It’s March 2020. The CrossFit season is well underway. Hundreds of athletes and fans are preparing to attend one of the several remaining CrossFit Sanctionals taking place in countries around the world, with the apex of them all — the 2020 CrossFit Games — scheduled for July 29 in Madison, Wisconsin. All the gears were in motion for 2020 to be CrossFit’s most bombastic year ever — until it wasn’t.
The first postponement announcement was the Asia CrossFit Championship, slated to take place between May 8 – 10, 2020 in Shanghai. This was followed by the Italian Showdown and then the German Throwdown. As the situation in Europe and the US became more of a concern, all remaining CrossFit Sanctionals were postponed or cancelled, signaling a very different year for CrossFit and the Games.
It became clear that the 2020 season would look nothing like CrossFit had hoped. As the pandemic shut down live events, adapting to the “new normal” became a priority — but making that transition turned out to be a lot more turbulent than anticipated.
A (PAINFUL) LESSON IN ADAPTATION
Since the early days of the brand, CrossFit HQ had practised a hands-off approach when it came to its affiliates. This allowed its 13,000 or so boxes to function autonomously without much input.
Unfortunately, in a time when gym owners were desperately seeking advice, this management style started to pose some serious issues. A March 2020 email to affiliates essentially allowed boxes to make their own decisions regarding closures, offering no clear guidelines in terms of hygiene measures or social distancing.
“It is — as it has always been — CrossFit, Inc.’s policy to entrust our affiliates with independence in their business practices,” the email read, “While all affiliates are expected to follow official health regulations, we also trust that each affiliate possesses the optimal vantage point from which to determine the best means of serving its members when official guidance is unclear, whether through keeping the doors open or closing them for the time being.”
They didn’t totally abandon their affiliates however, and opted to pause payments in locations where governments issued gym closures. Some of the Sanctionals, like the Italian Showdown, moved online. Many classes and workouts moved online too, with coaches adapting workouts in line with lockdown measures.
CrossFitters built home gyms in their gardens, garages and apartments. The CrossFit Games split into stages, with only 5 Individuals from each male and female category permitted to compete in the in-person final.
For the community, the show went on. For the brand, things were about to get a little more dicey.
When CrossFit started making headlines in the summer of 2020, it was not the kind they were probably hoping for. A handful of incidents fanned the flames of a schism within its base; a reflection of the larger social divisions occurring globally around the coronavirus prevention measures.
Among many incidents that drove unrest, derogatory tweets and comments made around the George Floyd/BLM protests in June from former CEO Greg Glassman led to hundreds of boxes pulling their affiliation, and sponsors like Reebok and Rogue Fitness ending their relationship with the brand.
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None of the problems CrossFit was now facing came as much of a surprise for its detractors, and even some of its athletes. Since its inception and under Glassman’s leadership, CrossFit had earned a reputation for its macho hypermasculinity; a “toughen up” or leave attitude that appealed to a lot of the American right. CrossFit was described in a recent Men’s Health article as the “fitness equivalent of Donald Trump, Duke basketball, or pineapple pizza.”
During the pandemic, six-time Games athlete Pat Vellner told Buzzfeed News that CrossFit was “dancing a razor thin line” in its response — or lack thereof — to the pandemic, because it didn’t want to upset a huge part of their base. But as CrossFit has grown into one of the biggest fitness brands on the planet, so has its community.
The pandemic, combined with the Black Lives Matter movement, proved that the company also needed to adapt alongside its diversifying membership.
Alyssa Royse, owner of Rocket Community Fitness (formerly “Rocket CrossFit) a nine-year CrossFit affiliate, who wrote an open letter to Brian Mulvaney, chief advisor at CrossFit Inc., highlighted many concerns about CrossFit’s hands-off business approach and lack of consistency.
“COVID hit hard. We’ve been closed for 3 months now. Even so, we are amongst the lucky ones. We took a huge hit, but we’re fine. Our community is strong, we pivoted our classes online, we’re fine,” she wrote. “But we also realized that we are doing so alone. We do not have the help of the brand that we pay to be affiliated with, and we are not part of any sort of united group with shared values.”
Eric Roza’s appointment as owner and CEO signalled a fresh start, with inclusivity being top of the agenda. In a 27-minute livestream in June 2020, Roza made his intentions clear; “we are committed to being a really broadly inclusive community,” Roza said, relieving any lingering ambiguity about the brand’s future.
CROSSFIT’S MOST INCLUSIVE YEAR EVER
True inclusion means more than empty promises, and CrossFit has made strides in fixing their diversity issues; setting up a DEI Council and placing funding into scholarships and local initiatives. An example of this is a $7 million endowment from Roza and other investors for the CrossFit Foundation to advance public health in underserved communities.
Affiliate fees are also being examined to better reflect a country’s economic situation, and the independent circumstances of each gym’s location.
A big part of Roza’s DEI strategy is how to help CrossFit inspire underrepresented communities to get involved with fitness, and one of the ways he’s doing this is through a Scholarship Program which will partner with local youth organisations to give no-cost Level 1 training in underserved communities (the L1 training is also now available online).
Gary Gaines has also been brought on as the new General Manager of International, with the goal to expand focus beyond the United States.
The Support Your Local Box fundraiser was launched at the end of March to help support gyms threatened with closure, as well as United In Movement which was launched to raise funds to support humanitarian efforts, businesses and gyms impacted by COVID-19. The initiative raised $400,000 for the American Red Cross, Action Against Hunger and the CrossFit Foundation.
CrossFit is finally making good on their promise that the sport is for everyone. The virus contained many of us to our homes; unable to attend gym classes in person; forcing us to think differently about community — making connection and togetherness even more important.
One of CrossFit’s biggest triumphs in the pandemic-era looks like it might be the 2021 CrossFit Open; an event which draws hundreds of thousands of CrossFit athletes every year to participate in a weeks-long online workout. It marks the start of the CrossFit season and is open to top athletes as well as hobbyists. The Open is the first step towards the brand’s flagship event; the CrossFit Games.
The most inclusive CrossFit Open to date.
It was already an event that leveraged CrossFit’s huge global online community, and could have existed without much need for change. This year, however, included Foundation and Equipment-Free Divisions for the first time. The addition of these divisions helped the Open become one of the most inclusive sporting events in the world, allowing literally anyone with the desire a chance to compete.
It is also the first time Adaptive Divisions have been included. Working with WheelWOD and the Adaptive Training Academy (ATA), people with disabilities now have a space to place on the Open in their respective division and, in future, might also earn their ticket to the Games.
“CrossFit is moving in a great direction for inclusion,” ATA’s Executive Director, Alec Zirkenbach told BOXROX. “And they have been inclusive; CrossFit is thought of as this big community, anybody can come in the door and do a workout. We can scale, we can do it for all people.”
WHAT HAPPENS NOW?
CrossFit was certainly not the only organisation to have faced some major hurdles in response to an unprecedented global event, presenting an opportunity for the brand to critically examine their shortcomings and strive for something better.
By removing all of the barriers that might inhibit people from participating, CrossFit has created an entirely accessible (and global) fitness community — possibly for the first time.
Looking into CrossFit’s future, it’s highly likely that the processes which have been necessary to develop during the pandemic may remain. Access to workouts and coaching won’t need to involve an in-person box and a room full of equipment, which offers athletes more choice about where and how they participate. Communication between CrossFit Inc. and the community is becoming much stronger, making for a more cohesive and connected environment.
While the brand suffered greatly in light of last year’s events, the spirit of the community barrelled forward. Values of togetherness, adaptation and sacrifice have helped the sport adapt desite the many hiccups along the way.
It’s now been one year since the pandemic shook at the foundations of our lives, and we’re still figuring out how to live alongside it. Looking back over the past year however, we can glean a huge amount of positives which have helped shape the future of CrossFit for the better, making the future of the sport look a whole lot brighter.
image sources
- crossfit-after-the-pandemic: Stevie D Photography
