CrossFit: The Good Fight

For several years, CrossFit Inc. Founder and CEO Greg Glassman and his legal team have been fighting a battle with the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) and the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), organizations that present themselves as the foremost authorities on strength and conditioning.

Through the CrossFit Journal, The Russells blog, social-media posts and litigation, CrossFit is taking action against questionable “science” published by corporate-sponsored researchers, non-existent definitions of fitness, poor exercise instruction, injurious hydration recommendations, and attacks against CrossFit and its affiliates.

CrossFit is currently in litigation with the NSCA over alleged fraud in reporting injury data involving members of CrossFit 614 in Ohio, and CrossFit recently hosted the 2015 CrossFit Conference on Exercise-Associated Hyponatremia to help prevent the needless deaths that occur when athletes fall victim to bad hydration science and drink too much. CrossFit is also actively working against efforts to pass legislation that would require the licensure of fitness trainers.

Overall, CrossFit is working to demonstrate that these organizations are unfit to lead the fitness industry. CrossFit HQ staff member Russell Berger has worked closely with Glassman throughout.

“These battles that we’re fighting are incredibly important and are really a noble cause,” Berger explains.

He adds: “I know there’s this misperception about CrossFit … that we’re a litigious company that’s just out there creating petty squabbles between our competitors, and this is all just us being angry because we’ve been criticized and can’t handle that. It’s a lot more than that.”

Here, Berger gives an overview and a history of the legal battles CrossFit is involved in and explains the final goals. One of those goals is to preserve the livelihoods of trainers at CrossFit affiliates by preventing unfounded criticism that tarnishes the reputations of those gyms.

“You’ll see that what we’re doing is not just incredibly important for our company and for the CrossFit brand,” he says, “but it’s important for every single one of our 11,000 affiliates.”

Video by Heber Cannon, Jay Vera and Eric Maciel.

30min 40 sec

Additional reading: “NCSA ‘CrossFit Study’ Fraud?” by Russell Berger, published May 22, 2013.