By now, the CrossFit craze has subsided, but not without changing gym culture and current fitness models. In twenty years, CrossFit grew rapidly to thousands of locations across the world. Today, there are about 12,000 CrossFit Gyms in 150 countries – less than half of which are in the US. CrossFit is known to be more than a gym franchise. Its followers are often made fun of for talking incessantly about their last CrossFit workout at the office water cooler. CrossFit stands out for its intense loyalty, enthusiasm, and cult-like following.
The brand has not been without controversy. Over the years, there has been a stack of sexual harassment cases, such as allegations of its founder, Greg Glassman, pulling women’s tops down. In the wake of George Floyd and in 2020, Glassman responded to a tweet that stated systemic racism was an epidemic with the remark “Floyd-19”, which was the final straw causing his resignation.
Glassman doesn’t exactly look like many CrossFit adherents with massive layers of bulky muscle. The CrossFit system he developed was pulled together from his own fitness routine. As a child, he had serious health issues and found keeping fit with gymnastics and lifting critical to his health. With CrossFit, Glassman combined gymnastics with Olympic lifting and calisthenics into a workout that could be modified so that (supposedly) anyone could participate regardless of age or fitness level.
What really made CrossFit a phenomenon that swept the fitness industry is that he made each workout a spectator sport and competition.
The inspiration for CrossFit came from Glassman’s frustration watching trainers let their clients zone out on a treadmill to feel like they were exercising but not getting results. A key element of the CrossFit culture is that each workout is a surprise, so CrossFit participants never know exactly what to expect.
Glassman co-founded CrossFit in 2000 with his wife at the time, Lauren Jenai. A part of CrossFit’s success was its very low buy-in for anyone to open a CrossFit with little corporate franchise regulation. Glassman encouraged gym owners to take the initiative and do whatever worked best for them. To open a CrossFit, it only required $3,000 a year and a weekend training course to get started. Within five years, CrossFit started showing up on every corner like Starbucks, and became mainstream. Further, Glassman capitalized on posting intense workouts on the internet in the early 2000s that captured popularity among police forces, Navy SEALS, and Green Berets. Once it caught on, CrossFit’s tire flipping and strict low-carb Paleo diet became the biggest fitness trend.
By 2013, Glassman had split from Jenai and bought out her CrossFit shares. It was at this time that Glassman sued the NCSA (National Strength And Conditioning Association), which is the body that certifies personal trainers. The lawsuit was in response to a published study that was favorable to CrossFit as a workout but exaggerated the frequency of injuries to followers. Once Glassman found the study was partly funded by Pepsi-Cola, he went to Congress to lobby against soda.
According to the Washington Post, “the closer Glassman looked, the more soda money he found — supporting not just training organizations, but also health nonprofits, medical organizations, diabetes foundations, even the foundations supporting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. (A 2016 study by Boston University researchers found nearly 100 national health and medical groups were sponsored by Coca-Cola Co. or PepsiCo.”)
“Some research suggests such funding taints soda science. A 2013 analysis by a team of European researchers found that literature reviews sponsored by the food and beverage industry were “five times more likely to present a conclusion of no positive association between SSB [sugar-sweetened beverage] consumption and obesity than those without them.”
Glassman won the lawsuit, although the high rate of injuries reported was deemed unintentional. Recently, Glassman described his beloved team of lawyers as leprechauns popping up everywhere. Meanwhile, Jenai had married a man while he was incarcerated for first-degree murder, but the marriage was short-lived.
Since Glassman’s 2020 retirement, CrossFit management has switched leadership several times and closed 20% of its locations during Covid. Even without Glassman, the CrossFit brand has continued to be buried in sexual harassment, racial discrimination, and injury lawsuits.
This brings us to the recent drowning of Serbian athlete Lazar Dukic, who was a professional water polo player. The circumstances of how this athlete drowned are still being investigated. There were rescue teams on paddleboards nearby, yet Dukic’s body wasn’t found until after the competition.
CrossFit athletes have expressed outrage that going into competitions, they are never informed of how long they will be competing in conditions like sweltering heat or swimming in contaminated water. In a recent podcast interview, Glassman stated that CrossFit has donated money towards awareness of children’s drowning deaths and that all ten of his kids (four of which are with Jenai) were swimming or floating by the time they were six months old.
The accident is especially devastating for a community that is largely made up of first responders who structure their lives around these competitions. An ex-Navy SEAL was running the event, adding to the confusion that there were so many people nearby who were more than trained to rescue an athlete. At the same time, the drowning validates long-standing concerns about the safety of CrossFit.
There are many, many things CrossFit did wrong, but the CrossFit trend was the beginning of a new era in fitness. The iconic weighted ropes are now standard pieces of gym equipment. CrossFit redefined exercise from mindless cardio to primal athletic training. Glassman saw issues in how fitness and nutrition were being coached and successfully disrupted the industry. CrossFit has always been a “you love it or you hate it” trend, and enough people loved it enough to transform the way fitness is practiced today.
