I think some other people have spoken and have given their opinion on the recent CrossFit problems on these pages. As someone who enjoyed CrossFit when I founded Breaking Muscle and someone who believes that you should be open to all training modalities, remain curious about all disciplines, and shouldn't try to take precedence in a supremacy, I need my perspective specify .
First, Breaking Muscle was never, and never should be, a training format. So we won't be able to avoid talking about CrossFit. I can understand that some of the conversations surrounding CrossFit are related to CrossFit's brand and business, but unfortunately there is no other way to relate to what CrossFitters is doing than to call it CrossFit.
The term CrossFit, no matter what happens to the people who run CrossFit, Inc., will not go away. There are too many people dedicated to training, competitions and the sense of belonging that they feel for training.
What is CrossFit? That's because of the CrossFit community. I don't want to speculate and I don't want to speak for them. I believe that most of the partners face enough challenges due to the recent ban and are now facing an existential threat to their core beliefs through the actions of CrossFit, the company.
What I can say is that there are many good trainers and trainers who have found their voice and sharpened their profile due to CrossFit. My family is very close to Mike Tromello at Precision CrossFit and has known Mike since he was a strength and conditioning trainer and before he became a successful partner.
Mike is probably one of the biggest CrossFit fans we know. We are sorry that he was able to deal with the effects of recent events. Despite all the hard work and years of advocacy that Mike has done in CrossFit, he shouldn't have been put in that position.
And Mike is one of the best strength and conditioning trainers we've had at Breaking Muscle. It wasn't like he was teaching CrossFit. It was his strength and conditioning skills.
There are many other people like Mike out there, affiliate owners with the same passion for CrossFit, who are also fitness professionals who are good at their work and would thrive as strength and conditioning trainers in any environment. Everyone has to deal with problems are not from what they do and for whom there is no easy answer.
We cannot write these coaches and coaches off. And we cannot realistically expect everyone to part with them.
There are also many great coaches that have emerged from the CrossFit world, Coach Rut and James Fitzgerald, to name but two, that have evolved over the years.
There are others who may not want to be named who were driven out of CrossFit because they were not as respectful as they could have been.
There are many war stories about CrossFit; If you read all of Pat McCarty's articles, you'll get a history lesson on how the company handled criticism. It seems like the bad stories come out more because of the opportunity to be heard, and there are undoubtedly good ones that will get lost in the noise.
However, the CrossFit issues are business issues. The social struggle against racism in its current form may only intensify, and most people will be on the right side of this struggle because most people can be trusted to do the right thing.
You want to do the right thing. I think most partners will have problems with what that means for them.
However you choose, CrossFit will still be CrossFit. It will be difficult to say what that really means for CrossFit in six months.