CrossFit the next Globo Gym?

Any venture whether it be fitness related or not, must grow, or it becomes stagnant and eventually dies. CrossFit is no exception, and as anyone can tell you, is growing by leaps and bounds. In just a few short years it has catapulted onto the fitness stage and taken the world by storm. From major endorsement deals, to commercials now running on national TV, it is everywhere. The question is, at what cost?

In this short article, I am not going to give hard facts, nor am I going to single out any individuals. With time, maybe the sources of some of the tidbits of information I have heard about will agree to let their stories be heard, but until then, lets just call this entire article a bit of speculation and rumor.

Instead of writing this article in the regular format, I thought I’d pose a few questions regarding topics that have been milling around the net lately and my thoughts on them.

1. Will the Reebok partnership ruin the small affiliate? Well this is a hard one to answer. I wrote an article over a year ago giving my thoughts on the partnership and gave a prediction of sorts as to what would eventually happen. In that article I explained that Reebok was a manufacturer and I doubted that they would be in the gym business.
   
   I also explained that because of their business model, if they did decide to get into the “gym” business, they would only open a few “Reebok CrossFit” branded gyms to promote new “CrossFit” products. Those affiliates would be located in larger metropolitan areas, and the small guy would be left alone. Well from what I hear, this has been happening, but on a much larger scale than I predicted. 
   
   * As of this writing there are 43 Reebok branded affiliates with a goal of 150 by the end of 2012 – See article on CNBC.com
   
   Now I really don’t know what this means overall, but I do get a feeling that some of the smaller affiliates out there are not so happy. Scuttlebutt is that affiliate rates have gone up, and this is effectively closing out the little guy, especially in less populated areas.
   
   Is this part of the plan? Does Reebok want total control over the entire CrossFit empire? Do they have a hand in influencing pricing, and if so is, it an attempt to force out the small “Non-Performers” to keep the Reebok brand solid? Don’t know, once again, I am just hypothesizing. But this brings me to number two.
   
   
   
2. Does the explosive growth of CrossFit and number of affiliates lead to a lack of overall quality?  Ok let me be the first to say this, I am all for entrepreneurship and I don’t knock anyone who wants to get out there and live the dream.
   
   That being said, and please don’t get offended if this is you, but you are no more qualified to teach any type of exercise or sport, after a few short certificate courses, than I am watching E.R, then attempting to perform surgery.
   
   The people who should be teaching are the ones who have been there and done it with CrossFit, or those with years of experience in many of the different disciplines in CrossFit (Olympic Lifting, Gymnastics etc.). These are the gurus that can lead you in the right direction, tell you when your making mistakes and stop you before you hurt yourself.
   
   I’m not talking about those people; I’m talking about the people who have an entire two months of CrossFit under their belts who choose to plop down some cash for a certificate course, then decide to open an affiliate, and coach.
   
   Now this is where it gets crazy! CrossFit allows them to do this!
   
   So on any given day, you never really know what your gonna get at any given CrossFit because there is no consistency. Affiliate number one, may have years of knowledge with its trainers, while affiliate number two down the street may be staffed with people who wouldn’t know a proper squat if it bit them in the ass.
   
   Now, I am no expert in any of the lifts and I readily admit it. For advice and technique I look to the experts online, and try to replicate what I see, but guess what, I don’t teach the stuff because I am not an expert, not yet at least.
   
   From what I’m hearing, the sentiment around the net is that the explosive growth of CrossFit and expansion of affiliates is creating an inferior product. Now I’m not saying this is true, but if it is, here is how it could ruin the brand as a whole.
   
   I’ll use a fast food chain as an example. Lets say McDonalds let anyone who had a few thousand bucks open a restaurant. Lets say they gave them a couple eight-hour courses on running a restaurant and then sent them on their way, with no real future oversight.
   
   This would be great at first because you’d have a McDonalds on every corner. But soon the problems would start. All the food would taste different at each location, costs would be different, the buildings would look different, and quality would vary from location to location.
   
   After a while people would stop visiting the chain altogether, because they wouldn’t know what to expect. At one location, you’d get the real deal and at the other, something totally unexpected.
   
   In my opinion the same could go for CrossFit. If a client were to get burned by visiting an unqualified affiliate, they would be apprehensive about spending money at another. Which brings me to my third and final question/observation.
   
   
   
3. Does the Reebok-CrossFit recognize this problem and look to standardize affiliates?
   
   If so will CrossFit eventually become the newest GLOBO gym?
   
   Who knows, but it is an interesting question. On one hand, standardization would mean that every affiliate would be highly trained to teach CrossFit. Any athlete anywhere would be able to enter any gym around the world and know exactly what they were getting. They’d get expert advice from highly qualified individuals at each location.
   
   But due to the new affiliate requirements, I could only guess the costs to own an affiliate would rise, due to the cost of training and oversight required by the “Mother ship”. This would effectively force the little guy out, because they just couldn’t afford fees associated with the new CrossFit model.
   
   The crazy thing is that if CrossFit doesn’t do some kind of oversight, I imagine that they will someday reach the fate of a fast food chain gone mad, like in the example above.
   
   It seems if you look at it with open eyes, they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

Once again, I have no hard facts, and my answers to the hypothetical questions are pure speculation. For the fun of it, I thought I’d create a few polls to see what you think.

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See you in the hills.
Lance