March 22, 2025 • 9 mins
Some CrossFit affiliate owners believe the CrossFit Games are a powerful marketing tool for their gyms.
But is that really true?
In this special episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Chris Cooper challenges the idea that the Games help affiliates and explores what must change to make them a win for more than just elite athletes.
Coop explains why Games exposure doesn’t translate to measurable benefits for affiliates and encourages CrossFit to look to other fitness competitions that are thriving.
He highlights what Hyrox, Spartan Races, the Rogue Invitational and fitness festivals such as the Arnold are doing well, and he explains how CrossFit can learn from them.
It’s time to rethink who the Games are really for. Tune in to hear Chris’ take.
If you missed any of the other episodes in this special series, check them out via the links below.
Links
How to Save CrossFit
Q&A With Coop
Save the Affiliate Movement
Gym Owners United
Book a Call
00:47 - The purpose of the Games
3:15 - Should HQ scrap the Games?
4:22 - Hyrox and Spartan
6:20 - The Rogue Invitational
7:43 - Fitness festivals
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
How to save the CrossFit Games. I'm Chris
Cooper. This is Run aProfitable Gym, and I am not a
CrossFit games athlete. Infact, I'm not even sure that
I'm a CrossFitter. I'm acyclist who does high intensity
interval training workoutsabout twice a week, and I quite
often cherry pick my oldfavorite named CrossFit Watts.
But here's what I am. I'm anaffiliate owner who was 14
(00:25):
years as an affiliate. I workedfor CrossFit HQ for six years,
and I now mentor more CrossFitaffiliate owners than anyone
else in the world through twoBrain business. Our mentorship
program. I've written booksabout CrossFit in business. We
have the largest data set forgyms in the world. And for the
past 10 years, I've tried to dofor CrossFit affiliates what
CrossFit HQ should have beendoing all along. Now, back
(00:47):
before the Reebok era, thegames served a different
purpose than it does now. Whileit was a competition to find
the fittest on earth, therewere a lot of regional events,
and your gym had a fairlydecent shot of putting a few
people into a sectional orprobably may , maybe even a
regional, right? Mine did thata few times. But when Reebok
(01:08):
and ES PN two arrived, westarted to get really excited
about the marketing potentialthat the big brands would give
us. We confused exposure withmarketing. We thought that if
more people just heard aboutCrossFit, they would show up at
our boxes. Similarly, I canremember when the first nanos
came out and one of the shoestores in our town carried
them. And so my wife and I wentdown to the mall. She had our
(01:30):
camera, and there was these bigposters of the , the CrossFit,
Reebok, Delta, and the nanoshoes. And she took my picture
in front of 'em and I called ameeting of all of my coaches
back at my gym. Guys, this isso huge. Can all of you work
some extra hours? We're gonnahave to do all these on ramps.
Maybe we should go back to agroup on ramp . No, that didn't
work. Can we, can we, how manymore clients can we take?
(01:53):
What's our capacity? We thoughtthat a shoe store selling
CrossFit shoes was gonna pumpso many people to our gym,
along with the CrossFit gamesbeing on ES , espn two , that
we wouldn't be able to handlethe inflow. Now, of course,
that was wrong, right? And someof you're probably laughing,
that's good, but that's becausewe assumed that exposure was
the same as marketing. Now,because of that, over the
(02:16):
years, we started to believethe story that the games were
the marketing for CrossFit. Butlet's stop and ask ourselves,
who is the games marketingactually helping? Does it help
the two people who become thefittest on Earth? Yeah, they
make a few bucks and they getsome sponsors. They deserve it.
Good for them. Does it help therunners up the second, third,
(02:39):
fifth place? Well, not much,but a few people can actually
make a career at this. Now,does it help the sponsors?
Possibly, I'm, I'm not sure.
You'd have to ask them. Does ithelp the affiliates? Not
anymore. Unless you're inEastern Europe, you probably
don't have people coming in andsaying, I watched the games. I
wanna sign up for CrossFitanymore. The games provides
(03:01):
affiliates with exposure, butit doesn't increase their lead
generation or the value oftheir service or their
retention or anything elsethat's measurable. And
honestly, last year theattention wasn't even all that
positive. So if the games isreally only a win for the
people who win the games, thefittest on Earth, should HQ
scrap it? Or can we look atwhat others are doing well and
(03:24):
use the opportunity to pivot?
The cool thing about Tube Brainand the way that we've built it
is that I don't have to haveevery idea myself. I can look
out and say, what's that persondoing? How is that person
improving their retentionmetrics? Let's find out. Let's
get them on the podcast. Let'slook at their metrics. And if
it's teachable, we'll teach itto everybody else, just like
(03:47):
Greg did with Deadlift. How isthat person deadlifting over a
thousand pounds? Let's talk tothem. Let's get their numbers
and maybe they can help us dobetter too. And so with that in
mind, I think that we can lookat other people and what
they're doing in the fitnessspace, take some of their ideas
and potentially incorporate itinto the Games 2.0, the next
(04:08):
evolution of the CrossFitGames. I'm a firm believer that
success leaves clues. And aftertalking with some very smart
people in the industry, not thegames athletes, but the people
who are out there runningevents, helping affiliates, I
got a few suggestions toconsider. Number one, look at
High Rocks. Spartan has asimilar program to High Rocks
called , um, Spartan Deca , butit's fitness racing. It's
(04:30):
really simple. They could puthundreds of people through a
course in a day. The coursedoesn't change. It's not a
surprise. You don't learn aboutit five minutes before you do
it. Can somebody actually winwith hundreds of people going
through this course in a day?
Probably there probably is awinner at the end of the day,
but nobody really cares.
They're really just excitedabout doing the challenge.
(04:51):
Before , um, high Rocks , thebest example of this was
probably Spartan Race. Nobodywas trying to really be the
Spartan World champion exceptfor that guy named Hunter
Hunter Thornton. But thousandsand thousands, millions of
people did Spartan racesbecause they wanted to test
their fitness. They wanted tofeel like, this is the
healthiest I've ever been. Thisis the fittest day of my life.
(05:13):
And that's what we need tothink more about because that
will actually benefitaffiliates. If you wanna look
at some metrics this year, theCrossFit open enrollment
dropped by over 30%. That'smassive. Meanwhile, in the last
year, high Rocks has grown sixx 600%. CrossFit doesn't have
to copy High Rocks to learnfrom them. Simpler is better.
This is a good lesson to learn.
(05:34):
Keep it simple. Participationis the king, not crowning the
fittest on earth. And theultimate winner ultimately
really doesn't matter, right?
You wanna give people thisamazing experience that they
can talk about. You wanna give'em a story that they're gonna
share and snap their ownpictures at and , and be proud
of, and then go to a concertmaybe that night and get a
t-shirt and like, that's it.
People will pay big money to dothis stuff. Just like at
(05:57):
Spartan Race, instead of thegames being a money losing
venture for HQ that doesn'tbenefit the affiliates, why not
just flip it on its head? Startover. Build a fitness festival
that you run in five or sixplaces around the country to
start with and let people buildtheir own story. You know, find
their fittest day, win theirown personal journey, get a
(06:18):
T-shirt, listen to a rockconcert, and go home. The
second place that I would lookis the Rogue Invitational. In
fact, just asking Rogue to runthe events for CrossFit would
probably save the games. Idon't know if you've been to
one of these events. My , thelast one I went to was down in
Austin last year. And thecommunity, the feeling, the
(06:39):
vibe, it just feels likeCrossFit circa 2017. Like,
these people are amazing, butthey're not outta reach. And if
I train really, really, reallyhard, I might not win, but I
could get to the competitionfloor. You really don't feel
that with the games anymore.
And it's, you know, things getjuggled every year and whatnot.
But if you set things up and ifyou , you partner with Rogue,
(07:00):
you're gonna have an amazingevent that you're proud to take
your members to , you're gonnahave this amazing feeling of
pride just being in the crowd.
Boy, when the two BrainBusiness banner came up all
over that Rogue Invitational inAustin, I was so proud that I
almost cried. But showing upwith 10 people from your gym,
20 people, 30 people, andyou're all gonna run through
(07:22):
the challenge, one after theother, maybe together, maybe
cross the finish line, arm andarm. And it's gonna be amazing
because Rogue built it and it'sgonna be one of the five peak
moments that they remember ontheir deathbed, and they're
gonna tell their friends aboutit forever, man. Like that is
irreplaceable value to theaffiliates where crowning the
top king and queen of fitnesson earth. I don't think that
(07:43):
does have value. Another goodexample is like the Arnold. Now
this is for bodybuilding,meatheads , but it attracts
thousands and thousands ofpeople who are not bodybuilders
because they wanna see the showand they wanna see the other
people. But a Fe Festivalatmosphere is great, and if you
incorporate something like a afitness challenge or a race,
you , you've just got a win-winfor everybody, right? So just
(08:04):
give people a chance to showup, do a workout with their
friends, and stay for theparty. Look, there are other
examples out there to drawfrom. Even online cycling. I'm
a cyclist, but the Tour de WThad half a million participants
this year, and it's onlinecycling with a smart trainer.
You don't really know anybodyelse, but you're making
friends. You're competing forabout six weeks, you're doing
(08:26):
eight different races. You'retracking your progress against
previous years. It keeps youtraining through the dark
months when you can't beoutside on the road, et cetera.
I'm not saying that CrossFit'scompetition should be online.
What I'm saying is there'sprobably something to learn
from these events that aregrowing while CrossFit is
shrinking and there's no bettertime to rethink it. This is
(08:47):
gonna be a controversial take.
The other games alternativesthat you see out there, like
different leagues andorganizations of athletes and
unions and all this stuff,these are just small variations
on the original concept of thegames. What I'm saying is it's
time to revisit the originalconcept and ask who are the
games for? And if they aretruly to benefit affiliates,
(09:09):
then let's run them in a waythat helps my clients love
CrossFit, love my gym, lovetheir fitness, love themselves,
love their friends even more.
And I think the way to do thatis to make it more of a
festival. I'm Chris Cooper.
This has Run a Profitable Gym.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
If you've got a better plan,let's hear it.
How to save the CrossFit Games. I'm Chris
Cooper. This is Run aProfitable Gym, and I am not a
CrossFit games athlete. Infact, I'm not even sure that
I'm a CrossFitter. I'm acyclist who does high intensity
interval training workoutsabout twice a week, and I quite
often cherry pick my oldfavorite named CrossFit Watts.
But here's what I am. I'm anaffiliate owner who was 14
(00:25):
years as an affiliate. I workedfor CrossFit HQ for six years,
and I now mentor more CrossFitaffiliate owners than anyone
else in the world through twoBrain business. Our mentorship
program. I've written booksabout CrossFit in business. We
have the largest data set forgyms in the world. And for the
past 10 years, I've tried to dofor CrossFit affiliates what
CrossFit HQ should have beendoing all along. Now, back
(00:47):
before the Reebok era, thegames served a different
purpose than it does now. Whileit was a competition to find
the fittest on earth, therewere a lot of regional events,
and your gym had a fairlydecent shot of putting a few
people into a sectional orprobably may , maybe even a
regional, right? Mine did thata few times. But when Reebok
(01:08):
and ES PN two arrived, westarted to get really excited
about the marketing potentialthat the big brands would give
us. We confused exposure withmarketing. We thought that if
more people just heard aboutCrossFit, they would show up at
our boxes. Similarly, I canremember when the first nanos
came out and one of the shoestores in our town carried
them. And so my wife and I wentdown to the mall. She had our
(01:30):
camera, and there was these bigposters of the , the CrossFit,
Reebok, Delta, and the nanoshoes. And she took my picture
in front of 'em and I called ameeting of all of my coaches
back at my gym. Guys, this isso huge. Can all of you work
some extra hours? We're gonnahave to do all these on ramps.
Maybe we should go back to agroup on ramp . No, that didn't
work. Can we, can we, how manymore clients can we take?
(01:53):
What's our capacity? We thoughtthat a shoe store selling
CrossFit shoes was gonna pumpso many people to our gym,
along with the CrossFit gamesbeing on ES , espn two , that
we wouldn't be able to handlethe inflow. Now, of course,
that was wrong, right? And someof you're probably laughing,
that's good, but that's becausewe assumed that exposure was
the same as marketing. Now,because of that, over the
(02:16):
years, we started to believethe story that the games were
the marketing for CrossFit. Butlet's stop and ask ourselves,
who is the games marketingactually helping? Does it help
the two people who become thefittest on Earth? Yeah, they
make a few bucks and they getsome sponsors. They deserve it.
Good for them. Does it help therunners up the second, third,
(02:39):
fifth place? Well, not much,but a few people can actually
make a career at this. Now,does it help the sponsors?
Possibly, I'm, I'm not sure.
You'd have to ask them. Does ithelp the affiliates? Not
anymore. Unless you're inEastern Europe, you probably
don't have people coming in andsaying, I watched the games. I
wanna sign up for CrossFitanymore. The games provides
(03:01):
affiliates with exposure, butit doesn't increase their lead
generation or the value oftheir service or their
retention or anything elsethat's measurable. And
honestly, last year theattention wasn't even all that
positive. So if the games isreally only a win for the
people who win the games, thefittest on Earth, should HQ
scrap it? Or can we look atwhat others are doing well and
(03:24):
use the opportunity to pivot?
The cool thing about Tube Brainand the way that we've built it
is that I don't have to haveevery idea myself. I can look
out and say, what's that persondoing? How is that person
improving their retentionmetrics? Let's find out. Let's
get them on the podcast. Let'slook at their metrics. And if
it's teachable, we'll teach itto everybody else, just like
(03:47):
Greg did with Deadlift. How isthat person deadlifting over a
thousand pounds? Let's talk tothem. Let's get their numbers
and maybe they can help us dobetter too. And so with that in
mind, I think that we can lookat other people and what
they're doing in the fitnessspace, take some of their ideas
and potentially incorporate itinto the Games 2.0, the next
(04:08):
evolution of the CrossFitGames. I'm a firm believer that
success leaves clues. And aftertalking with some very smart
people in the industry, not thegames athletes, but the people
who are out there runningevents, helping affiliates, I
got a few suggestions toconsider. Number one, look at
High Rocks. Spartan has asimilar program to High Rocks
called , um, Spartan Deca , butit's fitness racing. It's
(04:30):
really simple. They could puthundreds of people through a
course in a day. The coursedoesn't change. It's not a
surprise. You don't learn aboutit five minutes before you do
it. Can somebody actually winwith hundreds of people going
through this course in a day?
Probably there probably is awinner at the end of the day,
but nobody really cares.
They're really just excitedabout doing the challenge.
(04:51):
Before , um, high Rocks , thebest example of this was
probably Spartan Race. Nobodywas trying to really be the
Spartan World champion exceptfor that guy named Hunter
Hunter Thornton. But thousandsand thousands, millions of
people did Spartan racesbecause they wanted to test
their fitness. They wanted tofeel like, this is the
healthiest I've ever been. Thisis the fittest day of my life.
(05:13):
And that's what we need tothink more about because that
will actually benefitaffiliates. If you wanna look
at some metrics this year, theCrossFit open enrollment
dropped by over 30%. That'smassive. Meanwhile, in the last
year, high Rocks has grown sixx 600%. CrossFit doesn't have
to copy High Rocks to learnfrom them. Simpler is better.
This is a good lesson to learn.
(05:34):
Keep it simple. Participationis the king, not crowning the
fittest on earth. And theultimate winner ultimately
really doesn't matter, right?
You wanna give people thisamazing experience that they
can talk about. You wanna give'em a story that they're gonna
share and snap their ownpictures at and , and be proud
of, and then go to a concertmaybe that night and get a
t-shirt and like, that's it.
People will pay big money to dothis stuff. Just like at
(05:57):
Spartan Race, instead of thegames being a money losing
venture for HQ that doesn'tbenefit the affiliates, why not
just flip it on its head? Startover. Build a fitness festival
that you run in five or sixplaces around the country to
start with and let people buildtheir own story. You know, find
their fittest day, win theirown personal journey, get a
(06:18):
T-shirt, listen to a rockconcert, and go home. The
second place that I would lookis the Rogue Invitational. In
fact, just asking Rogue to runthe events for CrossFit would
probably save the games. Idon't know if you've been to
one of these events. My , thelast one I went to was down in
Austin last year. And thecommunity, the feeling, the
(06:39):
vibe, it just feels likeCrossFit circa 2017. Like,
these people are amazing, butthey're not outta reach. And if
I train really, really, reallyhard, I might not win, but I
could get to the competitionfloor. You really don't feel
that with the games anymore.
And it's, you know, things getjuggled every year and whatnot.
But if you set things up and ifyou , you partner with Rogue,
(07:00):
you're gonna have an amazingevent that you're proud to take
your members to , you're gonnahave this amazing feeling of
pride just being in the crowd.
Boy, when the two BrainBusiness banner came up all
over that Rogue Invitational inAustin, I was so proud that I
almost cried. But showing upwith 10 people from your gym,
20 people, 30 people, andyou're all gonna run through
(07:22):
the challenge, one after theother, maybe together, maybe
cross the finish line, arm andarm. And it's gonna be amazing
because Rogue built it and it'sgonna be one of the five peak
moments that they remember ontheir deathbed, and they're
gonna tell their friends aboutit forever, man. Like that is
irreplaceable value to theaffiliates where crowning the
top king and queen of fitnesson earth. I don't think that
(07:43):
does have value. Another goodexample is like the Arnold. Now
this is for bodybuilding,meatheads , but it attracts
thousands and thousands ofpeople who are not bodybuilders
because they wanna see the showand they wanna see the other
people. But a Fe Festivalatmosphere is great, and if you
incorporate something like a afitness challenge or a race,
you , you've just got a win-winfor everybody, right? So just
(08:04):
give people a chance to showup, do a workout with their
friends, and stay for theparty. Look, there are other
examples out there to drawfrom. Even online cycling. I'm
a cyclist, but the Tour de WThad half a million participants
this year, and it's onlinecycling with a smart trainer.
You don't really know anybodyelse, but you're making
friends. You're competing forabout six weeks, you're doing
(08:26):
eight different races. You'retracking your progress against
previous years. It keeps youtraining through the dark
months when you can't beoutside on the road, et cetera.
I'm not saying that CrossFit'scompetition should be online.
What I'm saying is there'sprobably something to learn
from these events that aregrowing while CrossFit is
shrinking and there's no bettertime to rethink it. This is
(08:47):
gonna be a controversial take.
The other games alternativesthat you see out there, like
different leagues andorganizations of athletes and
unions and all this stuff,these are just small variations
on the original concept of thegames. What I'm saying is it's
time to revisit the originalconcept and ask who are the
games for? And if they aretruly to benefit affiliates,
(09:09):
then let's run them in a waythat helps my clients love
CrossFit, love my gym, lovetheir fitness, love themselves,
love their friends even more.
And I think the way to do thatis to make it more of a
festival. I'm Chris Cooper.
This has Run a Profitable Gym.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
If you've got a better plan,let's hear it.
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