The Cult of CrossFit

by Katie Rose Hejtmanek

Shows how Christianity undergirds the popularity of the CrossFit exercise regime

CrossFit in the United States has become increasingly popular, around which a fascinating culture has developed which shapes everyday life for the people devoted to it. CrossFit claims to be many a business, a brand, a tremendously difficult fitness regimen, a community, a way to gain salvation, and a method to survive the apocalypse. In The Cult of CrossFit, Katie Rose Hejtmanek examines how this exercise program is shaped by American Christian values and practices, connecting American religious ideologies to secular institutions in contemporary American culture.

Drawing upon years of immersing herself in CrossFit gyms in the United States and across six continents, this book illustrates how US CrossFit operates using distinctly American codes, ranging from its intensity and patriarchal militarism to its emphasis on (white) salvation and the adoration of the hero and vigilante. Despite presenting itself as a secular space, Hejtmanek argues that CrossFit is both heavily influenced by and deeply intertwined with American Christian values. She makes the case that the Christianity that shapes CrossFit is the Christianity that shapes much of America, usually in ways we do not even notice. Offering a new cross-cultural perspective for understanding a popular workout, The Cult of CrossFit provides a window into a particularly American rendition of a Christian plotline, lived out one workout at a time.

Genres: Nonfiction, Religion

240 pages, Paperback

Published March 11, 2025

Reviews

[Liralen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's an association most of us wouldn't think to make: The fitness company CrossFit and white Evangelical American Christianity. But in The Cult of CrossFit, Hejtmanek makes a compelling argument for just that association, connecting CrossFit with theme after theme that at first glance looks unremarkable, and at second glance is yet another thread tying it to cultural Christianity broadly and to salvation, militarism, and embedded -isms more specifically.

Hejtmanek got involved with CrossFit through research; in her two years of direct research, she went from a newcomer to completing the basic training to be a CrossFit coach. She learned the lingo; she learned the movements; she got stronger. My body went from specializing in sprinting to being generally fit, the CrossFit way. (10*) It's clear that she got value out of the program. It's also clear that, well, she didn't drink the Kool-Aid.

This is an academic work, not a memoir; while Hejtmanek is in the book, that's more for context and narrative structure than it is the point. I read this because it hits at two topics that interest me (certain types of fitness, and interrogation of religion), I love a twofer, and anyway my academic roots run deep, but it's worth noting that you should go in prepared for academic rather than, e.g., pop science.

Because I was reading this just for fun, my takeaways are admittedly less academic. I've never tried CrossFit and never really had any interest in it, and I came away more convinced than ever that that is just as well. There's so much sexism embedded in certain types of exercise already, and CrossFit in its previous form—the book doesn't go into depth in CrossFit in more recent years, presumably because the primary research had been long since completed by the time things changed—sounds like a double whammy of sexism and racism with a side of American exceptionalism. I'm particularly intrigued by the differences between the American boxes (CrossFit gyms) Hejtmanek visited and the international versions, though that wasn't the point of the book. I'm also intrigued by this obsession with functional fitness and what it actually means in practical terms: What differences are diligent CrossFitters seeing in their daily lives? Not the changes in physique, not the amount they're able to lift in the gym or the speed with which they can complete their WOD (the assigned workout du jour at CrossFit boxes), I mean; I don't really care whether they can row four kilometers on an erg on a whim, but it's interesting that CrossFit's focus on "functional fitness" that Hejtmanek observed seemed to be less about current function and more about a hypothetical future when you might need to scale a wall with your similarly fit friends in the zombie apocalypse (but not to help a stranger over, say, or someone with a disability...).

And finally: again not really the point of the book (though it's touched on), but now I really want to go dig up some papers on injury rates—and types of injury—in CrossFit vs. other fitness programs and types of exercise.

Again, this is one for people looking for something fairly specific, but I found it to be a pretty engrossing read.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

[Anna Vaa · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Cult of CrossFit is an anthropologist’s deep dive into the exercise craze’s rise and 2020 fall. Hejtmanek has done exhaustive research into the subject alongside Christianity in American military and general culture that she brings together in a highly academic way for the majority of the book. This part of the text is quite dry and slow to read. In addition, she jumps into CrossFit gyms herself to fully understand the ethos and community, and the moments in the book where she uses her own experience are a highlight for me, but mostly contained to short beginnings and endings of chapters.

Ultimately, Hejtmanek proves her point but loses some readability by sticking to her academic background.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review!

[Katie Grandprey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think a more suitable title would be “The Cult of Greg Glassman.” This book, written with historical context and anthropological perspective so well traces the origins of crossfit in a means to understand it’s current identity crisis. (And this was written before the 2024 CrossFit Games with the death of Lazar Dukic.)

As someone deeply involved in both the Christian community and Crossfit space, both of which give me the ick for the over American-ization of both, I thoroughly enjoyed this. This type of intellectual observation and analysis is often extremely discouraged within the Crossfit space (i.e. Sevan Podcast) yet more of this nuanced conversation is absolutely necessary if the community and sport is to continue on.

This will not be everyone’s cup of tea, because again, it’s written with an Anthropological perspective. But if you love to nerd out on 2 of your biggest passions (functional fitness + church) and the cultural intersections between them, this is an excellent read.

[Logan Kedzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much like CrossFit® itself,(1) the problem in the book is mistaking volume for depth.

There are a few layers here. The first is as the title, and the ways in which CrossFit®(2) derives from and is bound within Christianity, specifically Protestantism, and specifically there American non-denominational but sectarian Protestant religion, heretofore "WASPery."(3) Not only does ® hinge well into WASPery in general, it acts as a sort of modern cypher to WASPery now and WASPery past, Muscular Christianity obviously, but also New Thought.

The last point is what, often, gets too little attention. This leads to the author's own description of "Oracle Capitalism"(4). This has a real "this is water" problem, owing to how much of the U.S. identity is and always has been bound up in WASPery. Even in its discontents, which exist in specific response to it. But these great ideas, both of which I am inclined to agree with, are developed fully. In particular, a lot of the evidence for a sort of unified WASPery experience to American Culture is surface level. There is insufficient attention put on mythology or the religious experience in general contra what is specifically WASPery, while there is too much weight put on a sort of other as regards religion as requiring WASPery(5).

It is a pervasive sort of mixed feeling that I have about the writing here. I think that the arguments are correct, but with so many there could not be sufficient analysis given to any one, so the project feels weaker than I think it is(6). I also think that there is an interesting missing study about how Libertarianism isn't, because tone, clique, and culture overcomes any ideological commitment to something without that.

In addition, the book is an ethnography of ®. It is a good study. Here are a lot of the compelling and memorable parts of the book. The author does good work relating her own ethnographic studies to her arguments. The weakness here seems to be of restraint. Race and gender are consistently reflected upon, and I kept waiting for a deeper take, but the ones that exist are somewhat surface level, particularly on race. The book is aware of other ethnographies of ®, and the sense that I have is of not wanting to reduplicate that work, but it felt like both the author had more to say and did have good and valuable impressions to provide, based on what bits are there.

The ethnography veers into memoir. This is not a critique. This is the story of the author's participation in and then divergence from ®. It is worth mentioning here that while the author downplays her accomplishments in ®, however one chooses to characterize those, it was a step for her to accomplish incredible things(7), operating at a level of performance that I have not accomplished in anything, much less a physical thing. (I am too ASD to know what sort of emotion that I have here, but I offer that we should all be impressed, if only that someone manages a schedule that allows them to do that, write a book, and have an academic career.) None of that factors into the author's conclusions, but it does set the tone of the book and the general sense of disenchantment.

Much of that sense comes from what operates as the next layer to the text of it serving as a history of ®, and, in particular, its sort of mask-off moment(8) in 2020, with subsequent changes that drove changes in the community. Well, temporarily, at any rate: the downer ending is how half the protest quitters slunk back. Here is where you can feel the harm and hurt. But it is not the point of the book, and so not the focus. It is a strong ending, but again, feels like something out of a different project altogether.

I remain most frustrated about the ethnographic angle. While it operates on background so to speak, what bits do show up locked my attention. I want the book that is only about the author's experiences of international ®, because the teaser that there is a conscious push against the WASPery while also an intention to forge a shared cultural experience is some seriously provocative stuff, more so when it allows for reflection between two non-American units.

So, yes, I am reminded in this book of ®, specifically the book's own section of the pseudoscience of it. It is generally noble and I do not want to knock it. But it enacts the Sharpshooter Fallacy by finding a couple definable things, then building a focus around those things. No one choice is wrong, but the cluster itself is not as useful as any one of the choices.

My thanks to the author, Katie Rose Hejtmanek, for writing the book, and to the publisher, NYU Press, for making the ARC available to me.

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1 - The joke is not funny when I discovered that, per the guidelines, CrossFit is an adjective and should not be used it isolation, ergo it must be the CrossFit® cult, never the cult of CrossFit.

2 - Okay, let's take this gag even further. Heretofore CrossFit, which is to say CrossFit®, which is to say the organization that oversees CrossFit® training, will be referred to as "®."

3 - Part of the gag here is a reflection on ®'s own naming structure, itself which operates as a sort of linguistic trap (outside, of course, of any cult's propensity to rename things), in performing a cliched masculinity that takes offense only as readily as it purports to scoff at the offense of others: cf. Murph vs. Fran.

4 - Which, probably, ought to be "Operatic Capitalism," but then you would be explaining all the time that it did not have to do with La traviata and have to face suits from Ms. Winfrey's lawyers.

5 - Yes, all Satanists; no, not all Occultists. Specifically, this is why the connecting but then undercooking of New Thought hurts.

6 - The exception here is the military/militarism aspect. Much as with Giuliani, "9/11" is not a universal solvent. Again, though, it is a frustrating sort of thing to comment about in terms of a review, because I think that the argument is right. There is an overlap, particularly in the apocalypse-oriented thinking and how 9/11 factors into that, but this is a multi-vector concern. The ideas and ideals in play pre-date 2001, and after 2001 become engaged with the popular culture and the real military in different ways. It is a dense cake with marketing icing.

7 - You can include an "in a real sport" if you so choose. It is not something that I would say to a ®ers face, but yeah.

8 - Literal and figurative!

[Val Wilde · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting anthropological look at the specifically American cultural ideas that infuse CrossFit’s ideas around fitness, measurement, suffering, work, race, gender, eugenics, ethics, and community. It feels valuable as a microcosm of larger discourses within fitness, and the author’s status as a participant makes it a more nuanced and sympathetic portrayal than the title’s use of “cult” might suggest.