Eliza Tebo
Update, 6/10: CrossFit CEO Greg Glassman resigned Tuesday amid growing fallout from his incendiary comments about George Floyd.
“On Saturday I created a rift in the CrossFit community and unintentionally hurt many of its members,” Glassman said in a statement the company released Tuesday night.
The announcement came shortly after BuzzFeed News released excerpts of a Zoom call Glassman held with studio owners on Saturday.
“We’re not mourning for George Floyd—I don’t think me or any of my staff are,” Glassman said on the call. “Can you tell me why I should mourn for him? Other than that it’s the white thing to do—other than that, give me another reason,” he asked one owner in the call.
Glassman will retain his ownership stake in the company, according to the New York Times.
Local gyms are weighing in on the decision. In response to a letter CrossFit headquarters posted Tuesday, titled “Why Didn’t CrossFit Just Say Something?” Petworth Fitness co-owner Marcus Taylor said the post wasn’t enough. “I give them credit for acknowledging their silence but even within an apology letter they can’t say the words ‘Black Lives Matter,’” Taylor wrote on his personal Instagram account.
For CrossFit South Arlington, Glassman’s resignation does not go far enough.
“Replacing one CEO for another is not real change. We welcome the retirement of CrossFit CEO Greg Glassman as a step in the right direction, but we find it woefully inadequate,” the studio wrote in an Instagram post on Wednesday. The studio calls on headquarters to create a board of directors composed of and elected by community members. According to networking site The Org and Inc., CrossFit does not have a board of directors.
More than 1100 studios in the U.S. and internationally have decided to disaffiliate from the company. MoCo CrossFit in Rockville, CrossFit Hierarchy on Kalorama Road, and District CrossFit near Nationals Park are among the local gyms that have recently announced a dissociation with the brand.
Original:
Several local CrossFit gyms are criticizing brand CEO and co-founder Greg Glassman after a tone-deaf tweet invoking George Floyd. Some are severing ties with the brand completely, saying CrossFit has a history of discrimination.
Glassman’s tweet was in response to another tweet from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation that read, “Racism and discrimination are critical public health issues that demand an urgent response. #BlackLivesMatter.” Using his personal account, Glassman replied, “It’s FLOYD-19” on Saturday, a reference to the man whose death at the hands of Minneapolis police on May 25 has inspired a wave of nationwide protests against police brutality toward African Americans.
But at least one local gym says the problems with the global brand of high-intensity training gyms didn’t start with Glassman’s tweet.
Petworth Fitness, which changed its name from CrossFit Petworth two years ago but continued to offer CrossFit-branded classes until recently, posted an open letter to the brand on its social media channels Friday, a day before Glassman’s tweet.
“We wish to inform you and as many other affiliates as we can: The inaction of CrossFit regarding anti-racism work is unacceptable, and as a result, we are choosing to disaffiliate from CrossFit,” the letter states. “For a brand that has preached about being ‘for all,’ the deafening silence on current and past issues of racism tell us all we need to know.”
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Marcus Taylor, the studio co-owner and co-founder, says Petworth Fitness leadership met early last week to post the open letter. They made the decision to disaffiliate after seeing CrossFit headquarters remain silent as other brands and companies made statements in the wake of Floyd’s killing.
“I’m a black man. I’ve been involved in CrossFit for more than a decade. And for me, the silence spoke volumes,” Taylor says. “The thing that I told people about and sold them on was the community of CrossFit; it’s just such an awesome community to be involved with. And for them to remain silent on this, it really hurt. It hurt a lot.”
In their open letter, they criticize the brand for the lack of diversity across its annual CrossFit Games, its seminar staff, and its Instagram feed. The letter also says the studio is looking at ways to bring in community members who can’t afford a studio membership. Taylor, who grew up in Petworth, says his studio staff reflects the growing diversity of the neighborhood.
“As a gym in a diverse neighborhood with a diverse coaching staff, we often talk about the lack of representation in CrossFit,” the letter reads. It also states that the $3,000 in annual dues the studio would have paid to CrossFit will instead be donated to Black Lives Matter DC and Know Your Rights.
The CrossFit Games, the brand’s annual athletic competition, released a statement on Facebook later on Friday addressing community members who “feel neglected, left out, trapped, and hurt,” and asking “What can we do to better serve the Black Community in CrossFit?”
Representatives for CrossFit did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Other CrossFit studios in the D.C. region — including CrossFit DC on U Street, CrossFit Durable in Haymarket and CrossFit Cove in Columbia, Maryland — have distanced themselves from the brand since Glassman’s tweet. There are more than a dozen CrossFit affiliate studios in the region that use the brand in its name. Others — including Petworth Fitness, until recently — offer CrossFit classes on their schedules.
On Sunday night, the Twitter account for CrossFit HQ released an apology from Glassman. The CEO claimed he was “trying to stick it” to the IHME, “for their invalidated models resulting in needless, economy-wrecking, life-wrecking lockdown” in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
“I, CrossFit HQ, and the CrossFit community will not stand for racism. I made a mistake by the words I chose yesterday,” the tweeted statement read. “My heart is deeply saddened by the pain it has caused. It was a mistake, not racist but a mistake.”
This is not the first time CrossFit has been condemned for racist behavior. In 2013, the brand was called out for sharing a Facebook post authored by “racial realists” (those who believe there are biological differences between people that provide a scientific basis for racial supremacy). The brand also pulled an Instagram post in March that featured a sign reading “Some guy eats a bat halfway across the world and now I can’t go to CrossFit.”
National brands and athletes have criticized Glassman or ended their relationship with the brand, including professional CrossFit athlete Rich Froning, Olympian Tia-Clair Toomey and Reebok. Some 227 affiliates thus far are in the process of rebranding, according to BBC News.
On Friday, Alyssa Royse, owner of Rocket CrossFit in Seattle, posted an email response she received from Glassman. Royse had reached out to the CEO saying the studio would be changing its name to Rocket Community Fitness after assessing the brand’s response to both COVID-19 and the recent protest movement.
“Even taking a small step to the right side of history is better than haphazardly napping on the wrong side of history,” Royse wrote.
Royse posted a screenshot of Glassman’s response. In it he writes, “You’ve let your politics warp you into something that strikes me as wrong to the point of being evil.”
Earlier today, Taylor of Petworth Fitness,addressed Glassman’s tweet in an Instagram post. Calling on athletes and fitness brands, he asked, “With all of these gyms disaffiliating from Crossfit, the question NOW is what are YOU going to do? … The community is watching.”
This post has been updated with the correct name of CrossFit South Arlington.
