Crossfit and Social Capital

My garage has turned into a haven for the baby apocalypse. I don’t know what that would look like, but I am prepared. Or maybe I feel like I have turned into like a dealer/Middle Mom for baby gear, arranging pick-ups and drop-offs at odd hours, a “Breaking Good” sort of situation. It is a weird hobby, especially for someone who is done having babies. My other main hobby is Crossfit, going on nine years or something, and I would not have developed this new hobby of collecting baby gear without the help of the old one. Not because my muscles enable me to lift double strollers out of trunks with ease, but because of a term I learned recently: social capital. 

The wise internet tells me that the definition of social capital is “the networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling that society to function effectively.” My definition is my Crossfit gym. It turns out that without social capital, it is hard to make it. More on that soon.

It is true that there are other ways than joining a Crossfit gym to develop social capital: church, a country club, maybe a close knit work team or an extended family that lives in the same town. I just don’t think any of these are as fun as hitting a noon class for Sue’s understated hilarious briefings or sweating alongside a total stranger and finishing a workout feeling like best friends. Maybe that is just me. I keep coming back. But I have been thinking lately about how it isn’t just the endorphins and Sue’s jokes and trying to get Kayla’s muscles and the loud music and seeing my badass gym friends. That is all part of it, but what I am realizing is that what Crossfit gives me access to is real social capital. A group of people to turn to when I have a question, a need, a job notice, a broken toilet, or a giant field of rocks that needs to be cleared. (That one about the rocks is not theoretical. See photo.) Tammy has clothed my boys for the last four years or so and gave my youngest a Halloween costume this year. I have given away all my Strider bikes to little Zootown families. New Zootown babies have a Meal Train posted and meals delivered. Tiffany puts up a Giving Tree in the front of the gym every year and the gift tags fly off of it. Buddies from class showed up for a fundraiser for Family Promise at my parents’ house because I invited them and no other reason. All of this is social capital in action: a network of people that allows a society to function, and I would add, a way for individuals to feel connected and supported. 

I volunteer with the Missoula Family Promise in a few different capacities, and the buddies who came to the fundraiser now know that Family Promise works to support families who either live at the Family Housing Center at the Meadowlark or who are able to move from the Meadowlark into stable housing. I have done a few volunteer trainings through Family Promise, and I have learned that while many factors contribute to a family ending up at the Meadowlark, what comes up again and again is that families who end up falling through the cracks or losing housing do not have access to social capital. They often experience social isolation, which is the exact opposite. Not having people to turn to when things are tough, and when enough factors stack up, it is hard to keep the pieces together. I have had times in my life when I couldn’t keep the pieces together, but I was lucky to belong to various networks that have caught me when I have needed help. We are also learning through this program that without essential support networks (or social capital), families who move into stable housing can end up back in the shelter. What does this have to do with Crossfit? 

It has to do with how this community answers when help is asked. It has to do with a community that functions as a network of people to call on. It means that as I work with one family facing huge odds to keep their housing, I have people to call on to help. It means having the phone numbers of firefighters to ask about baby car seat checks and hearing back from them. It has to do with posting a question and getting a link to a website with the info I am looking for that I can pass on. I am learning that strangers are not so excited to help, that “no” is usually the first answer, and that the dead ends and roadblocks people face can seem endless. But friends and acquaintances open the back door to get a “yes.” It has to do with knowing moms who have had babies in the last few years and coordinating to get their hand-me-downs: stuff they are happy to get rid of to go to someone who needs it, someone who now has everything she needs for a new baby. It has to do with a garage full of baby gear thanks to the generosity of the Zootown families, an easy way to ask for things, and people who want to help people. 

I get to see through this work that most people are really good humans who want to help others, but we can get stuck because we don’t know how. Because those of us with social capital are often mostly connected to others who have social capital too. It is less common to be connected to people living a completely different reality, even in our own town. We can live in isolation in many different ways. Crossfit is one way to fight that isolation on an individual level, helping build friendships and acquaintanceships through shared suffering. Family Promise seeks to fight social isolation on a community level, and nowhere else do I see social capital in action as much as with the community of Zootown. It has moved me and inspired me to tap into this for the sake of the broader community. I keep asking, and I keep receiving. I will keep asking until Kayla bans me from the social app, because it turns out that social capital can be shared. I am seeing it work.  

One last thought on Crossfit and social capital: my brother Liam moved to Missoula before his senior year of high school about eight years ago. I used to worry about Liam. As an older sister of a kid with a disability, this comes with the territory. What would he do for work? Would he have friends? Would leaving Butte mean leaving people who have known him since he was a kid and look out for him if they saw him somewhere and he needed help? I don’t worry about Liam anymore. Liam has cultivated friendships with Zootown members that lead to a quality of life most of us can only aspire to. Friends to take him to baseball games, buy him Pepsi, give him birthday cards and gift cards, people to watch Sunday football with, people to joke around with, people who are genuinely happy to see him every day, who know his interests and sports teams and what is important to him. People who, I know, would step up big if something were to happen to him, if he needed help. This is a safety net. This is belonging. This is social capital. This is the difference between making it and not making it. This is what a Crossfit community can be. This is what I see when Mandy goes around and names everyone in the class and people feel seen and known and valued. This is cheering for the last person to finish, not cleaning up till they are done, acknowledging their hard work and effort and celebrating with them. This is introducing yourself to a new member. This is creating a network where people who have nothing more in common than the daily WOD can find a place of belonging over time. A place where people look out for each other in a way that is strong enough to go beyond Crossfit and beyond Zootown.