A poll was posted in the CrossFit Affiliate Owners group that I got to join this year after officially becoming a co-owner of an affiliate.

Does CrossFit have a diversity problem?

In the very small response of 24 affiliate owners:

75% of affiliate owners said that “CrossFit does not have a diversity problem.”
21% of affiliate owners said “CrossFit has a diversity problem and it’s getting better.”
4% of affiliate owners said “CrossFit has a diversity problem and it’s getting worse.”

It seemed like a simple enough question, and something that I’ve thought about in passing since beginning CrossFit 10+ years ago. When I first started looking at gyms, I did what has been a subconscious process for most of my life (I’m sure most racial minorities can relate). I clicked few a few pictures to see just how diverse the group I was going to visit would be. Or more simply - the “spot the black person” game. Usually it’s a short game in the places that I’ve grown up and the schools I’ve attended. I grew up in a majority Italian town, went to undergrad at a majority white school (although internationally diverse and improving since I attended).

But still, the poll answers bothered me, and my own answer (it has a diversity problem, and it’s getting better), I had no idea how to support that belief. So, let’s get into it.

To me, diversity is a topic that I don’t feel compelled to speak on. Partly my passive nature, partly because I don’t ever have an easy solution, and conflict for conflict’s sake doesn’t appeal to me.

But let’s first define a few things:

Diversity - In North America, the word “diversity” is strongly associated with racial diversity. However, that is just one dimension of the human reality. Diversity also includes income, gender, language, culture, social roles, sexual orientation, education and physical limitations. There are other diversity domains, but we’ll stop at those for this discussion.
Problem - A situation that needs attention and needs to be dealt with or solved.
CrossFit - there are two distinct sides of CrossFit at this point - the competitive side embodied by the CrossFit Games, and the affiliate side, represented by the 15,000 (est.) worldwide affiliate gyms.

With those three terms more clear, I would then ask some more quantifiable questions.

How many languages are CrossFit materials presented in?
In how many countries is CrossFit present?
How many racial minorities are at the highest level of competition?
How many countries are at the highest level of competition?
How many racial minorities are shown in CrossFit demo videos?
Is the number of minority affiliate owners known? How many are there in each country?
What is the distribution of income of people who go to an affiliate?
What is the distribution of income of people who follow CrossFit.com?
What is the distribution of racial diversity among CF-L4s? Among CrossFit.com employees? Among CrossFit.com senior executives?

In coming up with these questions, I immediately begin to think of Greg Glassman’s self-processed love of physics and numbers. In the all-important “Understanding CrossFit” article that lays the basis for the Level-1 CrossFit certificate, Greg states:

Using whiteboards as scoreboards, keeping accurate scores and records, running a clock, and precisely defining the rules and standards for performance, we not only motivate unprecedented output but derive both relative and absolute metrics at every workout; this data has important value well beyond motivation.

Has there been an article with data shared about any type of diversity - language, gender, sexuality published by CrossFit? Yes, there are anecdotes and transformation stories, but I am not aware of much diversity data being made available.

The quote above leads me to my belief that CrossFit doesn’t have a diversity problem, it has a data problem.

Let’s go back to some of the questions above that we can answer:

How many languages are CrossFit materials presented in?

CrossFit.com offers the L-1 in 13 languages: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, Spanish (Castilian), and Spanish (Latin American).

In how many countries is CrossFit present?

Using the CrossFit Games as a data source, there are 125 countries represented.

How many racial minorities are at the highest level of competition?
How many countries are at the highest level of competition?

In the top 20 men and women worldwide, there is one black athlete from the US (Chandler Smith) with 19 others on the men’s side with 9 countries represented, and on the women’s side, 0 racial minorities with 10 countries represented. The countries represented are North American or European.

How many racial minorities are shown in CrossFit demo videos?

While there are thousands of videos covering a range of topics on the CrossFit YouTube channel, the CrossFit essentials playlist contains 63 videos with 0 racial minorities and 1 country represented.

Note: The counts above are my own interpretation of athlete backgrounds. I do not know of a data source with more objective information.

Before getting back to the questions that do not have as easy answers, there are several areas that CrossFit has done a lot of work in from a country and language diversity perspective. As stated in a response to a post on CrossFit.com, the CrossFit Journal writes:

[CrossFit] wants to help every single person in the world become fitter. We want to cure chronic disease, which affects everyone… We’re continually working to expand our appeal to everyone in the world.

Expanding a training method from a California gym to 125 countries and making adaptive athletes central to their approach is an effort that should be celebrated. It checks a lot of diversity boxes - gender, culture, language, maybe even education.

In addition, I’ll speak to what I know of U.S. efforts to highlight racial diverse stories by the CrossFit Media team. A few that come to mind are:

Spirit of the Games award to Debra Cordner Carson (2012)- A black woman struggling with Lymphedema
RossFit (2013) - the early stages of Rick Ross learning about nutrition and getting in shape
No Mas (2016)- Educating Spanish-speaking and Latinx members about the dangers of sugary drinks
The Ron Gets Fit series (2018) - highlights an everyday black man getting back in shape for his family

There are many other examples, but finding them takes either knowledge that they exist, or (like me), monitoring the CrossFit Jounral sporadically for the past ten years, and reading old articles as part of the CF-L3 certification prep. Note that in the L-3 training, there is no specific mention of any of these articles (true in 2017 and still true in 2020).

So, that leaves us with a few unanswerable questions, with the most accessible entry into CrossFit being what can be found on its YouTube channel.

Is the number of minority affiliate owners known? How many are there in each country?
What is the distribution of income of people who go to an affiliate?
What is the distribution of income of people who follow CrossFit.com?
What is the distribution of racial diversity among CF-L4s? Among CrossFit.com employees? Among CrossFit.com senior executives?

My argument that CrossFit has a data problem, more specifically is that when relaying its message of curing the world’s health problems to communities that need it most (economically challenged racially diverse communities) whose mortality rates are much higher than those of their majority counterparts, CrossFit has not made this data externally available. (I doubt that it’s known at all - never once has my racial background been a part of demographic info gathering during CF certifications or competitions). Maybe the rate of minority-owned affiliates is higher than other small business ownership ratios, and maybe these business are increasing their communities’ longevity faster than the pharmaceutical industries around them. Has this story been told? And if not, are there numbers to show that it is at least improving? Here, I will also acknowledge that each affiliate is independently owned and operated. I think many are telling this story, but at a national level, the CrossFit brand’s approach is more difficult to pinpoint.

The data CrossFit has shared mostly points to geographic, language and physical limitation diversity more than racial or economic diversity. Moreover, this data is heavily biased toward the competitive side of CrossFit, which CrossFit itself has said is not the focus of its main brand. Its main brand, CrossFit, focuses on growing and training affiliates to address the world’s health problems.

I think in the end, CrossFit is doing as much as it can with the resources it has. However, the diversity data problem at least needs attention. In addition, I would also submit a change to the L-1 curriculum to make economic stability a part of the conversation from the beginning.

For many people to even begin to consider changing their health habits, they need to have some level of economic stability. Anyone leisurely reading through CrossFit Journal articles at their desk on a lunch break most likely doesn’t have to worry about taking three buses to get to work with limited to access to a grocery store with adequate fruit and vegetable selection. If you’re worried about your heating bill or where you will sleep tonight, the last thing on your mind is if you can get to the gym today.

So, for those of us who can start with addressing nutrition, go for it. For populations that are still working through other fundamental needs, yes nutrition will solve many problems down the road (diabetes, high blood pressure, etc.), but let’s at least acknowledge that there are other barriers to better health than paying for the gym. First you need to be able to get there, or at least have a safe space to train in. (Yes, CrossFit.com is free, but the space to do a burpee sometimes isn’t.)

I’m grateful to CrossFit for giving a structure to a very nebulous fitness industry, and for the U.S. racial minorities who have gotten to this point, let’s all take the next step and bring our family and friends that look like us along for the benefits we’ve already experienced.