CrossFit Athletic Group

[a rejected response to this]

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Dr. Seuss could not describe the Champions Club in 500 words. In fact, no possible arrangement of characters on a computer screen could produce the gravitational pull of the Champions Club. Carl Paoli anointed us “The Future.” Kelly Starrett called us revolutionary. Jarrod Bell from CrossFit BMW said “when I see [Chris] and his coaches Nicole, Emma and Sydni, I see a younger version of Greg Glassman and his team, Nicole, Eva and Annie coaching by his side.” All three have gone beyond the virtual pages to experience the Champions Club first-hand. They still don’t know.

Trying to describe the Champions Club to a stranger would be like trying to describe Illmatic to a deaf person. What started as a seven-kid group at Bishop Foley High School in 2009 exploded into a 60-person club by February, 2011 consisting of parents, siblings, alumni, and neighboring schools. We wanted to affiliate and the school was all in. That is, until they suddenly weren’t.

Within a matter of 48 hours, bad news broke in spectacular fashion. No outside students. No parents. No siblings. No alumni. No weekends. No holidays. And all the equipment we bought plus the remaining money in our account: school property. Dividing our group was never considered; either we keep everyone or we’re done. And if not for Mrs. Pip, the latter looked to be where things were headed.

In the following days, Mrs. Pip – veteran CrossFitter and mother to three Champions Club kids – used her lunch break between two jobs to look for a new building. Somehow she found a warehouse with an owner who put his trust in a 22-year-old college dropout to run a business with no money. Leaving Foley felt like that first clear inhale after weeks of nasal drippings. It was also our introduction to monthly rent and $13,000 handicap-regulated bathrooms. After the finishing touches, we were left with…

…a building that was crap. But it was ours! Our very own crap.

Luckily, an affiliate’s quality has little to do with the facility or membership numbers. Instead, the quality of a CrossFit affiliate is based on coaching, movement, and community. Are your coaches world-class? Can your athletes move well when nobody is watching? And have you created a family in the process? Those are the standards we hold ourselves to and I have yet to see anyone cover them as well as us. Our website illustrates this through classic editorials and videos detailing our philosophy and precise movement. Then our goofball side is showcased through theme workouts and…of course…Who Says CrossFit Can’t Be Sexy.

Youth drives the Champions Club. But youth has nothing to do with age; it’s about mentality. Unfortunately becoming an “adult” usually comes with boredom, over-complication, and realizing most things are too good to be true. We’ll have none of that. The Champions Club is the cure for adulthood. We exist because we don’t know any better. And in the meantime we not only live up to virtuosity, we are the standard.