The CrossFit Journal was launched in 2002 with an issue titled “The Garage Gym.” In that premier issue we decried the lack of efficacious programming in commercial gyms and proffered a solution with the promise that “you can build, rather inexpensively, a world-class strength and conditioning facility in your garage!”
Now we revisit the CrossFit garage-gym concept to report on the successes of what may be hundreds of CrossFit start-up gyms and the aspirations and motivations of the people behind them.
CrossFitters are holding court in London, New York, New Brunswick, Puerto Rico, Baghdad, Afghanistan, and Qatar. CrossFit crews are convening in public parks, garages and carports, basements, barns, deposed tyrants’ homes, commercial gyms, storage lockers, martial arts academies, and universities, under bleachers, and on military bases.
Three years ago we saw the CrossFit movement as an alternative to the prevailing commercial gym establishment and its signature “big-box,” machine-based, bodybuilding approach to fitness. We promoted the garage-gym notion in large part to provide refuge for our more athletic programming, which couldn’t find quarter in the commercial gyms.
Today we see ourselves as part of a wider war between the big-box franchises such as Gold’s, Bally’s, and 24-Hour Fitness and the small-box facilities of which the Curves chain is the best-known example.
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