Greg Glassman is the founder and CEO of a fast-growing fitness company with millions of devoted followers. But to him, he is nothing more than the guardian of one of the great wonders of the world. With its solid and functional movements, its clear results and its growing popularity, it seems that CrossFit will remain the champion of fitness for years to come. Glassman's early sports experiences directly influenced CrossFit's goal of achieving “greater ability to work in broad modal and temporal domains.
Recently, CrossFit founder Greg Glassman has restructured the company, altering the history of CrossFit Open training. These are annual online competitions where CrossFit athletes can compare their performance with that of other athletes around the world. According to many CrossFit coaches, this change will be beneficial in returning to CrossFit's original mission of fostering healthy lifestyles and communities. Some medical professionals have expressed concern that both the CrossFit methodology and the environment created by CrossFit coaches put athletes at high risk of developing rhabdomyolysis.
CrossFit became a community for people to not only train, but also strive and build confidence. As the best CrossFit athletes grow stronger, the CrossFit Games have evolved to develop new strategic challenges, workouts and events. He later discovered that incorporating different components of fitness, such as strength, endurance, flexibility, balance and power, would help people get in better shape, so in 2000 he opened his first CrossFit gym. Anyone who has met a person doing CrossFit can confirm that participants will not shut up about it, leading many to attribute a cult atmosphere to the company.
As an ode to Glassman's belief that the fittest athletes could master any workout, the first event of the inaugural CrossFit games was spontaneously chosen. Usually, CrossFit Open competitions crown a national champion who then qualifies for the CrossFit Games. The famous CrossFit Games have followed suit by growing more than ten times their size in the last 12 years. Based in Santa Cruz, California, CrossFit defends as a panacea an intense physical training regimen combined with a diet high in protein and low in carbohydrates. While CrossFit Open workouts will continue to be assigned each week, there has been a corporate twist to encourage community and fun through new types of training.
