When gym ownerAlyssa Royse reached out to the CrossFitleadershipon June 3to let them know she was disappointed by CrossFit leadership’s response to COVID and social unrest sparked by the killing of George Floyd, she hoped her message would at least be received respectfully.
CrossFit, a fitness company founded in 2000 by Greg Glassmanand his ex-wife,Lauren Jenai, has grown to more than 15,000 affiliated gyms over the past two decades.Each affiliatepays$3,000 a year to be able to use the CrossFit name in their branding and to receivepromotion on . The companypartnerswith Reebok tohostthe annual , where hundreds ofathletes compete for the Fittest on Earth title.For years, CrossFit profited from itsaffiliate modelwhile gym owners enjoyed the freedom of being independent business owners operating under a widely recognized brand.
As hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets to protest police violence against Black people in recent weeks, manyfitness companies spoke out in support ofthemovement. Nike an adaddressing America’shistory of racism, while Peloton released a ending with“Black Lives Matter” and made a $500,000 donation to the NAACPLegal Defense and EducationalFund.CrossFit, on the other hand, stayed silent for more than a week, despite calls from gym owners and athletes urgingit to make a statement.
The company’s long silenceprompted Royse, a longtime CrossFitgym owner, who is White, to send heremail toCrossFit leadership, where she alsoexplainedher inclination to disaffiliate.Shereceived from Glassman directly,which she posted on hergym’s blog along with her initial letter. In it, Glassman calls Royse“a really shitty person,”ending the email by telling her, “I am ashamed of you.”
Royse had thought hard aboutparting ways with CrossFit. Gyms that disaffiliate must rebrand and findmembers on their own, without the benefit of the CrossFit name or promotion on their website, all of which can be time-consuming and costly. But Royse says Glassman’s response confirmed to her that she’d made the right decision.
“At that moment, any hope I had that anything could be heard or changed just vanished,” Royse says. “It was profoundly sad.” Roysesays shedidn’t expect more than a couple hundred people to read her blog post detailing the interaction. On June 6, however, after from GlassmanregardingGeorge Floyd’s killingat the hands of the police and the relationship between systemic racism and health caredrew widespread condemnation,Royse’spost went viral. (Glassman’s Twitter account appears to have since been deactivated.) The next day, Reebok it was ending its partnership with CrossFit at the end of the year, and more CrossFit gym owners began to disaffiliate.Glassmanthat same day, saying:“I, CrossFit HQ, and the CrossFit community will not stand for racism. I made a mistake by the words I chose yesterday. My heart is deeply saddenedby the pain it has caused. It was a mistake, not racist but a mistake.”
On June 9,BuzzFeed News published aof aZoom callthat occurred shortly before Glassman posted the tweetin which hetold affiliate ownersthat he didn’t mournFloyd.Glassman the same daythathe would retire as CEObutretainownership ofthe company.“On Saturday I created a rift in the CrossFit community and unintentionally hurt many of its members,” from Glassman on the CrossFit website. The position ofCrossFit CEO was temporarily passedtoDave Castro,one of Glassman’s deputies and director of the CrossFit Games. CrossFit headquarters statement on June 9, apologizing for Glassman’s remarks and the company’s silence on the death of George Floyd.“The Black community is hurting around the globe,” the post read. “The community called upon us to speak, and we improperly answered. That was a mistake. We heard you and got in our own way while trying to figure out how to convey our message truthfully without following a trend, shaming, or creating division.”
The controversy didn’t subside. On June 20, that Glassman allegedly routinely sexually harassed employees and CrossFit athletes and that a level of sexism was pervasive in CrossFit offices, allegations that Glassman denied through CrossFit spokespeople. (Glassman did not respond to a request from ϳԹ for additional comment on the sexual harassment allegations.)Four days later, Glassman that he will sellthe company to Eric Roza, owner of a CrossFit gym in Boulder, Colorado, for an undisclosed sum. Roza would also take over theCEO position.
Those who have watched CrossFit’s meteoric rise from a boutique workout program to an international phenomenon and a powerful player in the fitness world were hardly surprised to readabout Glassman’s recent behavior and comments. His abrasive interpersonal style has long been tolerated and, in some cases, seen as a personification of the brandby gym owners and colleagues alike. This time, however, even before the reporton sexual harassment surfaced, some CrossFit gym owners and participants feltthat Glassmanhad gone too far.Others notedthat the cultural differences within the CrossFit community randeeper than Glassman’s leadership.
Royse has felt a tension between the culture at her gym and the larger CrossFit world’sculturefor years. Because of this, she saysshe worked todifferentiate herself from public perceptions of the brand—in the company’s early days, Glassman found among law enforcement officers, active-duty military personnel, and veterans. One of Glassman’s earliest contracts was to trainthe Santa Cruz, California,sheriff’s department, and Glassman intentionally brought on affiliate gyms with ties to the Navy SEAL community. “No SEAL is going to do the fat people’s workout. But the fat people will do the SEAL workout,” Glassman in 2015.
Bycontrast, Royse focused on creating a gender-inclusive and body-positive culture at her gym, something she says hasn’tbeen a priority for CrossFit. Transgender athletes, for example, were at the CrossFit Gamesin the gender division they were assigned atbirth,and Royse was part of an effort to lobby CrossFit to change its stance. (The policy in 2018.) “We built the reputation of our gym by fairly directly saying, ‘We’re not CrossFit,’” Royse says. Shethinks there are a lot of CrossFit gyms out there like hers—different from CrossFit HQand the earlier affiliate gyms. “It creates a bit of a culture war,” Royse says. “You can feel that tension. That tension is really, really real.”
CrossFit’s cultural riftsarebecoming more apparent as gym owners and athletes react to Glassman’s recent comments. Dale Saran, a Marine Corps veteranandalawyer, started participating inCrossFit workouts when he was stationed in Afghanistan. In 2007, after his service, he became an affiliate gym owner before working for CrossFitas itsgeneral counsel for over eight years.(He has since left the company.)He told ϳԹ that he viewsthe recent outrage overGlassman’s tweet and claims that he is racistas fundamentally “unserious.”
“How much is enough for the new Woke Thought-Guardians?” Saran wrotein a defense of Glassmanposted on .“You either start screaming RACISM! and demonize and denounce every cop in the country—or you’re cancelled. Is Glassman supposed to wade into the fray and choose between his ‘woke’ Affiliates and his police Affiliates—the latter being the ones who helped build CrossFit.” Saran also wrote that he misses the “familial nature” of the early CrossFit community, when CrossFit “transcended politics.”
For Lady Velez, a CrossFit coach,thatfamilial and welcoming quality of CrossFit was a revelation. “Thefirst day that I tried it, something changed,” Velez says. “I felt welcome.”
Velez discovered CrossFit during her first year of medical school in 2013. She got her M.D.from Stony Brook University in 2018andultimately decided to pursue a career as a CrossFit and competitive-weight-lifting coach.
As hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets to protest police violence against Black people in recent weeks, manyfitness companies spoke out in support ofthemovement.
One of the things Velez appreciated most about her CrossFit experiencewas that, as a woman, she was encouraged to be as strong as she could be. “I’m originally from Ecuador. The concept of women lifting heavy things is very taboo in my culture,” Velez says.“I never felt that there was any sexism. It felt really revolutionary.”
The overwhelmingly positive experience she had with CrossFit is one reason why CrossFit’s initial silence to the protests was so upsetting to Velez. “I feel fucking devastated and heartbroken,” shesays.“CrossFit changed my life.” For Velez, there is a disconnect, too, between CrossFitand Glassman’s mission to fix health careand the lack of response to the protests. (In 2017, CrossFit launchedCrossFit Healthwith the mission to expose corruption in healthcare and help solve chronic illnesses.) “If you cannot recognize that racism is a barrier to wellness, how, Greg Glassman, can you say that you are addressing health?” sheasks.
Systemic racism, Velez maintains, has health implications, something she hopes to help address as a coach at Strength for All, a new sliding-scale, nonprofit barbell club and fitness center in Brooklyn. She hopes Strength for All can be a model foraccessible fitness.
Creating a more inclusive fitness environment hasbeen onTaryn Pascal and SayKay Brown’s minds as well. InMay, as the George Floyd protests took off, Pascal, a former CrossFit participant, and Brown, who owns , began “Hero WODs” on Instagram to honor Black people killed by police officers. (WODs, or Workouts of the Day, are a staple of CrossFit, and Hero WODsare named in honor of a deceased hero, usually someone in the military or law enforcement.) Pascal and Brown, who met through Instagram, found that they shared an interest in building a platform for Black strength athletes. For Brown and Pascal, both of whom are Black, creating WODs that honored Black peoplekilled by police officers was one way they could bring the protests into their gyms. “Working out is our therapy,” Pascal says, “so why not find a way to incorporate the people who lost their lives?”
Although she is disappointedwithCrossFit’s slowresponse to the protests, Brown’s gym won’t be disafilliating from the company. She is hesitant to take on the cost associated with re-branding, she says, and a nonprofit program that she runs is supported by the, the company’s philanthropic branch. She also believesthat disaffiliation is an empty gesture if it’s not paired with local efforts to foster inclusivity and diversity. One way that Brown tries to cultivateinclusion at her gym is through the flags she hangs on the wall:in addition to the pride flag, the transgender flag, the American flag,and the Pan-African flag, she has thetohonor law enforcement.
Despite the cultural shifts within individual CrossFit communities—and within American culture as a whole—to become more inclusive, CrossFit corporateleadership has often appeared resistant to these changes. At a press conference at theCrossFit Games last year,Castro was asked what,if any,plans he had for diversifying the roster of athletes. All of the athletes on the stage at the time were White. In of the interaction, Castro pauses for several seconds, glancing at the athletes. One of themshrugs and pats another on his back. You can hearaudience members yelling, “Next question! Next question!” in the background.
Finally,Castro says, “Tomorrow morning, the first event will start at the water.” Audience members clap and cheer as the director, ignoring the question, continues to describe the events of the next day.
(WhenϳԹlater asked CrossFit for comment onthe company’sdiversity practices, a spokesperson from CrossFit said: “CrossFit is and always has been a collection of many different voices and backgrounds. That’sproven even more true as it has expanded around the world in the past 20 years. Thousands of affiliates—in the U.S. and across the world—recognize that ‘CrossFit’ means community and inclusive fitness, and they recognize their common mission to prevent and reverse chronic disease. That’s the unifying element of our culture.”)
Those who have watched CrossFit’s meteoric rise from a boutique workout program to an international phenomenon and a powerful player in the fitness world were hardly surprised to readabout Glassman’s recent behavior and comments.
In another instance of cultural disconnect, Kurt Roderick, whosegym in Brooklyn is in the process of disaffiliating from CrossFit, recalled when Castro for a Glock handgun to the winners of the 2016 CrossFit games. “Regardless of your stance on handguns, why would you give a handgun for a prize at a sporting event?” Roderick says.“It was a statement that just didn’t square well with me or my community.”
When Roderick, who is White, saw Glassman’s tweet about George Floydand his response to Royse, he felt like it was time to disaffiliate from CrossFit. Many of Roderick’s gym members were actively participating in the protests, and Roderick sayshis coaches and athletes agreed that leaving CrossFit would be best for their community.
For CrossFit,the future is unclear. Roderick thinks a split may emerge between more progressive, formerly affiliated gyms who still practiceCrossFit-like workoutsand the increasingly conservative remaining CrossFit gyms. However, the companyhas announced a number of steps in recent days to address the criticism. On Instagram, to commission an external review of diversity and inclusion at the CrossFit Games, among other measures. It hasalso announced an affiliate representative program to “facilitate communication between affiliates and CrossFit Headquarters.” In a statement after the CrossFit sale was announced, new owner and CEO Roza wrote:“In the past weeks, divisive statements and allegations have left many members of our community struggling to reconcile our transformative experiences in the local box with what we’ve been reading online. My view is simple: Racism and sexism are abhorrent and will not be tolerated in CrossFit.”
ForRoderick,the company’s statements on diversity made before the sale wereall too little, too late. “They still have a long way to go,” Roderick says.“If others can help CrossFit HQ learn, that is great, but I am more focused on my gym and my community.”