Scale, Belong, Remember: What Community Fitness Means

New walls, fresh energy, same purpose: build a place where anyone can train hard, belong, and get better. We just moved into 2585 Freeport Road, and even with the podcast gear still in boxes, the momentum is real. We added HYROX training and new class times, not to chase trends, but to meet the needs we hear every day—more conditioning options, more flexible schedules, and more paths to progress that fit real life.

We also tackle a myth that won’t die: that CrossFit is only for the elite. If your first impression came from Games highlights on YouTube, you’re seeing the Super Bowl of our world, not the local field where most of us learn the basics. We break down universal scalability with clear examples so you understand how the same workout can meet a beginner and a veteran exactly where they are. With smart coaching, nutrition, and sleep, the ceiling moves higher than you think.

Then we turn to the season ahead. The CrossFit Open is back, and we run each week’s workout as our Friday WOD, complete with scaled divisions and age groups so everyone can participate. We share how to approach it without stress, how to log a score for fun, and how that shared effort lights up a room. We also host the True Challenge on April 18, the evolved Festivus-style competition for novice and intermediate athletes. We explain our commitment to fair divisions and why protecting the spirit of the event matters. Last November’s feedback on our new venue proved how much environment shapes performance.

To close, we honor Sgt 1st Class Ryan Gloyer, a Ranger and Green Beret from Zielienople, with a Murph-style memorial workout. The Kappa Sigma Fraternity at Thiel College, along with many of their fellow classmates are taking it on at 4 pm today, and we invite you to pause, reflect, and, if you’re nearby, join. This is where fitness meets meaning: shared work, shared memory, shared purpose.

If this resonated, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs a nudge to start, and leave a quick review so more people can find the show. Then come train with us—let’s scale smart, push hard, and do the right thing together.

Transcript

Schedule Updates And HYROX Training

Clearing Up CrossFit Misconceptions

Universal Scalability Explained

CrossFit Open: How It Works

True Challenge Competition Details

Hosting Standards And Fair Play

Events, Courses, And Social Updates

SPEAKER_00 0:01

All right. Good morning. I apologize for the echo. We are coming to you live from our new location, 2585 Freeport Road, inside of one Alexander Center. If you haven't checked out the new space, probably the best space we've ever occupied. Anyway, got zero equipment here with me today. Zero. I mean this uh podcast equipment. All right, everything's packed up in storage. So we're gonna try to um go a little bit smaller. Right now I'm primitive. I'm using a microphone on my laptop and um same camera setup as I as I've used before, but um uh did have these really, really cool. My daughter uh sourced them for us, really cool little mini mini microphones, you know. But um I don't know where they are. So we're going we're going old school, we're going plain. So a few things that um it has been a while. It has been a while, and you know, while we uh we've been off and running, I mean, from the moment we moved from the old location to this, it's been fast. Been very, very fast, and we wouldn't have it any other way, but um we've added some times, uh new times to the uh old schedule. We've added uh high rocks training to the schedule, and it's it's it's funny. I mean, as I you know, the the longer we stay in this industry, we are uh coming with this our 20-year anniversary, the longer we're in it. I'm still baffled by how much confusion there is. All right. Um, we have a new member, really, really good athlete, good guy. And uh he said very casually, he said to me about a week ago, he said, Yeah, I keep telling my wife to try it. And you know, she's she looked at it on YouTube and and she was like, No way, that's not for me. And the only thing that crossed my mind, the first thing I had to say, I said, Let me guess. Um, she searched it on YouTube, and what she found were the CrossFit games, right? And that's like trying to explain to someone who's never played popcorn or football how you should really take up the sport. I think you'd be uh, you know, I think you'd be very good at it. You know, it's anybody can do it. And then you Google football, and a highlight reel comes up from like uh the Steelers of the 70s, you know, like a dynasty in the making. So sure, I mean it is intimidating, but it's not it, it's it's silly, you know. When you get right down to it, it's silly because it is in fact for everyone. Universal scalability. That simply means that given the proper coaching, and we have hands down the best coaches in the area, um they will tailor that workout for you so that if Rich Froning were to walk through, and Rich, you are always welcome, brother. If he were to walk through and take up a spot right beside you, he would do that workout RX prescribed, and you would do it with scaled modifications. And by the time that workout is over, you would look at one another and you would both have gotten the best workout you could possibly get. Him doing his version, you doing yours. And you know, you stick to it and you follow a sensible nutrition plan and you get some sleep. Next thing you know, you'll be RXing with Rich and you know, shattering his records. Probably not because he is a prodigy, all right. But you understand what I'm saying, it is for everybody. If at 62 years old, I can still do it. There's no reason you can't. The only reason is your own stop button up here. All right. Anyway, this week, this week we kick off the CrossFit Games Open. All right, CrossFit Games Open is a fun event, and it is also for everyone. There are scale divisions, right? There are uh, you know, RX, uh there's prescribed, there's scaled, there's every variation you could possibly wish, because CrossFit and the CrossFit Open have always been and will continue to be inclusive, right? You know what that means by the purest definition of the word, it means it's for everyone. All right. Anyway, um, the way it works is actually pretty exciting. Thursday, uh afternoon, evening, depending on your time zone. CrossFit headquarters will release the workout for that week. This will go for three weeks. You can come in, and we as an affiliate have run CrossFit Open as a normal workout of the day every Friday during the open season. Okay, and you'll come in and you'll perform that workout. And if you choose to keep score and look at how you stack up on the global leaderboard just for fun, or uh you know, we're gonna do it anyway. So always a challenge, always fun and always inclusive. Uh, also on the horizon in April, we are hosting the True Challenge, formerly the Festivus Games, now the True Challenge. Uh, last November we hosted in this location. First, uh, and we've been we've been hosting the Festivus Games since they were a thing, since their inception, if you will. And um, the the coolest part about the festivus games when it was uh created, festivist, those you familiar or fans of the Seinfeld show, uh, you'll remember when when that annoying little man, George Costanza, um didn't celebrate Christmas, he celebrated Festivus, so they could air their grievances and so forth. His tagline was uh festivus, uh holiday for the rest of us, right? So when Festivus first came online, the the concept was a competition for the rest of us. They are novice categories and uh intermediate categories, also broken down by age, masters, and and um open. The workouts are once again, they are universal, they are scalable, and it is that kind of competition for someone who's new, maybe new to the sport, maybe not new to the sport, but new to competing in the sport of CrossFit, right? So they're CrossFit movements, CrossFit modalities, but done at a at a level so you don't feel like you just walked into the competition and just got pasted by people who have been training, right? The only thing, and this is on us, this is incumbent on every host, right? And if if you're a host of the true challenge and you are not doing this, then shame on you, all right. You will get people who try to slide in under the radar. You know, a guy who's competed in every CrossFit Open, maybe even made it to a regional, or maybe made it beyond, and and then they come in and they uh they claim uh have a knee injury, right? So I'm gonna compete in festive. I mean, it's clear, it's clear when you register, if you've done this, this, this, you shouldn't be competing here. If your Fran time is this, if your MERF time is that, you shouldn't be competing here. Every once in a while you get somebody that that slips in. You remember making another um uh, what do you call it, Seinfeld reference? Anyone out there remember that episode of Seinfeld where Kramer was talking about karate and how he was in a class and how he was at the top of his class and he was beating everyone? And then you come to find out it's a kid's class, and in the end, they all jump him outside of the school. Yeah, little tiny fists of fury. Yeah, so don't do that. Don't do that. That's not what the true challenge is for. It has been around, it will continue to be around. And when we hosted in November, uh first event that we hosted here in the new space, we had some new athletes, you know, new uh competitors, but we also had some um some veterans, some longtime uh festivists and true challenge, you know, athletes competing in this space for the first time. And their feedback was incredible, was absolutely incredible. I mean, like 400 and some odd parking spaces around the building itself. So you're not, you know, you're not walking through um um the alleyways and city streets parking far away. Uh parking is not a challenge here. It's the only thing that's not a challenge here, all right. Uh let the workout be challenging, not your accessibility to it. But I got a lot of rave reviews, a lot of rave reviews when we hosted in November. So we're looking to hit that again. It'll be April 18th. Uh, you can find the links on our website, on our CrossFit Pittsburgh page. Website's also in transition. We are we're retooling everything, man, except I'll check with my wife and make sure I'm not on the chopping block.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

Excuse me. It is Sunday. Oh, I was gonna say morning, but it is 12.01, so it is Sunday afternoon, and I'm having some black rifle coffee.

Honoring Ryan Gloyer With A Memorial WOD

Closing Thoughts And Encouragement

SPEAKER_00 9:08

And um, but anyway, yeah, hopefully, hopefully, I mean, you know, hopefully I'm not on the chopping block. But uh true challenge, April 18th. Also, we are hosting a CrossFit Level 1 course on Saturday and Sunday, May 2nd and May 3rd. Information on that also on our Facebook page um on all of our social media. My daughters have taken over, like like little pirates, they've taken over our social media, and um, it's a lot of fun. I mean, they're they're coming up with some some fun, fun and creative uh videos, I should say. But anyway, um, I want to leave you with this today. There's a uh young man, graduate of Teal College, uh class of 2004. His name was Ryan Gloyer of Zillian Opel PA. Zillian Opel PA, Ryan Gloyer graduated Teal class of 2004 with a Magna cum laude. By all accounts, this was a great, great guy. Okay, he was community-oriented, he was driven. He uh graduated Teal with a dual degree in early education and psychology, and then he went on to earn his PA teaching certificate. He started teaching. During this time, he also enlisted in the Army. I believe his date of enlistment was December 28th, 2004. Uh, by 2004, I had already re-entered government service, and uh, I think actually December of 2004, I was uh was back home on my first leave after a very, very long and and uh harsh uh deployment to Iraq. So um I remember we had just spent we had just spent Christmas uh at home, and our son would be born almost one month later. But uh Ryan entered the army December 28th, 2004. Uh he earned his Ranger tab, he earned his Green Beret, he served three tours of duty in Afghanistan, uh, one tour of duty in Chad. And in between these times, he uh was a respected teacher, uh, friend, family member. At 34 years old, on November 3rd, 2016, Ryan was killed in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Right, killed in action on a mission in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Today, today, the fraternity brothers of uh my son's fraternity, Kappa Sigma fraternity at Teal College, four o'clock this afternoon, they will be doing a memorial workout in Ryan's memory. Um, it's a MERF-style workout, so it'll involve two miles of any modality, and it will involve the 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats. All right. So uh the boys at Kappa Sigma are prepared to get after it. And it looks like we we we actually um we remember Drian here at CrossFit Pittsburgh yesterday, and the boys at Kappa Sigma and uh Teal College, they'll be doing it again. This is their show today, four o'clock. So if you're in the area, if you're near Greenville PA, stop on in. All right, it's in the athletic center. If you're not at 4 o'clock today, stop what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Take a minute, say a prayer for this young man and those like him. Alright? Because as long as we don't forget, these boys will live forever. Alright. So, anyway, eat right, train hard. Just don't be uh just just do the right thing.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Alright. Uh it's gonna be back. And we'll be seeing you. Take care.