several messages in, he cops to being a member at two very expensive New York City gyms. In return, I own up to my own flaw.
“I’ll admit… CrossFit people freak me out,” he responds. “It’s kinda cultish.”
“??," I shoot back. "I mean, it’s just like any other workout."
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