The Church of Crossfit
It’s around noon on a gloomy, overcast Monday in March, the kind of day when it would be easy to skip the gym. But 37-year-old mom Abby Bezilla isn’t losing speed. She’s almost power walking when she wheels a double-stroller through one of several metal doors at a former manufacturing warehouse in her southwestern Pennsylvania hometown. Perching her 5- and 3-year-old sons in a corner, she hands them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and starts a warm-up routine immediately.
Her friends switch from their own chatter to greet the little ones who will be watching their workout. Pausing to pick up a kettlebell, retired elementary school teacher Suzette Burns asks them and their mom how they’ve been since she saw them last week. Instructor Michelle Preston, a full-time police officer, smiles and steps past to stretch near clusters of cast iron weights, and gradually they all check a whiteboard mounted on a cinderblock wall to see what today’s challenge is.
The kids keep snacking and watch their mom and others – a physician, a local businessman, a dog trainer – leap onto 20-inch boxes and load weights onto barbells, cheering each other on as they grunt and heave their way through front squats, thrusters, and push jerks.
The weights are different, but the workout is the same for all of the participants, no matter their personal strength. Nobody is out of place here. This is just another day, another class, at CrossFit.
The hodgepodge of teammates from the Pennsylvania countryside were gathered in the Pennsylvania at CrossFit Latrobe, one of more than 13,000 “boxes,” or gyms, around the world, where moms and college students and CEOs and retirees all face the same challenges, each of their names listed in random order on a whiteboard. Everyone is the same. Everyone is challenged. Everyone is included.
That’s an expectation for any affiliate – and key to what makes the workout program work, according to Dr. Patrick Landry, a chiropractor who found that CrossFit’s intensity and practicality best-suited his own personal fitness goals. Then he saw applications for patients at his chiropractic practice: Because the workouts are meant to be scaled to individual ability, any of his patients – regardless of age or physical limitations – can build strength and benefit. So he became a CrossFit Level 2 trainer and started using CrossFit techniques to emphasize functional movement for clients. Eventually, he swapped a floor of Nautilus fitness machines for pull-up bars and rings sets in wide open rooms to launch CrossFit Latrobe and extend skilled exercise opportunities to the rest of the community. But the reason people keep coming back, he said, is that CrossFit is structured to create the kind of togetherness that doesn’t let people slip through the cracks. “Most gyms have no anchor,” he says. “You go in for a week or a month or two but don’t come back. At CrossFit, everybody knows your name. They’re developing friendships, even if it’s a 60-year-old woman and a college student.” The workouts are tailored to strength – he has members who probably will never do a traditional pull-up but can pull off a modified version – but everyone is challenging herself and following the “W.O.D.,” a Workout of the Day that at least 4 million CrossFitters are performing across the globe.
“You push your body to the limit, and there’s a sense of overcoming with others who can relate,” he says. The result is a hard-won camaraderie is not unlike what he saw among his father and other World War II veterans. “There are bonds created when you’re all in it together, nobody’s left out, and you’re challenging yourselves, building strength under pressure.”
When Dr. Landry opened the affiliate in 2012, CrossFit still held a counter-culture vibe, a mystique that might have kept some away from what they assumed was a hardcore atmosphere. As people gave it a try, though, they discovered something unexpected. There, and at other CrossFit boxes, they found a place where no one feels excluded or unwanted. In fact, the friendships forged among even the most diverse members create accountability, Landry says. If folks miss a week or two, they’ll get a call – from a fellow member or a coach – inviting them back. And it’s designed to be accessible. Landry sets up several daily workout classes, starting at 5:30 a.m. and running through the evening every day but Sunday, so no one can claim the gym isn’t available.
No matter the location, all boxes are to align with CrossFit’s structure – high-intensity, varied exercise built around a community – outlined by co-founder Greg Glassman, the former gymnast who opened the first CrossFit in 1995 in Santa Cruz, California. Glassman had long taken an unconventional view of fitness, using a passion for math and physics to create a new formula for athletic power, and he had been perfecting his ideas since he was a teen. Training in the offseason for gymnastics in his family’s garage, he was dissatisfied with the ease and comfort of traditional weightlifting methods and decided to come up with his own challenges, like his first workout, the “Fran,” which mixes thrusters (a combination of front squats and push presses that he also devised in the garage) with pull-ups. He sought a new definition for health and fitness, one that pulled participants away from the comfort of gleaming machines and taught them to build strength and agility through routine-busting moves that changed daily.
With a flair for math and metrics, Greg Glassman devised a “power-output” calculation that helped him make fitness something trackable and set the tone for a workout that made clients compete against themselves and others. It also paved the way for a competitive drive that would lead to the CrossFit Games with hundreds of thousands of athletes competing for five weeks a year. His “Workout of the Day” – posted online since 2001 – caught on quickly, and an ongoing emphasis on the social networking, fueled with video and other shareable content, helped the company achieve astounding affiliate growth: from 13 in 2005 to more than 13,000 in 2015.
But the mechanics of his approach, routine-bucking mashups of exercises that emphasized “GPP” (general physical preparedness), and the logging and graph-making were only one piece of what made CrossFit something beyond a fad for the already muscle-bound.
Supportiveness – and inclusiveness – have become the “glue” that makes the CrossFit formula stick. CrossFit affiliates are known for their “tough-love” environments, but they’re also open to any level of athlete. Anyone can walk in and join a class, from beginners to body-builders – from college students, to moms and dads, to retirees. CrossFit’s “scaling” – tailoring moves to individual abilities – puts everyone in the same workout, no matter his skill. While it’s “high-dose” and “high intensity,” it’s also highly accessible. It doesn’t matter whether you’re 100 pounds overweight or a trained athlete, you can walk into a box and be welcomed. You’re expected to push yourself, but once you’re in, you’re in. The insider language – “W.O.D.s” and “met-cons” – become part of your world, and so does the whiteboard tracking of your personal numbers.
The sense of community that results has made for stories of cancer survivors who found new hope, discouraged and injured athletes who went from hardly walking to competing in marathons, and people like entrepreneur and therapist John Kim, who says he initially was drawn to CrossFit’s underground, “Fight Club” appeal – but stayed because he discovered a community of empowering encouragers who helped him recover after a divorce. The workouts, and the community – a “tribe” – were his own therapeutic tools. He found people who rooted for the “last-place” athletes as much as the strongest in the group. They were inclusive, and those bonds helped make him a stronger person. "I don't think we were meant to do this alone,” he says. “I think before fitness was fitness, we were very active with our tribe. So why now? We're thirsty for community, in a nutshell, I think, because we want to feel human again.”
The concept of mixing “sweat and fellowship” – the polar opposite of the impersonal, solo gym-goer experience – has elevated CrossFit to near-ecclesiastical terms by some of its devotees. Licensed psychologist Dr. Allison Belger penned a book, “The Power of Community: CrossFit and the Force of Human Connection,” that explores the community-fostered emotional healing people find among groups at CrossFit boxes, where people face their vulnerabilities in a setting based on Glassman’s “broad and inclusive” fitness standards. She’s gone as far as to call it a church, minus religion, and frames CrossFit as a connector that brings together diverse sets to find fellowship within the walls of a box, and outside it too. Those workout communities found wellness beyond physical improvements. She saw people who had found where they belong.
CrossFit regular the Rev. Matthias Martinez, a priest at St. Vincent Archabbey in western Pennsylvania, said CrossFit creates an atmosphere that works the same way healthy congregations do, where people encourage instead of isolate: “You welcome people where they are and then walk with them.”
When Glassman spoke to Harvard Divinity School students in 2015 to host a talk, “CrossFit as Church?!” he said there’s no conscious attempt to create a church fellowship feeling – but “it’s there in a huge way.” CrossFit communities help each other through tragedy and triumph, he said. “This community is tight. The tribes are closely allied, but within the tribe is where all the love is.”
And there is a lot of love. Members are so notoriously enthusiastic, they’ve been jokingly been accused of being part of a cult. Some have linked CrossFit’s popularity with a broader fixation with extreme fitness, likely aided by CrossFit’s unofficial mascot, Pukey the Clown. But it’s not all grit and grimace and pushing to the limit. Glassman puts “community” in his top three benefits for members of CrossFit affiliates, one he lists alongside personal transformation and accountability. While healing and wellness are the outcomes he’s been able to quantify, he said “community” is among the results of immeasurable value, and it’s one that has provided staying power in an industry known for fads and failures.
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How does CrossFit earn such lasting devotion? How does it build Belonging comparable to the fulfillment and bonds of a church family? How does it resonate as much with young parents and retirees as it does in military and law enforcement circles?
CrossFit includes. It takes people of different ages, body shapes, and abilities and give unified training in a group setting. One group doesn’t get jumping jacks while the rest lift weights. Everyone does the same thing – the “Workout of the Day.” Coaches make a point to learn new members’ first names, a gesture of Recognition, so no one feels like an anonymous gym member.
Members are greeted when they walk in the door, and they can expect a call if they skip out. All members’ progress goes up on the same board – so they can see they are part of a whole. And it’s not just one group. It’s happening across the world. Those gestures – I recognize who you are and will make space for you to participate with us, no matter who you are - create Inclusion, and that’s the reason CrossFit has been successful and the reason people don’t give it up. That’s the secret to CrossFit.
Summary
The Church of CrossFit: Building Community Through Sweat, Support, Identity, and Inclusion
CrossFit’s success is rooted in its community-focused approach, where inclusivity and recognition are key. The workout program’s ability to bring together people of all ages and fitness levels in a supportive environment has created a global movement that mirrors the sense of belonging found in religious congregations. By fostering a culture of mutual encouragement and shared goals, CrossFit has built a loyal following that goes beyond fitness, offering valuable lessons for organizations seeking to cultivate strong, lasting relationships with their members or employees.
“CrossFit’s phenomenal success lies in its ability to create a powerful sense of community and belonging among its members. By offering workouts that challenge everyone equally, regardless of their individual fitness levels, and fostering an environment where each person is recognized and included, CrossFit has built a loyal following that extends beyond mere fitness. This sense of belonging and mutual support is akin to the bonds found in religious communities, where members encourage one another to achieve personal growth and transformation. For organizations and leaders, the lesson is clear: fostering a sense of inclusion, recognition, and shared purpose can build lasting loyalty and devotion among members or employees.”
Keywords: CrossFit community, inclusive fitness, workout of the day, CrossFit success, belonging and recognition, supportive environment, global fitness movement, CrossFit culture, fitness inclusivity, building loyalty in organizations, belonging, identity, inclusion.