CrossFit's Brand Was Everything. Now That It's Toxic, What's Left?
On Tuesday, June 9, CrossFit founder and CEO Greg Glassman announced he was “retiring.” That’s a term normally reserved for people who have chosen a time to finish their career, which wasn’t the case here: Glassman was facing intense scrutiny after a series of racist tweets and comments during a staff Zoom call, which was first released by Buzzfeed News.
It’s also not clear whether he’ll continue to be involved with the business. Longtime CrossFit employee Dave Castro, who has a checkered history around race himself, was appointed CEO. But as Morning Chalk Up, a CrossFit-focused news site, recently reported, there is no evidence that Glassman has divested from CrossFit at all, nor is there any evidence that mechanisms exist to prevent him from exerting his influence on the company.
“Based on every conversation I’ve had, no one has denied the fact that Greg still owns 100 percent of the company,” says Justin LoFranco, founder of Morning Chalk Up. “It’s sort of answered itself.”
The response to Glassman’s remarks and ensuing quasi-departure has been swift and largely united. CrossFit has not publicized these numbers, but according to an impressively detailed spreadsheet making the rounds online, more than 1,000 gyms that pay to use the CrossFit brand have already ended their partnership. To put that in perspective, earlier this year there were 6,915 affiliate gyms in the United States.
“I don’t think the 1,000 or so affiliates who’ve left are buying the changes in place, and I don’t think a single one of them will come back,” says LoFranco. “They left because they were fed up.”
They’ve also left because associating with CrossFit was, in many cases, no longer a lucrative business opportunity. Cofounded by Glassman and his now-ex-wife Lauren Jenai, CrossFit was designed to be decentralized. The company isn’t primarily concerned with operating gyms itself—it licenses its name and reputation to independent gyms around the world. If you attend a CrossFit-affiliated class, you’ll know to expect a high-intensity workout taught by a certified coach who emphasizes a mix of strength and high-output cardio designed to develop “functional fitness.” It’s also fair to anticipate a certain vibe: a bare-bones “box” of a gym, a high-energy atmosphere of mutual pumping-up, maybe some talk about the paleo diet. The strength of the CrossFit brand meant it was profitable for gym owners to sign on. But as the brand has come to stand for more than a style of workout, many gyms are deciding affiliation doesn’t make business sense.
In 2015, around the height of the CrossFit craze, Oak Cliff, Texas, gym owner Alex Saenz decided to give CrossFit a shot. He paid $1,000 to become a level-one certified CrossFit coach. After that, he paid $3,000 a year so his gym, Bishop Arts Athletics, could license CrossFit’s name. He linked to CrossFit on his gym’s website, and CrossFit linked to his gym on their website. That was, more or less, the extent of their relationship. “Once you were an affiliate, they didn’t care what you did,” he says. “They just wanted to make sure they collected your $3,000.”
After Glassman’s racist comments surfaced, Saenz decided to end his gym’s affiliation, but the move had been simmering for a while. The first big warning sign came a few years ago, when Glassman pivoted CrossFit from focusing on intensive workout classes and the popular CrossFit Games to “disrupting healthcare,” advocating that doctors “prescribe” CrossFit workouts to treat chronic diseases. “It was all very odd,” Saenz says. “Glassman built his brand on competition, and all of a sudden, he dropped that off. The unorthodox way of working out is what people liked in the first place.”
Saenz, who’s Mexican-American, always maintained a wary eye about his partnership with CrossFit, in part because it’s “unfortunately, in general, a white-person sport,” and the community of gym members in Oak Cliff is far more diverse than other affiliates. “Glassman has no empathy,” Saenz says. “People just wanted him to say 'Black Lives Matter,' and he couldn’t even do that.”
Gym owners like Jason Khalipa, the founder of NC Fit, have swooped in to take advantage of CrossFit’s implosion. Khalipa claims he was already dabbling with a plan to license the NC Fit brand to other gyms, and now he’s announced that the plan is being “expedited” due to “recent events.” It’s possible the NC Fit affiliation program, or another one, will stick. Another possibility is that these gyms will press on without any affiliation. Many gyms have built up strong ties with their members—some of whom originally joined because of the CrossFit brand, but will now have no issue keeping their functional fitness routines under a different banner or name.
Bishop Arts Athletics, for instance, will now label its classes as “Performance” for top athletes, and “Fitness” for those looking for something less intense. The classes won’t be any different than before, nor do they have any reason to change.
CrossFit has, historically speaking, been quite litigious when gym owners have used its name without permission, and when it’s been challenged about the safety and efficacy of its workouts. What CrossFit is not expected to have success suing over, however, are the workouts themselves.
“Just because you want to do 21-15-9 as a rep scheme doesn’t mean you’ve infringed on anyone’s trademark,” LoFranco says. “You can’t trademark a physical movement that people have been doing for thousands of years.”
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Originally Appeared on GQ
