How to Save CrossFit

CrossFit is at a crossroads. With affiliate numbers shrinking and Berkshire Partners looking to sell, the future of the brand is uncertain.

In this special episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Two-Brain Business founder and CEO Chris Cooper lays out a plan to save CrossFit—the company and the broader community of gym owners and trainers who depend on the brand.

Chris was an affiliate owner for 14 years and worked for CrossFit HQ for six. Now, through Two-Brain, he mentors more CrossFit affiliate owners than anyone else in the world.

Coop’s seen firsthand what makes affiliates successful—and why so many are struggling.

Today, he breaks down why great coaching alone isn’t enough, how outdated business advice led many affiliates to financial instability and why the future of CrossFit depends on strong, profitable gyms.

He outlines specific steps a new CrossFit LLC owner should take to turn things around, including revamping the affiliate model and redefining the brand in today’s fitness industry.

Stay tuned for the next three episodes in this series: Chris will answer the top questions he's received about CrossFit, he'll explain how affiliates can be saved, and he'll lay out a plan for the evolution of the CrossFit Games.

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00:36 - CrossFit is shrinking

03:56 - How we got here

08:45 - The brand is built on affiliates

11:09 - How to fix CrossFit

19:20 - What real change requires

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

In 2020, Berkshire Partners bought CrossFit Inc. From Greg Glassman . The brand was on a slight decline from its peak at the time when it had over 15,000 affiliates worldwide and was certifying nearly 50,000 coaches per year. Greg got paid a reported 200 million on the sale, which he well deserved. But there are still thousands of people, affiliates and coaches and athletes who depend on the brand for their living. Many of us have set aside careers taking enormous debt or work for over a decade to bring the CrossFit method to their community. And now the brand is shrinking and Berkshire Partners wants out. I'm Chris Cooper. This has Run a profitable gym, and today I'm gonna share my plan to save CrossFit. Here's why. I was an affiliate owner for 14 years. I worked for CrossFit HQ for six, and I'm I Mentor Moore CrossFit affiliate owners than anyone else in the world. Through two Brainin business. I've written books about CrossFit and business. We have the largest data set for gyms in the world, and for the last 10 years I've tried to do for CrossFit affiliates, what CrossFit HQ should have been doing all along. So this is my opinion on how a new buyer or even the existing owners can turn the ship around. Let's start with the question, what does CrossFit sell? Well, CrossFit has four products. The first is the CrossFit methodology, which has been free since the beginning 2001, with daily workouts and articles on crossfit.com. The second product is the CrossFit coach certifications, which are arguably still the best in the world for producing hands-on coaching knowledge. The third product is CrossFit affiliation, which is a license to use the CrossFit trademark in your gym's name and marketing. And the fourth is sponsorship, which is access to this huge audience of CrossFit affiliate owners, coaches and fans for a fee which is mostly done through the games, but also sometimes done through the affiliate partner network. Now, in the early days, the CrossFit revenue model followed this predictable path from number one to number four. People would find the workouts online and they would try it and they'd love it, and then they'd wanna become a coach. So they'd attend a seminar and they'd fall deeper in love. And then they wanted to help more people and make a living coaching CrossFit. So they opened an affiliate and then a few saw opportunities to sell a product back to affiliates or to the CrossFit community, like programming and shirts and supplements. And they did that. And now each of these is shrinking. The company is likely, my guess, worth less than it was when purchased from Greg Glassman four years ago. But the method still works. It's fun and effective. So why don't we have 30,000 affiliates out there? Well , I'll start with my area of expertise and what I think is the first step in a turnaround, and that's fixing the affiliate model. CrossFit affiliates are closing at an alarming rate. The public story is that the brand is thriving and each affiliate is doing really well. But behind the scenes, thousands of gym owners are struggling to stay open, not because they've got bad coaches or they don't care enough, or they're hobbyists or whatever, but because they don't know how to run a business For years, CrossFit HQ has believed that great coaching alone would make affiliates successful. But the truth is great coaching isn't enough. A gym owner must be great at business too . Fitness is the hardest business in the world to run, and if you're not great at running a fitness business, your coaching won't save you. Unfortunately. The problem is that CrossFit HQ never taught affiliates how to run a business and worse the information that they did share and provide was sometimes misleading or harmful. Let's walk through the timeline of how we got here. To understand why CrossFit affiliates are struggling, we need to look at how business education was introduced and rejected over the years. So 2004, the first CrossFit affiliate, which was CrossFit North, opens up no business systems are provided. The founder, Greg Glassman, is even surprised to be approached with an offer to license his brand by Rob Wolfe and Rick , uh, Nikki ti . And he says to his wife, Lauren, maybe we'll have five of these someday . That was in an interview that I heard with Greg and I loved it. In 2006, John Birch, who was a former martial arts business consultant, launched a company called The Biz, which promoted the big group model of packing classes and keeping prices low and avoiding business, you know, basic stuff. This was because Birch's background was in growing karate studios where that is the business model. You primarily market to the smallest humans you can kids, you put 30 of them in a room and you synchronize their movements so that nobody's kicking and punching each other or running into one another. And so that was what John Birch taught as the model in 2006 at the first ever CrossFit affiliate gathering. And people watched him on stage and accepted that this must be the CrossFit model. So again, this model is the big group model. It's packing classes, keeping prices low and avoiding business fundamentals like retention and IT and on-ramps. And his approach led to short-term revenue spikes, but long-term instability. So in 2024, by the way, John Birch was arrested and charged with child exploitation. And you can see a link if you just Google it, it'll be on the FBI website. A few years later, in 2009, Nikki ti , the co-founder of the first CrossFit affiliate, published something called the On-Ramp program. In her own , uh, online publication performance menu, she was advocating for structured client onboarding and better business practices. In 2012, the affiliate blog, which was on crossfit.com, promoted some business discussions, but most advice was unstructured and anecdotal. In 2013, CrossFit launched the community page and I was made head writer of it for a few months, but it only lasted for like four months. And in 2017, I traveled to Portland to meet Greg Glassman at his house. We recorded a really deep dive sitting at his kitchen table about CrossFit's business model and future, and you can go to that, listen to it@twobrainbusiness.com slash greg. In that interview, Greg confirmed that he did small group personal training at his gym, not the big group model promoted by CrossFit business experts. A few years later, in 2018, CrossFit fired most of its media team and started focusing only on games coverage, ignoring the affiliates and those stories that were helping them. Also, in 2018, I ran a free business seminar at CrossFit HQ for their team and about a two dozen local affiliates. In 2020, Greg Glassman sold CrossFit to Berkshire Partners. Now, initially the public was told that Eric Rosa was the purchaser, but he was representing the private equity firm, Berkshire Partners that's now looking to sell CrossFit in 2022, I was invited onto a call with Gary Gaines, Austin Mallilo , Mike Marone , and Braxton decamp about the affiliate partner Network. I was told on that call that two brainin was their only choice for business coaching and mentorship, but they ultimately chose somebody , uh, who was more eager to pay them for referrals. In 2023, HQ attempted to launch a business mentorship program of their own, but it failed due to lack of structure tracking and real mentorship. And in 2024, CrossFit pivoted to doing round table discussions were struggling, gym owners shared opinions, but they didn't receive any actionable guidance. And finally, in 2025, just last week, CrossFit announced that it's looking to sell. Now that model of big group packham in low price introduced in 2006 by John Birch , promoted by various CrossFit experts over the year, most of whom have now disappeared. That helped drive early growth in some affiliates, but it created unsustainable businesses. The early message to affiliates was pack your ca classes, keep the prices low, and just make it work. And if you were the first gym to open up in a big market like Atlanta, Boston, New York, that did work for a little while, but as competition arose, you created this commodity effect and prices drove downward. And most of the people who were business experts promoting this big group model in 2015 are gone. Now. They're not even in business anymore. That's what I mean by non-sustainable model. So the result of all that years later is that most CrossFit gyms have operated at break even , or worse for years. There are probably more than 10,000 former affiliates who have either de affiliated or gone outta a business. And now as the competition is growing with F 45 FitBody bootcamp, board steering all these and rent is going up, many more affiliates are going under. Here's the truth that the CrossFit brand is built on affiliates not the other way around. I said at the beginning that the early path was you find the workouts, you get certified, you open an affiliate, et cetera . Now it's the opposite. The affiliates are the primary driver of the gym's growth. People are more likely to find the affiliate than they are to find the games or even crossfit.com. And that's because the real marketing engine is the affiliates themselves. They're the ones who are out there getting referrals, running ads , uh, you know, doing all the marketing, doing the social media. Each affiliate is a self-funded marketing machine. HQ doesn't give us money to market. We all do that. They bring in members, they spread the brand, and they grow the movement. And when an affiliate closes, CrossFit loses another of its best marketing tools. Now, Greg Glassman understood this at, you know, a high level for sure. The libertarian philosophy promoted by HQ was really simple. The best gyms will survive and the weak ones will fail, and the the employees and the staff from the weak ones will go get jobs and and join the better ones. And he believed CrossFit's job wasn't really to help affiliates as much as it was to certify trainers and help them produce the best possible product, and then let the market decide which of the gyms were good and which weren't. But here's the problem. Nobody ever defined what makes a gym a good gym. A good gym isn't just one with great coaching that is necessary but insufficient to be a good sustainable gym. A good affiliate is one that's financially sustainable so that it's still here in 30 years helping people. So CrossFit HQ never provided a real business framework. Now, you know, for 500 bucks or a thousand bucks or even 5,000 a year, you're not really paying for a business framework. You're paying for a license to use the brand. But that's why affiliates failed , not because they're bad at coaching, but because they were never taught how to run a gym. Failing affiliates don't produce coaches for the certifications. Failing affiliates don't produce registrations for the CrossFit open failing affiliates don't produce customers for fit aid or those cool t-shirt companies. Failing affiliates don't pay their a affiliation fees either. They either de affiliate or go outta business. This is why I say that the found the affiliates are the foundation, and as they fail, it all crumbles. So here's how to fix CrossFit before it's too late. The last thing I wanna do is just complain or take shots at hq. It seems like everybody's doing that. Somebody has to say, here is a plan and float this out there so that people can talk about it. Disagree, agree, or implement. That's what's most important. So here's how to fix CrossFit before it's too late. If CrossFit really wants to save its affiliates and by extension its brand, it has to take immediate action starting with the affiliate program. So the first step is to acknowledge that affiliates fail due to poor business systems, not poor coaching. The level one and two and three courses are some of the best coaching certifications in the world, but they're the worst courses in the world for preparing gym owners to run a business because they actively say, you know, this is all you need. That's not false. By the way, nowhere in the L one or the L two does it say that CrossFit equals big group coaching. That's also another myth, but that came from a different source. A coach does not automatically become a successful entrepreneur just because they take a seminar. In fact, the business courses that HQ has run have sometimes been actively harmful. They're built on outdated models that encourage breakeven operations and overwork. So HQ must acknowledge this failure and commit to fixing it. Second HQ needs to teach affiliates basic business metrics. Every new affiliate should know how to read a profit and loss statement before they open. For example, they should understand a RM, which is average revenue per member and leg length of engagement, which are the two most critical numbers in gym profitability. They should be able to price their services correctly instead of relying on the failed big group model of looking what the other three gyms in town are doing. And then pricing yourself $5 less and offering a service that looks exactly the same as everybody else. That's commodity pricing and it's driving pricing way down. A level two coaching credential should not be a requirement for affiliation, but a business education should be. Third, pre-qualify. Any mentors or experts who give business advice on the CrossFit platform right now, CrossFit chooses its business mentors based on how long they've owned a gym, not how successful that gym has been. And so many of the mentors that they put on stage never ran profitable gyms. Many of them survived by working as CrossFit seminar staff, not from their gym. Others run gyms that are for sale or have are failing, or they're like the third owners. This has to stop. If someone is gonna mentor other affiliates, they must be able to prove their success and the ability to produce success in other people with data. It's not even just enough to have a successful gym yourself. You have to prove now that you can make other gyms successful with a proven working model. The the bar is that high. It's not just enough to know who the most successful gyms are, but that's a good starting point. Now, this is true for CrossFit meetups, round tables, online seminars, anywhere that affiliates can be led astray by opinion or salesman . Anywhere you're talking about business, you should vet the people who are doing the talking. You know, though, John Birch created the problem, it still carries on today. Attend any affiliate zoom, call with a guest speaker and count the number of times somebody says, Hey, where's your proof? Where's your data? Like, it just doesn't happen. We all trust that anybody CrossFit puts in front of us to give business advice is gonna give us good vetted, edited, tested advice. And that's a mistake unless you're gonna do your own testing. Fourth, track and publish affiliate business metrics. CrossFit HQ should collect and share real data from affiliates, not just their coaching credentials. This means, and I just mean share it with other affiliates, it means that you should be able to see annual financial reports for affiliates, their average revenue. You don't have to see the individual affiliates p and l, but you need to see averages, revenue, net profit, member retention. We need to see leaderboards based on business metrics, not just how long somebody has owned a gym. Quite often the people with the 15 year affiliates are like the third owners. Highlighting profitable affiliates as role models instead of just the loudest voices in the room is really important because just like everything else in the CrossFit model, if we wanna know how to improve our deadlift, we should start by saying, who's got the best deadlift in the world? And it's the same with retention. Now, Greg Glassman's original CrossFit gym was 1200 square feet. He ran small group personal training, not these massive group classes. HQ keeps pushing the big group model because it requires affiliates to hire more level one trainers, which HQ certifies. It leads to higher insurance premiums, which HQ profits from through the RRG. It forces affiliates to lease larger spaces and take on debt, which locks them into longer term commitments. But this model is failing. If HQ advocated for semi-private training and a RM focused pricing or even a prescriptive model, more affiliates would thrive. Six. Work hard to bring former affiliates back while the 2024 price hike wasn't received. Well, it probably shouldn't be reversed. It was overdue. CrossFit does deliver around $5,000 worth of value per year. Most of us who were at long-term rates were overdue for an increase. My affiliate fee hadn't changed in 13 years or something. I was wildly underpaying. However, the L two requirement is just an obvious money grab. Nobody, even anyone at HQ believes that holding an L two coaching credential equips somebody to own a business. Seven, recruit new affiliates from other certifying bodies like the NSCA CrossFitters. Taking the L one aren't the only future gym owners in the world. Many personal trainers will someday open their own gym. Why wouldn't they be attracted to leveraging the CrossFit brand? Because the CrossFit versus everyone's dance dies hard. They think they're already an enemy, and that's wrong. Number eight, redefine the brand. It almost doesn't matter what the definition of CrossFit is right now, the brand has no definition. Ask somebody on the street for the difference between CrossFit and Orangetheory or F 45 or bootcamp, and they'll probably mention either the equipment or they'll say, I don't know . The original forging elite fitness could have been maintained and used to this day if we had told a story that elite fitness was possible for average people. Instead, we've gone all the way to CrossFit is for everyone, which while kind of true is not a differentiator because everything is at for everyone. Now, planet Fitness has a lung alarm because they are for everyone, right? And that make might make us wanna barf, but it's a better brand differentiator than anything CrossFit Media has produced in the last five years. Number nine, leave the core certifications alone. They're excellent. Keep the renewal period the same instead of shortening it to three years. Reintroduce true subject matter experts from outside the CrossFit ecosystem. Instead of looking only internally at the usual suspects, get the best weightlifters in the world who are the best at coaching. Other weightlifters. Get the running coaches who are best at coaching other runners. Don't worry if they already work for CrossFit. This is how you make the brand anti-fragile by attracting the best in the world, not the best in the office. Number 10, evolve the method. This is the suggestion that's most likely to have me burned at the stake, but when Greg left, there was nobody responsible for doing science anymore. That means the method which was once derived through the scientific process has become dogma. It's just something that we repeat over and over by memory instead of addressing new thinking about aerobic training. Zone two, for example, the common response in CrossFit media is we don't do that because we're CrossFit or we don't follow fads, whatever that means. Or we kind of do that by accident and we tell people to take it easy. Sometimes this doesn't sound like the CrossFit of Greg Glassman does it. And number 11, vet the affiliate partners. When you sell your audience to an advertiser, you are renting out their trust. Don't sell to big soda Monster energy drinks. Either stay on mission or lose the room . What's required for real change. CrossFit is reportedly building a level one course for business. Now this could be helpful or it could further the problem. As history has shown, real reform usually doesn't come from the institution that's running the show. In Soviet Russia, for example, the reformers in Stalin's government didn't change anything because they were incentivized to keep things exactly the same. The model was feeding them. It worked for them. Who cares if it didn't work for anybody else? When private equity purchase as a company, it tries to buy a company that looks like it's already set up and running smoothly, and they don't have to change anything, but they're just gonna capitalize on its opportunities more. So they're resistant to changing a working model for good reason, right? Their MO is always to capture more money from everyone in the ecosystem to charge more for affiliation, to sell more sponsorships, to capture more revenue by selling products directly themselves instead of partnering with the established experts. Similarly, choosing one of the long-term CrossFit elites to institute real reform in the affiliate model will probably have the same effect. Fewer and fewer of the affiliate managers actually own gyms. Their income comes from hq. Their incentive is to resist change because any change upsets the apple cart and maybe jeopardizes their jobs. So half change will probably have to come from outside. When I was asked back in 2018, what's the best thing we can do for affiliates? It was by Bruce Edwards, who was the COO at the time, and Jeff Kane, who was the CEO . And I responded with the exact same list, almost verbatim that I just shared with you. One of the people at the breakfast table said, that sounds great, but we're never gonna do it. And at the time I was really despondent, I was depressed. But in 2025, after seeing CrossFits grow stall and then go backward, I'm actually glad to have a position outside of the inner circle because it means that I can work for affiliates without being influenced by the motives of private equity. I , I'm a huge CrossFit fan. Greg Glassman changed the industry and my life in 2017 while sitting with him at his kitchen table, I asked Greg, Greg, why shouldn't an affiliate continue to pay the a affiliation fee year after year? And at the time I thought that question was rhetorical. I didn't think I'd ever de affiliate. And his answer was, Chris, I , if I were using something that somebody else had created, I'd wanna pay them for the privilege. Hey, fair enough. That's a great reason. Greg deserved to become very wealthy for creating something effective and powerful and world changing like CrossFit. But now that Greg has been paid, the company needs direction and leadership. That means the company needs real change to grow. I'm gonna leave it to others to comment on the programming or the games or the certification and the courses, and stick to what I know after 14 years of affiliation and publishing free stuff for affiliates every single day for the last 13 years. And that's that. It all starts with affiliates. Give affiliates help from real experts with real data instead of regurgitating the old myths louder and faster. The affiliates are not the fruit of the CrossFit tree. They're not. What happens after somebody finds the method gets certified. They are the roots. They are the start of everybody's journey in CrossFit. Now, if you make the affiliate stronger and then get outta their way, they will save CrossFit.