Crossfit vs Meditation

risks, similarities and science

Grunting, sweating, slamming barbells vs sitting in stillness. It’s not easy to picture anything so different. This is more about similarities than differences though. Don’t worry, I’m not about to try to induct anyone into a CrossFit meditation cult, even if that could be a fun thing to imagine.

This isn’t a how to meditate while maxing a workout article. I might even cater to a few prejudices against CrossFit and suspicions of meditation, even if many people benefit from both.

This is mostly about parallels between the risks of CrossFit and meditation. These risks are generally less well appreciated when it comes to meditation. Being aware of these in advance is smart in either endeavour, whether meditation, CrossFit or any other intense exercise method.

For all its ethereal air, meditation is a kind of body building. The part of the body it targets is the brain. In the last decades the capacity to measure changes in brain activity and anatomy in living persons has advanced greatly, and contributed to a mainstream acceptance of meditation. Meditation has been shown to lead to increases in cortical thickness of specific brain areas¹

The analogy to sport is useful in part because most of us know that adaptation happens over time with physical…