Search Weight Loss Topics:

Home » Exercise Programs » Does CrossFit Have a Future? – The New Yorker

CrossFit also spawned innumerable businesses, as members started ventures in everything from insurance to nutrition. The Ohio-based gym-equipment manufacturer Rogue Fitness was launched to meet the demands of the new CrossFit gyms; it grew to employ hundreds of people. RxBar, which makes energy bars with ingredients that hew to CrossFits nutrition guidelines, sold to Kelloggs, in 2017, for six hundred million dollars.

CrossFits ascent was not uninterrupted. In December, 2005, the Times published a piece titled Getting Fit, Even if It Kills You, which documented a CrossFit athlete who gave himself rhabdomyolysis, a condition in which muscle cells die from overexertion, resulting in possible renal failure and death. Glassman told the Times, It can kill you. Ive always been completely honest about that. In fact, CrossFit had chosen as a mascot a muscular puking clown named Uncle Rhabdo.

CrossFit members embraced a narrative of redemption through physical suffering. I heard from many adherents that the daily practice of hard work spilled over into their everyday lives, making them better people, or at least capable of setting goals and achieving them. But, interspersed with aspirational photos, the company posted sexually suggestive images on Facebook, among them images of a woman with her legs spread while climbing a rope, and a woman who tripped and momentarily had her head in position for a sexual act. Photos you wouldnt post of your friends, basically.

Coaches and gym owners with flair or specialized knowledge became independently famous. But former employees told me that, whenever someone grew too big for Glassmans comfort, he banished them. (Glassman denies this.) After a former CrossFit trainer named Mark Twight began working with Hollywood celebrities, including the cast of the 2006 movie 300, Glassman accused him of stealing his intellectual property.

Wolf, who had a public altercation at a CrossFit seminar with a favored Glassman employee, a former Navy SEAL named Dave Castro, was fired. You have to kowtow and not let your star shine too brightly, Wolf said, in 2013, of Glassman. Hes always had this tendency toward incredible kindness, but he also has this rattlesnake intensity and cruelty. Gym-goers were undeterred, however, and by 2015 there were eleven thousand affiliate gyms. Forbes estimated CrossFits revenues at a hundred million dollars, and wrote, CrossFit CEO Greg Glassman has turned the fitness industry on its head. Hes done it, I think, by making CrossFit a mirror image of himself. Thats not entirely true; as many have pointed out, Glassman is less Adonis and more high-school gym teacher, who, at sixty-four years old, walks with a limp from a childhood bout of polio and a gymnastics accident years later.

Once you brand and sell fitness, you have to try to prove your version is better than all the others, Brad Stulberg, a performance coach who has taken heat online from the CrossFit community about his health-and-fitness writing, told me. In CrossFits efforts to set itself apart, its most pious members defended the brand with a mocking litism that was modelled by Glassman.

Until CrossFit, the dominant accreditation body in the fitness industry was the National Strength and Conditioning Association. In 2013, the N.S.C.A.s Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research published a study about CrossFits efficacy. Out of fifty-four people who undertook a CrossFit program for ten weeks, the research claimed, nine had failed to finish, owing to injury.

The study quickly spread through the fitness world. Outside published a piece titled Is CrossFit Killing Us? and with the subtitle The CrossFit backlash is in full swingled by a long list of injured participants. The article touted the studys sixteen-per-cent injury rate.

Glassman and his community were incredulous, and angry. In their nearly ten thousand gyms, they had never seen such injury rates. CrossFit sued the N.S.C.A. for false advertising and unfair competition. The discovery process revealed that management at the N.S.C.A. had essentially told the researchers to add injury data where there was none. In December, 2019, a court found in CrossFits favor and ordered the N.S.C.A. to pay the company four million dollars in sanctions. (The N.S.C.A. declined to comment, except to say that the matter was settled without any admission of liability.)

All physical pursuits come with risks. Of my personal obsessions, running has uniquely gruesome statistics. The numbers are imprecise, but its often estimated that between forty and eighty per cent of runners will injure themselves in a given year. In my experience, these estimates are likely low. But this does little to diminish the elegance of such a simple and effective mode of exercise.

I was injured during my second time in a CrossFit gym. In an off-season effort to regain some foundational strength I had lost after a decade of ultra-endurance racing, I paid to work with a trainer. He began by testing me. Baselines are important in the gym, and essential in CrossFit. We started by doing jump squats with a weighted seven-foot barbell across my shoulders. I didnt notice that the weight was lifting off my upper back at the top of the jump and coming down on my spine when I landed. Neither did the trainer. The following day I awoke to neck pain and a bruise. More than seven years later, I cant sleep on my stomach, lest I risk a day of not being able to turn my head.

My next foray into CrossFit was more fruitful. Down the street from me in Salt Lake City, where I was living, was a gym run by a former college-football player, Tommy Hackenbruck, who had a vibrant CrossFit community. Hackenbruck, a hulking yet gracious man, coached me to proper form and then provided me with workouts to do on my own. A combination of regular CrossFit classes and Hackenbrucks individual programming worked well for me, and I became considerably stronger, more agile, and more confident in my athletic abilities that off-season.

On June 5, 2020, a co-owner of a Seattle affiliate, Alyssa Royse, posted to her gyms Web site an e-mail exchange she had with Glassman. She had challenged management about what she considered their moral ambiguity... in the face of both COVID and the massive social unrest the US is now reckoning with, and added that her gym was likely to de-affiliate because of it.

I sincerely believe the quarantine has adversely impacted your mental health, Glassman had replied. Youve let your politics warp you into something that strikes me as wrong to the point of being evil. I am ashamed of you.

The next day, during a Zoom call with a group of affiliates, an owner in Minnesota asked why corporate headquarters had remained silent during the national unrest over racial injustice. Were not mourning for George Floyd. I dont think me or any of my staff are, Glassman said, according to a recording of the meeting published by BuzzFeed News and reviewed by The New Yorker. Can you tell me why I should mourn for him? Other than that its the white thing to do. He then mentioned a conspiracy theory about Floyd, who he said was murdered in an effort to silence him over his involvement in a counterfeit-money ring, citing inside information from the F.B.I. in the affiliates Minnesota neighborhood.

Later that day, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation tweeted that racism and discrimination were critical public health issues that demand an urgent response. Frustrated with what he saw as the I.H.M.E.s role in shutting down the economy, which Glassman believed disproportionately harmed minority communities, he responded, Its FLOYD-19.

Within forty-eight hours, a reported three hundred CrossFit boxes had pledged to de-affiliate. Some of the brands famous athletes denounced Glassmans comments and said that they would withdraw from the upcoming CrossFit Gamesthe companys annual competition to crown the Fittest on Earth. Reebok, which was nearing the end of a ten-year Games sponsorship deal, announced that it would not renew its contract.

On June 7th, one of CrossFits longest-tenured employees, Nicole Carroll, called Glassman and resigned. I didnt see a way forward that I believed in anymore, not on the mission level, but on a leadership level, she told me. I cant align with Greg anymore.

Two days later, Glassman stepped down as C.E.O. and announced his retirement on the CrossFit Web site. He handed over the chief-executive role to Dave Castro, his longtime lieutenant. But many people in the CrossFit community think that Castro can be as abrasive as the founder himself. Commenters on social media called Glassman a racist and Castro (who is Mexican-American) complicit. They demanded that Glassman sell the company to save CrossFit. I equate being a racist with being stupid, Glassman told me.

Soon, the Times published accusations of workplace sexual harassment by Glassman. Among the claims were an account of a former employee who was paid by Glassman in lieu of a sexual-harassment lawsuit, a lewd Wi-Fi password used in the San Diego CrossFit office (as well as in Glassmans home, according to his ex-wife), and an environment in which the founder demeaned women, openly assessing whether hed have sex with them.

Glassman denies any accusations of sexual harrassment, and explained to me that there was a sexually charged office environment that was fucking one-hundred-per-cent consensual in all directions. Glassman added, of the way in which he ran the business, Im proud of the way everyone was treated and the way I treated everyone. I have no regrets.

A couple of months after our workout, I met Roza at the new CrossFit offices, a block from a Whole Foods Market in north Boulder. A row of standing desks is flanked by a kitchen and a mini-gym outfitted with new Rogue equipment. A conference room has a view of Mt. Sanitas, a popular peak named for the sanitarium, an early health resort, that once sat on its lower slopes.

In appearance, Roza is everything youd expect from the chief executive of a global fitness brand. Hes muscular, with a shaved head; he drives a Tesla and has a subscription to The New Yorker but admits that hes too busy to read it. A self-described math guy, Roza attended the University of Michigan, then worked in management consulting for Bain & Company and in the music industry before matriculating at Stanford.

His introduction to CrossFit is a familiar story. Caught up in the reinvigorated interest around long-distance running caused by the best-seller Born to Run, he hired a coach to get him to his goal of a three-hour marathon. He tried ChiRunning and ran in barefoot shoes, but ended up injured.

Here is the original post:
Does CrossFit Have a Future? - The New Yorker

Your Full Name
Your Email
Your Phone Number
Select your age (30+ only)	30313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960616263646566676869707172737475767778798081828384858687888990919293949596979899100101102103104105106107108109110111112113114115116117118119120
Select Your US State	Select Your StateAlabamaAlaskaArizonaArkansasCaliforniaColoradoConnecticutDelawareFloridaGeorgiaHawaiiIdahoIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasKentuckyLouisianaMaineMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMinnesotaMississippiMissouriMontanaNebraskaNevadaNew HampshireNew JerseyNew MexicoNew YorkNorth CarolinaNorth DakotaOhioOklahomaOregonPennsylvaniaRhode IslandSouth CarolinaSouth DakotaTennesseeTexasUtahVermontVirginiaWashingtonWashington,DCWest VirginiaWisconsinWyoming
Program Choice	Select Your ProgramInjectable HGHInjectable TestoteroneInjectable SermorelinInjectable Weight LossInjectable HCG DietInjectable Vitamins
Confirm over 30 years old	Yes
Confirm that you resident in USA	Yes
This is a Serious Inquiry	Yes
Message:

Home » Exercise Programs » Does CrossFit Have a Future? – The New Yorker