CrossFit Athletic Group

Here's an excerpt from the CrossFit Affiliate Application I wrote in 2011:

CrossFit has helped my game a lot, and has also lead me to this career opportunity, so I want to give back to the community and spread this to as many people as I possibly can. Now that my schedule will be clearing up in the spring, I want to make the commitment now to open up Champion’s Club CrossFit.

I was pumped; we were overflowing with people at the time so much that we were forced to move two times in 18 months. We had unknowingly and unintentionally started an underground business and figured the time was right to make it official. A week after the application was submitted we got the approval!

... with one exception:

Hi Chris:

On behalf of CrossFit, we would like to offer our congratulations and let you know that we would be honored to accept your affiliate application.

Unfortunately, the name you have chosen is not available.

Turns out these bastards in Texas had an affiliate name that was too similar to Champion's Club. Naturally, I tried to work around it on technicality:

[...] here's a few alternates in order of preference:

CrossFit Champion's Club (I'm assuming that wouldn't work, but figured I'd try it)

CrossFit CC

CC CrossFit

I got a quick reply from this one:

Hi Chris,

The name CC CrossFit is available.  We'll update your account with the new name and get the next steps out to you.

Congrats and welcome!

And then two days later I got a second email. Trick dice:

Hi Chris,

I tried calling you this morning, please give me a shout when you have a minute.

We won't be able to give you the name CC CrossFit after all, we already have one.  I'm sorry about that.  Can you please send us a couple other names for approval?

I still stand by the notion that the Bubs/Aaron Athlete of the Summer in 2022 was the most difficult decision I've ever made for the gym; picking our name is definitely #2. I was so sure Champion's Club CrossFit was going to stick that I never put thought into brainstorming any alternatives. I skipped class the next morning, laid on my bed, and wrote down every name that came to mind:

1. Family CrossFit
2. CrossFit Witness
3. Dynamic CrossFit
4. CrossFit Athletic Club
5. Association
6. Organization
7. Group
8. CrossFit Mad Heights
9. Midwest CrossFit
10. Form First CrossFit
11. CrossFit 2010
12. CrossFit 05
13. Athlete
14. CrossFit Athletic Association
15. CrossFit Workout Club
16. CrossFit Training Club
17. CrossFit Sports Club
18. CrossFit Sporting Club
19. School of CrossFit

As you can tell I was all over the place with it. Oddly enough, it was right during the time my teammate Mick Jack was picking his rap name, so we spent an entire bus ride to Indiana talking about the hilarious complexity and simplicity of this process. He was with me: it can't just be a cool-sounding name, or something to grab people's attention, but instead it needed to really be about us and our identity.

I believe in CrossFit to its core, so the name would be in there even if it wasn't a requirement.

I love the concept of collective units working together, but I'm not going to rip off The Family, "community" is too many syllables, and "club" could also be, like, Chess club or cheerleading. So I went with "Group".

Finally, lifting weights and doing pull-ups and Helen times are impressive, but no matter how deep I dove into the CrossFit world I never lost sight of why it was created in the first place: to help people get better at sports and to treat everyday normal people like athletes.

CrossFit Athletic Group is not as dope of a name as the Champions Club, but it encompasses everything we're about, and sport is, literally, the center of it.

The first question I ask new people is "What sports did you play in high school?" I'm not listening for All-State honors, or the 51st time a 50 year-old talks about how they tried out for the St. Louis Cardinals, instead I'm listening for team sports: basketball, football, volleyball, baseball, softball. If those sports are covered thoroughly then we have that box checked. Track, swimming, cross country, and wraastling are individual sports, and lacrosse is weird, so I ask a few follow up questions before checking the box. Either way it comes down to whether or not the new prospect knows what it's like to be treated like an athlete, because that is non-negotiable here. Mrs. Gloria plays basketball for a warmup and does somersaults.

Sports are at the very core of who we are and the reason why we exist, but being treated like an athlete doesn't just mean playing floor hockey and ankle tag and basketball, it also means being held to high standards and not deviating from them. It means this isn't always going to be the best hour of your day. It means being pissed at a coach and still coming back. It means not having to like the people around you to love them. It means being left out sometimes. It means still doing your job even if you don't particularly know if it's a "good" job or "bad" job. It means having to account for factors outside of your control like weather, equipment, contact, and space. It means learning how when, and with whom to compete. It means understanding that there's not only double-standards, but as many standards as there are athletes around you. It means being told no more often than being told yes. It means having to ride this dinky-ass bike because you finished the run last.

The CrossFit HQ I wanted to affiliate with in 2011 is not the same CrossFit HQ that exists today. I still pay my affiliate fee because I would feel like a crook if I didn't, but from a (mostly) outside perspective, they are on some serious Soft Ass White People Shit. They stay inside when it's cold, put on grippy gloves to do pull-ups, scale running/rowing distances for girls, promote whichever product pays them, is inclusive to anyone regardless of what it means for the culture. All you need to do is turn on the NBC for the next two weeks and see how awesome an environment becomes when people are forced to adapt to the environment's standards, not the other way around.

We have a group that appreciates the Olympics because we can relate... kind of. You can relate enough to know how humbling presses to handstands handstand descents are and can do some quick, inaccurate math to guess how much time those little Asian people must have spent to make their routines look so flawless. You can remember the frustration of being told to do the rep over because your feet came apart on a burpee, and know that your frustration must be nothing compared to losing a medal because your feet came apart on some twisting spinning cartwheeling thing on a 4-inch beam. You can see a volleyball match being played in the rain and be thankful that your rainy workout does not have medals on the line. You can see someone miss a Clean and Jerk on live television and be thankful that your misses at the gym and at work are not televised. And you can come up just short of an award and know you don't have to wait four years to try again.

We do an Olympics Theme Workout every four years as an homage to the amount of impact sports have on our community. Our entire gym revolves around the school sports calendar and our Summer attendance has boundaries out of respect for it - even if it's not reciprocated. You might have run out of eligibility to play sports for your high school or college, but your athletic days are not done. Not as long as you're here.