The Glass Box covers military affinity, founder controversies and Glassman’s $200m exit
The Guardian’s Edward Helmore opens his review by writing, “Comparative machismo is hardly new.” Earlier this month, Donald Trump publicly admired Senator Jon Husted’s backside and later told advisers the comment made the since-defeated Ohio incumbent more “interesting” to voters. Husted leaned into the compliment, saying it gave him extra motivation to “get down to the gym.”
Helmore asks whether such an exchange would have taken place without CrossFit, the fitness empire founded by college dropout and gymnast Greg Glassman in the 1990s. The movement grew to 15,000 gyms across 160 countries before Glassman was drawn into public controversy at the height of #MeToo and the social justice movement in 2020. The Glass Box does not directly answer the question. Marsh, the book’s author and a former CrossFit devotee, examines a movement that encouraged adherents to participate in high-intensity workouts. Helmore describes its aesthetic and attitude as having “bled into right-wing politics and militarism.”
What Glassman built before CrossFit’s expansion
Glassman had polio as a child and used gymnastics to rebuild his strength. Beginning in his 30s, he worked as a personal trainer in Santa Cruz, California, where he developed a system combining weightlifting, gymnastics and sprint conditioning. He opened his first gym in 1995 and was hired by the police department to train its officers.
Overbooked by demand from private clients, Glassman started group classes, and the CrossFit community and company grew from them. The book says Glassman attained guru-like status. The Guardian describes him with the line, “He was, by turns, charming and irascible, and prone to bluntness and profanity.” The book also quotes Glassman telling his wife, Jenai: “This next year I’m going to have a lot more sex, either with or without you.”
CrossFit’s program was organized around three phrases: “Hard Work Pays Off” was the mantra; “Mechanics, Consistency, and then Intensity” the programming; and “Forging Elite Fitness” the goal. Glassman described the regimen as “constantly varied, high-intensity functional movements.” At seminars, CrossFitters were first encouraged toward the Zone Diet — “eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar” — and later toward the paleo diet, also known as the caveman or stone age diet, which imagined what humans would have eaten in the Paleolithic era. The Guardian describes the movements as accompanied by grunting.
Marsh says CrossFit was developed as an accessible, “easy, safe way of training, mainly for people who were overweight, senior citizens and the infirm – something that could be done by anyone.” As it evolved, he says, it became popular with people in the military, the police and first responders. “People in those fields gravitated to it because, at its extreme, it can be very intense. So it became popular as a more rugged, macho version of a typical workout and moved away from its original ethos.”
How the company cultivated a military affinity
CrossFit’s military association developed after its founding shortly before 9/11. Marsh says the new workout ethos complemented what he calls a “more self-determined and hardened, battle-ready stance. It was a perfect time for CrossFit to take off.” The company launched a website accessible to military personnel serving in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Marsh says: “CrossFit pursued and cultivated an affinity by naming workouts over fallen service members and plastering its website with images of people in the military, guys jumping out of helicopters and doing pull-ups on the end of a tank.”
The association never became formal, but it endured. Helmore writes that every era finds its complementary physical aesthetic. That affinity can now be seen in Trump administration figures, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who made physical fitness a military priority and his own physical training a centerpiece of his command. Robert F Kennedy Jr has prioritized viral fitness challenges and high-intensity workouts that mirror CrossFit, along with displays of his own physique. Hegseth and Kennedy launched the online “Pete and Bobby Challenge” as part of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” platform.
Marsh says the Trump-era figures were reasserting an aesthetic cultivated during the early Bush era. “There’s a big premium paid to being perceived as being manly and rugged, and that totally ties into the early Bush-era, CrossFit style,” he says. CrossFit gyms of that period cultivated an atmosphere described as “no mirrors, no vanity, rough garage-style.”
The review’s photographs include an image of CrossFit CEO Greg Glassman speaking in support of Senate Bill SB203 at Fathom CrossFit in Barrio Logan in San Diego, California, credited to ZUMA Press Inc/Alamy. A separate photograph, credited to Andia/Alamy, shows people working out at a CrossFit club in Saint-Basile, Quebec. Through gaps in a blurred foreground, another photograph, credited to Jose Luis Mendez Fernandez/Alamy, shows two men doing pull-ups during an indoor CrossFit workout.
How CrossFit differed from earlier fitness culture
CrossFit’s aesthetic arrived in contrast to an earlier period of fitness culture. TV personality Tony Robbins developed a time-efficient routine that promoted cold water immersion, mental “priming” exercises, rhythmic breathing exercises and a fast 15-minute high-intensity workout. Marsh says the message then was to be able to get fit without really trying.
That approach developed out of the 1980s era of “Jane Fonda’s Workout” and the dawn of the health club — upscale boutique places with soft jazz meant to appeal to suburban moms or businesspeople — before the 1990s era of the ThighMaster and Buns of Steel. “Everything about the way they were marketed and positioned was to de-emphasize how difficult they were,” Marsh says. CrossFit’s message was the opposite: “It was unheard of at the time. You’re gonna have to try. It’s going to be brutal. You’re going to bleed and vomit.”
Looking further back, Marsh points to 1930s Germany and the body aesthetics of the Nazis as captured in Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, an example he concedes is extreme. Physical prowess and the body mirror the culture, and vice versa, he says: “It’s both responding to changes that are political and helping to shape them. It’s in the air and in the culture and part of what makes these things manifest.”
The book arrives as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, figures from bodybuilding’s golden age who translated their physiques into movie stardom, have re-emerged as what The Guardian calls “avuncular cultural heroes.” Stallone’s recent autobiography The Steps made No 1 on nonfiction book sales charts when it was released last month. The Guardian also describes Schwarzenegger as having been recast as “a pro-immigration voice of Republican reason.”
What preceded Glassman’s departure
A New York Times exposé, drawing on accounts from former employees and CrossFit athletes, accused Glassman of creating a culture of “routine and rampant sexual harassment.” Glassman denied such conduct, and a spokesperson said the negative accounts were “a collective effort to devalue the company and buy it for scraps.”
Glassman linked racism and the Black Lives Matter movement to the pandemic, tweeting “It’s FLOYD-19.” On a Zoom call, he said: “I do not mourn George Floyd.” Stories also emerged about spending on private jets, restaurants, alcohol, Mariachi bands and stays at the Four Seasons. Glassman explained that he was not the CEO of a publicly traded company caught with his hand in the till: “The till was mine,” he said. “I owned 100 per cent of the company.”
After his history of highly questionable remarks became public, Glassman was forced to resign and sell CrossFit. He kept the company jets and collected a $200m payout. “He made a few political blunders and stupid errors of judgment that brought him an immense amount of backlash,” Marsh said. “He tried walking them back, he stepped down, and when that wasn’t enough, he ended up selling. It was probably a long time coming.”
What Marsh says Glassman left behind
Marsh says Glassman’s legacy on fitness is undeniable “in ways that are so broad that they’re hard to believe.” He argues CrossFit’s revolution was not just the manner and equipment of working out but its social culture. “CrossFit’s unique quality was its community-oriented classes,” says Marsh, who met his wife at a class. “They were very social, close-knit, and people built relationships in ways that would not happen if you just went to the gym with your headphones on.”