When you run, what part of it is for the social aspect? Many people run to enjoy the company of friends, they run in pairs, or groups, and race often - again, for the camaraderie.
I love running with a friend (or 50), but often times I Really Love running alone. It's why I started running in the first place: to be alone with my thoughts, alone with God, and (quite literally) run away from all my stress, problems, and haters for an hour or so. As I often say, running, for me, is meditation in motion.
I have also known over the years that working out, on the other hand, is an activity that isn't half as fun, rewarding, energized, or effective without friends. As most of you know, I drank the CrossFit Kool-aid and haven't looked back. I don't do it nearly as often as I should or as I would like to, but when I can, I love it and find it to be a very well designed and thought out program.
A few people have asked about CrossFit when I mention doing it with friends-there are lots of ways to go about this! First off, I do not go to a CrossFit box, don't get me wrong, I think they are awesome! But they also aren't close to me and, quite frankly, I'm way to cheap... A friend and I have put together our own version of a garage gym and use it when we can. Simply working out in the same room with someone else helps, but in CrossFit too there are lots of ways to do the workouts together if you go a little... outside the 'box'.
My 2 favorite ones are the Team Pace Horse workouts and the Team Partner workouts:
With the Pace Horse workout you have multiple stations, 1 station for each person you have working out. So if you have 5 people, you have 5 stations. One of those 5 stations is a Pace Horse - (use something like a run, or a row - run 400 meters, or row 250 meters, or run 1 suicide, etc.). The other 4 stations can be anything (Kettle bell swings, air squats, wall balls, and dubs).
The Pace Horse sets the time for the rotation, everyone else just does AMRAP until the pace horse is done, then swap stations.
The other one is the one a group of us did last night: The Partner WOD.
In the partner WOD you pair everyone up and come up with several (but doesn't have to be all) workouts that have to be done in pairs. And you can get creative. Last night we were 1 short so we actually had 7 people so we had 2 pairs and a group of 3 (Wolfpack!). A couple examples of partner/pair workouts would be Wall-Ball volleyball, Wall-Ball situps (lock ankles, throw the wall ball at your partner each rep), etc.
Find some friends and get to it! And remember, always follow the proper Gym Etiquette ;)
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