At this point, most people probably know someone – maybe a coworker, a friend, a classmate, a partner – who is obsessed with CrossFit. So, is CrossFit a cult, a community, or something else?
In the U.S., we like to off-handedly call things cults because we often understand many things in religious, or more specifically Christian, terms. It’s so easy to call something like CrossFit – an intense exercise regimen to which some people commit a lot of time and money – a “cult,” but that’s not actually what I say in my book – the title is meant to be intentionally provocative, because there is a kind of religious devotion in the CrossFit community. But the short answer is no: CrossFit is not a religious cult.
In the book, I land on the idea that CrossFit is what philosopher Josiah Royce calls a “beloved community.” A beloved community is based on loyalty to a group, above and beyond oneself or even a leader. I think a lot of CrossFitters are loyal to the community of CrossFit even when they get hurt by the exercise, or when they don’t agree with the gym’s leadership. CrossFit is not a perfect organization, but overall, I want to be clear that I think it still provides a sense of community to a lot of members.
As part of your research for this book, you immersed yourself in CrossFit culture. You’re also a world and national champion in masters weightlifting. How did your personal relationship to the world of fitness lead you to the idea for this book?
I have always considered myself an athlete, and professionally, I’m an anthropologist interested in how we learn about and express culture in our body. My first book was on how mental health treatment changes the way suffers learn to feel sensations and emotions in a new way. After I finished that work, I was struck by the new phrases I was seeing about women’s bodies in the fitness world, like, “strong is the new sexy.” So, I set out studying various strength sports including CrossFit. I quickly learned that CrossFit was much different than something like powerlifting. CrossFit created an entire world unto itself, people related to it beyond it just being a sport. It was a “lifestyle” with a moral universe; people called it a “culture.”
The study of culture is an anthropologist’s domain. To study culture we get two perspectives: 1) the insider’s (or emic) point of view, say through interviews or surveys; and 2) outsider’s (etic) point of view, through observations, participation, and analysis of what is going on. I interviewed gym owners, gym goers, new members, OGs, and former CrossFitters,. I also spent all day at the gym, from 5am to 8pm watching people exercise, chatting about the workouts, and getting a sense of what the ethos of the gyms were like. I also did CrossFit. I felt what it was like to dread what the surprise workout of the day would be but then show up and do it, trying to get better every day with everyone else at the gym.
Despite ostensibly being a secular space – it is a gym, after all – CrossFit, you assert, is deeply intertwined with Christian values. Can you explain what this means? What does it look like to be at a CrossFit gym, working out, and there is also this underlying power structure present?
Using the work of other scholars, I believe “history sits in the room” already when we arrive. It can be elusive, or invisible, but we come into a space an encounter cultural norms or social conventions that feel as natural as the air we breathe.
At a CrossFit gym, Christianity sits in the gym when we arrive. That means that At mainstream gyms people would go to the gym when they were “on the bandwagon” but could also fall “off” the bandwagon if they got too busy to exercise. In CrossFit gyms, people were very committed, so much that they would say CrossFit “saved” them and that they were committed to it, “lifers” or that they had “drunk the Kool-Aid.” But because CrossFit isn’t a church, I call such subtle or unconscious (underlying code-style) references to Christian notions “cultural Christianity.”
Similarly, CrossFit also values the archetypes of the “hero” and the “vigilante.” Your research reveals that there’s a kind of adoration of the American frontier spirit embedded within this intense workout culture – can you describe an example of how these ideas manifest, and what the broader cultural impact might be?
The American hero is usually a vigilante, someone working alone outside of the usual institutional frameworks to save the day. He’s based on heroes of the mythical, imagined idea of the Wild West – largely constructed through media like novels and movies – who took the law into their own hands to save their community. His value system is defined by violence and strength; he must by physically capable, and willing to sacrifice his life for something greater than himself.
Historically, this heroic ideal evolved out of Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders,” a military precursor to the Navy SEALs whose name came from Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show. Preserving the American nation-state becomes these vigilantes’ ultimate goal, and they will do what’s necessary (even unlawful) to preserve their concept of “freedom.”
CrossFit is known for its links to the US military: it gained in popularity after 9/11 when many Americans felt vulnerable, it has about 200 Hero WODs or tough workouts named after (mostly) US soldiers who have died during the war on terror, and popular CrossFit leaders have leveraged their special forces backgrounds (i.e., Dave Castro) to link the fitness regimen with special forces capacities. This allows everyday American CrossFitters to train as if they were Navy SEALs, or a kind of modern cowboy – to imagine they’re the vigilante heroes called upon to save the day.
We’re currently in a political environment in which science is constantly under attack – the new appointment of RFK Jr. to the head of the NIH shows that “science” has suddenly become a political punching bag. How does CrossFit culture view science?
CrossFit has an interesting relationship with science. On one hand, Greg Glassman, the former owner and founder of CrossFit, boasted that he was doing science by being the first exercise regimen to define and then measure fitness. One definition of CrossFit is “increased work capacity over broad time and modal domains.” The way to measure this was to time the workouts and then see if one got faster over time. If one “increased” one’s speed (or decreased one’s time) during any workout, one was getting fitter.
The problem with this is twofold. First, putting an agenda (increase) on measurement is about auditing (or scientific management), which was started at West Point in the 1800s but made popular by Ford and other work management systems. Second, if you want to measure work, which is a physics quantity, you must measure it in joules, not time. If you don’t measure joules, you aren’t measuring work. So really what CrossFit is doing is using an audit or accounting system.
In addition, the idea of being fit to survive comes from Darwinian notions of fitness and CrossFit taps into this. Glassman even argued that CrossFit reveals genetic potential, carving out of a modern human what nature would have done so “millions of years ago.” CrossFit was at the very beginning of the “functional” fitness/medicine craze and tried to tie its logic to evolutionary science (including the paleo diet). But CrossFit’s use of evolutionary science is shoddy, especially in terms of diet. Humans have adapted to eat everything, including a lot of carbs.
So, the whole scientific justification for this workout regimen is actually pseudo-science. But CrossFit leadership, like others trying to leverage science for personal gain (JFK, Jr. or many in the podcast-sphere), uses big words that sound like science. This then confuses people about what is actually science and what sounds like science, elevating those with the best sound bites and diminishing actual expertise and experts.
Someone died at the CrossFit games last year, in no small part due to the negligence of the CrossFit Games creator. Do you think CrossFit needs to undergo a culture change? What would that look like?
In 2024 Lazar Dukic died at the CrossFit Games. Some were surprised it took this long for someone to succumb to the brutality of the workouts and the ethos of go-so-hard-you-test-your-physical-limits, like a Navy SEAL. The founder Greg Glassman had nothing to do with last year’s Games but in a 2005 New York Times he is quoted as saying, “[CrossFit] can kill you. I’ve been completely honest about that.” The Hero WODs are (mostly) named after war on terror soldiers who have died. There is what I call a “necrosociality” in CrossFit, meaning that people build community on and around death.
However, in the aftermath of Dukic’s death, many international Games athletes have called for cultural change. CrossFit said it would allow a third-party investigation into the tragedy. The investigation concluded by CrossFit didn’t share the conclusions/results and ignored the safety and transparency demands made by the athlete’s association (akin to a player’s union). In response, many Games athletes have decided to sit out this year’s CrossFit Open, and thousands fewer CrossFitters have signed up to participate. Therefore, while CrossFit’s culture has hinged on valorizing death, cultures always change. The power of the CrossFit community might transform the brand CrossFit in the wake of Dukic’s death.
Katie Rose Hejtmanek is Professor of Anthropology and Children and Youth Studies at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. She is the author of Friendship, Love, and Hip Hop: An Ethnography of African American Men in Psychiatric Custody and co-editor of Gender and Power in Strength Sports: Strong as Feminist. She is also a world and national champion in masters weightlifting.
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