Reinvention Through CrossFit: Branded Transformation Documentaries

Abstract

This article analyses a set of branded promotional documentaries from the CrossFit YouTube channel, which depict new participants as they transition into a CrossFit lifestyle. These documentaries share narrative elements of reality makeover television’s hybrid entertainment/educational format, deploying popular tropes of reinvention and personal empowerment through guided consumption. In focusing largely on participants dealing with chronic health issues, the documentaries reproduce dominant neoliberal ideologies about personal responsibility for health through fitness and construct CrossFit as a socially engaged brand with an inclusive fitness mission. These documentaries may also mitigate dominant, intimidating media images of high-performing CrossFit competitors who embody the brand image, as well as CrossFit’s reputation as an extreme fitness practice. This article takes Dawson’s (2017) position that CrossFit is a contemporary reinventive institution, which makes omnivorous demands of its adherents’ lives in exchange for personal transformation. In these documentaries, participants’ successful transition into exemplary CrossFit membership hinges not only on capitulation to these demands but recognition of them as desirable steps toward self-making and health. Reinvention is depicted as willing conformity to CrossFit values and behaviours, rather than simply the achievement of physical fitness, and those who successfully transform are constructed as aspirational embodiments of the brand.

Digital transformations in a platform society: A comparative analysis of European football leagues as YouTube complementors

“…To summarize, this article has not only attached a new layer to the existing literature on the relationship between sport and YouTube (Checchinato et al, 2015; McCarthy, 2021a, 2021b) and the wider digital football studies project (Lawrence and Crawford, 2022), because we also make an original and timely contribution to the body of literature on the symbiotic media/sport relationship (Hutchins and Rowe, 2012; Rowe, 2004, 2015) in a digital sociological age, which has seen the rise of new platforms, such as YouTube. This area, and sports media more widely, remains as key cornerstones of the continually developing academic field revolving around the nexus between sport and communication (see Billings et al, 2018).…”

“…The strategic efforts of sporting organizations and brands to do this, via YouTube, have recently been recognized by researchers (Billings et al, 2018; Tang and Cooper, 2018). Scholars have across various sporting contexts examined, inter alia, misogyny and online abuse across YouTube comments (McCarthy, 2021a), the emergence of football Fan TV channels (Rivers and Ross, 2021) and the content generated by sports clubs, international federations, brands and fans (Checchinato et al, 2015; McCarthy, 2021b; Petersen-Wagner, 2022; Zimmerman et al, 2011). Meanwhile, other relevant areas that have been covered relate to YouTube and sports fandom and fan practices.…”

“…By throwing a light on how YouTube, in European football's context, may be seriously considered an alternative and complementary medium in comparison to traditional media, such as television, this article makes an original contribution to the existing literature on the nexus between sport and YouTube (Checchinato et al, 2015;Gil-Lopez et al, 2017;McCarthy, 2021aMcCarthy, , 2021b while our findings concurrently tie into, and push the boundaries of the wider and evolving digital football studies field (Lawrence and Crawford, 2022). We also extend the existing scholarship on the 'big five' leagues (e.g., Sanchez et al, 2021) through our analysis of their adaption to YouTube.…”

“We Should Not Have the Same Restrictions as Everybody Else:” Southeastern US CrossFit Coaches’ Perceptions of COVID-19 Restrictions

“…Particularly due to its increasingly urgent focus on the relationship between health, chronic illness, and fitness (McCarthy, 2021), CrossFit should ensure their emphasis on individual responsibility (Nash, 2017) does not ignore broader community health. Fitness industry advocates and professional associations should continue to educate their constituencies on the role of gyms, including CrossFit, to positively contribute to public health.…”