On November 15th, 1999, astronomers sent a powerful radio transmission toward a star cluster 25,000 light-years away in hopes of someday communicating with extraterrestrial intelligence. If lucky, a response could come back in 50,000 years.
On February 10th, 2001, Lauren and I first published our simple, distinctive workouts on the Internet in hopes of someday communicating with intelligent life in the fitness world. The experiment has proven to be a stunning success, with a comparatively rapid return, and it gave birth to a community that is revolutionizing fitness and training.
This month we want to share our thoughts on the growth and development of CrossFit and share our dreams and commitments as stewards and servants of the CrossFit community.
History
The CrossFit.com website was not our idea. In fact, the domain name was registered and held in trust by a friend and client, Mike Bender, ten-time winner of the Toughest Cop Alive competition, who waited patiently for us to come to understand the potential of the Internet and the need for a website.
It was Ben Elizer, another CrossFit client and Silicon Valley software developer, who in the later part of 1999 first proposed a CrossFit website. Ben’s software firm KnowWare, now defunct, had done technical work for many of the better-known dot-com startups and had the connections, contacts, and experience needed to secure venture capital and take a startup public.
KnowWare put together a series of meetings with artists, programmers, developers, and investors to plan the launch of CrossFit.com. The proposed business model was to produce a high-tech feature-packed website with venture capital, go public, and then figure out how to make money from it. The line was “Get eyes, then monetize.”
The developers knew how to build a site, draw people to a site, and get investors, and we knew how to make monsters of men. None of us could quite figure out how we’d make money, and that was OK with all of us, but our perceptions of how to best draw people to a fitness concept ultimately diverged. The dot-com experts, the developers, believed that an expensive website and investor-funded giveaways would carry us to an IPO. They’d done it before. We thought that uniquely effective programming delivered daily via a “Workout of the Day” or “WOD” would do the trick.
When we explained that we thought our workouts were so effective that if we were to post one every day, someone would eventually find them, try them, have great results, and come back and tell friends, the dot-comers laughed heartily and condescendingly chortled, “Ahhhh, the old grassroots approach!” (They also loved the “ring” of “Workout of the Day.”)
We worked and planned, discussed and argued with our development/management team for months about the visions for CrossFit.com while working toward the first phase of funding. Then, in the second week of March, 2000, the NASDAQ began a freefall heralding one of the greatest market collapses in U.S. history. The plans for CrossFit.com evaporated as quickly as the fortunes and dreams of so many investors.
Frankly, while sorry for our newfound friends’ financial ruin, we were quite relieved. For the rest of the year we got back on task with trying to get kicked out of one more commercial gym.
Relieved but still intrigued, we couldn’t put to rest the idea of sharing our fitness programming with the world. We were haunted by the notion that if our programming were indeed as effective as we thought it, the Internet might provide the opportunity to prove as much by allowing us to inexpensively and powerfully give the kernel or our work—our workouts—a global test and distribution.
Today
On February 10th, 2001, CrossFit.com went live with a single ugly page featuring our first workout on a blue background and white font that we only months later learned printed as a blank page.
Five years later, without a penny spent on advertising, marketing, or promotion, CrossFit.com has over 75,000 regular unique visitors from around the world, over 1 million visits so far this year, and over a terabyte of data delivered monthly.
In the last year alone CrossFit has appeared in the magazines Law and Order, Outside, Grappling, and Skiing. Last month Men’s Journal listed CrossFit at number 4 among the “50 Greatest Health and Fitness Websites” and is wrapping up a feature story about CrossFit for its February 2006 issue.
There are currently 49 CrossFit affiliates; last year at this time there were seven. Our “cyber community,” whatever that is, spawns sub-communities that sweat, laugh, and cry together—in the flesh. Formal and informal, temporary and enduring, planned and impromptu, these participant-driven gatherings of CrossFitters have the potential to revolutionize the fitness industry.
Our claim to being a peerless developer of fitness has gone unchallenged in 5 years of “put-up, challenge the standard, or shut-up” WOD postings, and has been tested thoroughly and impartially in police and military clinical trials in the U.S. and Canada.
CrossFit is growing like a weed. It’s that old grassroots approach.
Listening to You
The idea of fitness programming based on constant variance of functional exercises executed at high intensity came from us. All the following innovations came directly from our clients:
- Getting our own facility
- CrossFit Journal
- Seminars and certifications
- Website
- Registering the CrossFit.com domain name
- Videos and DVDs
- CrossFit store
- T-shirts
- Blog format for the website
- Affiliate program
- Message board
- Moderation of the message board
- CrossFit FAQ
- CrossFit Live
Everything that has followed the initial spark of the programming concept has been a direct response to the repeated demands, requests, and pleadings of people who do CrossFit. It is also CrossFitters who will continuously develop and refine the CrossFit model as we continue our commitment to making co-developers of the best coaches, trainers, athletes, and thinkers in fitness. We are an open-source fitness program.
As stewards of this community we are committed to providing improved infrastructure, tools, and services to support CrossFitters everywhere.
Infrastructure
Keeping the site up is paramount. Our cumulative downtime in five years of operation is less than several hours. CrossFit.com has survived floods, roof leaks, and power outages when hosted in our garage and company and equipment failures when hosted professionally. With unusual luck and the dedication of tireless friends, and while hop-scotching from one server to another (six moves so far), we’ve not missed a workout in five years. The other constant has been increased traffic on the site.
In April of 2003 we unveiled a redesign of CrossFit.com. The remodel featured a professional design, new message board, and weblog architecture powered by Moveable Type. Brian Mulvaney had been goading us toward the blog format for over a year. It was Brian’s persistence on the subject of blogging that led us to the view that websites with dynamic front-page content that formed community would thrive while others would be relegated to billboard status.
It was the blogging structure and spirit of the new site that excited the need for more and better media. Larger photos and more and better videos, have proven themselves to be powerful community building and fitness driving tools.
This summer we put CrossFit.com in the hands of professional IT care. Jim Roe, our new IT guy, is a veteran of high-traffic mission-critical site management. We are, for the first time, not just maintaining a website but also planning and building infrastructure for future growth and traffic.
As well as accommodating more traffic, building bigger machines with bigger, faster pipes gives us sufficient economy of scale to reduce costs for affiliates to produce high-bit-rate media.
Moveable Type upgrades and plug-ins are going to enable us to e-mail the WOD and allow everyone to post their comments to the WOD blog via e-mail. We have a long list of fixes and modifications slated in 2006 for the Moveable Type interface.
Two other additions to the site are scheduled for early 2006. First is the new CrossFit message board. Lynne Pitts will be moving us from our current slow and overloaded Discus message board to vBulletin in a move that will support a more robust and feature-packed platform. The move from Discus to vBulletin is as big a step as moving from the first board to Discus was. Lynne continues to be a CrossFit pillar.
Also slated for early 2006 is the CrossFit Fitness Wiki. The CrossFit community includes scores of subject matter experts whose authority is nearly matched by the color and power of their expression. In our Wiki, authority, authenticity, and color will be valued over comprehensiveness and breadth. Expect articles like “Defense from the Front Seat of a Car,” “Fitness Advantages of Single-Speed Bikes,” “The .308 Rifle,” “The Overhead Squat for Core Strength”, and “Freezing to Death.” The CrossFit wiki will be a prominent place to showcase and develop articles worthy of permanent and very public display.
Complicated network
CrossFit.com is at the center of a fitness revolution. The CrossFit website, the CrossFit affiliates, our friends, and our seminars form a complex and efficient network of support, expertise, experience, education, camaraderie, and fun. This network presents a viable challenge to the traditional fitness and training culture and industry.
Thousands have come to CrossFit.com and found a much better way to work out. Most of these same people have found their fellow CrossFitters to be intelligent, engaging, fun, and multidimensional. Through seminars, workouts, e-mails, and phone calls, many, many of us have made new and strong friendships. The hundred or so people involved with the affiliate program are discovering the unmatched satisfaction and excitement found through teaching and sharing fitness with others.
This is indeed a revolution.
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