CrossFit and its ‘army of doctors’ want to change the entire fitness game. Can they do it?
- Founder Greg Glassman is recruiting doctors to join the CrossFit world, and so far it seems to be working
- In a shift away from the CrossFit Games, the company wants to take on the entire health, wellness and fitness world, but still has its detractors
In a recent interview with South China Morning Post , CrossFit founder Greg Glassman said he has one priority for CrossFit this year.
The sport recently underwent a massive shift as it tries to push the focus away from the widely popular CrossFit Games and more onto its health and wellness campaign.
The move was both criticised and applauded, however Glassman has been unwavering in taking the branded fitness regime in a new direction. CrossFit has been dolling out diet, wellness and active lifestyle advice on its website, and picking fights with Big Soda and various lobbyists hell bent on watching the company flounder. Branded “dangerous” by various outlets, the sport has grown immensely in the two decades it has been around and now features more than 15,000 “boxes” in more than 120 countries.
Glassman said he is working on a secret weapon to combat CrossFit’s enemies and help further legitimise the workout regime, and it has already started in America.
“We’ve got about 20,000 doctors in the US alone who are regularly going to boxes,” said Glassman, who noted he wants to add as many physicians as he can to his “army”.
One of Glassman’s poster girls is Dr Ronda Rockett, a former Wellesley, Massachusetts, family doctor who left family medicine after 12 years in 2013. Rockett was getting frustrated with the amount of patients coming through her office with similar ailments such as diabetes and obesity who were all on multiple medications. Rockett, who discovered CrossFit back in 2008 in her 40s, decided on a massive career change: she quit medicine and opened a CrossFit box in her home garage.