Do You Have a Moment to Talk About Eastermaxxing?

IN THE CLIP, a group of shirtless, muscular athletes load heavy barbells onto their shoulders and walk along an empty stretch of road outside CrossFit East Nashville, struggling under the load. “How heavy was Jesus’ cross?” a voiceover asks. According to the caption, that’s roughly 300 pounds. So that’s how much weight they’re hauling down the street for this Good Friday workout session. “Is this what sanctification feels like?” one guy asks the camera between sets. The group is boisterously positive, even as they struggle under their burden.

The workout video comes from Vessel Training Co., a Christian athleisure brand based in Nashville. They’re representative of the type of modern apostle who looks to mark the Easter holiday—and their faith more generally—with a more muscular gesture than kneeling in a pew. Call it Eastermaxxing.

When most Christians celebrate Easter, they attend Good Friday church services, sober evenings marked with remembrances of Christ’s sacrifice. Some really hammer home the suffering, maybe watching The Passion of the Christ and its lurid depiction of the crucifixion. And some shoot for a more literal walk in Christ’s sandals, like Graham Popadic and Spencer Grubbs, Vessel’s founders. “It’s a simple thing of just carrying a barbell for half a mile, but it's so deep and meaningful to reflect on what Jesus did on the cross,” Grubbs says. “As a Christian, that means everything to us.”

Vessel’s post has racked up 938K views and over 600 comments since it was posted earlier this week, with overwhelming approval from both the pious and fitness-pilled. “Not to mention the weight of my sins,” reads one comment with 1,794 likes. “On a diet of bread and fish with no training or supplements,” reads another (270 likes).

The video is actually a re-post—the original video, shared last Easter season, was even more popular, getting over 1.5 million views. “We had so many people after the fact last year that wished they had heard about it before so they could have done it themselves,” Grubbs said. After resharing this week, Popadic says that they’ve received videos from people as far away as Zimbabwe taking on the challenge.

Not everyone is fully on board, though: “That ain’t the full weight but it’s the physical weight,” reads one comment (only 21 likes). That was never the point, according to Grubbs. “It's just symbolic,” he says.

Still, Vessel has created other workouts with similar themes as part of their brand ministry. Since they’ve estimated that Jesus was hung on the cross for six hours, the guys hop up onto a pullup bar and perform dead hangs for six minutes. If they falter, the penalty is three devil presses, a double-dumbbell snatch complex, before regripping (thankfully, no nails are involved in this recreation). Rounding out the trinity of workouts are heavy tire flips, meant to represent the tombstone that was moved by an angel on the third day after Jesus’s death, heralding his resurrection. “Jesus did that for me—I’m doing this for him,” says one of the guys.

These types of workouts kind of fit into the long tradition of Hero WODs like the Murph, meant to commemorate fallen service members—and for Christians, there’s no sacrifice more notable than their Savior’s. Just search “Jesus WOD,” and you’ll find a long list of routines inspired by different interpretations of Bible verses, with grueling sets of exercises standing in for the 14 stations of the cross or different forms of hardship Jesus endured according to scripture. Grubbs says these Bible-inspired workouts are much more meaningful than any other routine, calling them “so much deeper” than the standard CrossFit routine. “There's so much education behind it and conversation that we can have before and after,” he says. “Those challenges and shared suffering bring people together.” This Saturday, they plan to host a workout in Nashville for people to do just that.

That’s the tack they’ve taken outside of the Easter season, too. The Vessel bros say they’ve hosted other workouts for as many as 250 people, where they combined their messages of fitness and faith—inspiring people from outside Nashville to show up to take part in the community. Eventually, Popadic and Grubbs say their plan is to launch an app that will bring these challenges—and daily devotions and fellowship—to like-minded Christians outside Nashville who want to mix their prayers and their pump.

At first, these videos may look like any other fitness highlight reel, but they’re also a direct line to proselytize to an online audience (and yes, promote the Vessel brand too). When I first saw the cross carrying clip, I was immediately reminded of the evangelical tradition I was raised in, where every endeavor was treated as an opportunity to have a conversation with or about Jesus. I remember football teammates gutting through an “Iron Cross” workout every Easter weekend. Christianity and fitness have long been connected, with prayerful bodybuilders and a more recent class of influencers posting themselves pumping iron to spread the word.

Popadic’s next idea is a bit more of a stunt, meant to cap off the season. Instead of just flipping the massive tire from their tombstone video, he plans to roll it all around Nashville “to round out the story of Jesus,” on Resurrection Sunday. That’s not exactly in line the day’s suit-and-tie traditions—but it’ll make a great post.

Brett Williams, NASM-CPT, PES, a senior editor at Men's Health, is a certified trainer and former pro football player and tech reporter. You can find his work elsewhere at Mashable, Thrillist, and other outlets.