CrossFit once looked unstoppable — a global fitness juggernaut with a cult-like following, explosive growth, and cultural dominance.
But according to Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of the wearable tech company Whoop, the brand behind the sport lost its way so profoundly that it created a vacuum now being filled by competitors like HYROX and boutique fitness brands.
“I’ve never seen anybody fumble the bag so hard in fitness,” Ahmed said in a recent interview.
CrossFit’s downfall, he argues, wasn’t just a PR crisis. It was a fundamental failure of leadership, partnership, and strategy. And he’s speaking from experience — his company was once partnered with CrossFit during some of its most turbulent years.
From Movement to Mess: What Happened to CrossFit?
CrossFit started as a grassroots movement. “It literally began as an email list,” Ahmed explained, emphasizing how impressive its early rise was. It spread like wildfire by turning its users into evangelists — the kind of people who couldn’t wait to tell everyone about their new passion. For a while, it seemed like nothing could stop it.
Then came the fall.
The turning point, Ahmed suggests, was the controversial behavior of founder Greg Glassman, particularly during the Black Lives Matter movement. Glassman’s comments and erratic leadership led to a mass exodus of gyms and athletes, tarnishing CrossFit’s brand practically overnight.
“Then you’ve got this whole new leadership team that comes in,” said Ahmed, referencing the post-Glassman transition. “We became partners with CrossFit around that time… and I mean, without question, the most dysfunctional partner we’ve ever worked with.”
Inside the Dysfunction: A Toxic Partnership
Whoop, a fitness wearable brand focused on recovery and performance optimization, had aligned with CrossFit hoping to tap into a thriving, elite athletic community. But Ahmed says the experience was a disaster.
“We’ve worked with a lot of partners, and I mean a lot of dysfunction — this was the worst.”
He didn’t get into granular details about specific failures, but described the partnership as “so poorly run it’s hard to even talk about it.” What’s more frustrating, he said, is that CrossFit had two incredibly rare assets that should have made it resilient: an authentic brand and a deeply connected community.
“They also had a great community and a great brand — which are two things that are pretty resilient when things go wrong,” he said. “And even with that, it’s unbelievable how sorry of a place it is now.”
A Vacuum CrossFit Left Behind
CrossFit’s missteps didn’t just lead to its own decline. According to Ahmed, they created room for a new wave of fitness experiences that feel more modern, inclusive, and less intimidating.
“Everybody’s new fitness pursuit is their most exciting thing,” he said. “Every CrossFitter wanted to tell you about CrossFit… now every run club person is trying to get you to go to their Saturday morning 5K.”
The rise of HYROX and hybrid fitness events — which combine endurance, strength, and functional movement in ways that are more accessible than traditional CrossFit competitions — is a direct response to the space CrossFit vacated, Ahmed argues.
“It’s a bit lower impact. Maybe it’s a little bit more accessible to go into a HYROX event than it would have been to try and go to sectionals or do a local CrossFit comp,” he said. “Like, I’d rather do burpee broad jumps than try and do a snatch or a handstand walk.”
Not Just Bad Leadership — An Inaccessible Product
While CrossFit’s operational issues and leadership scandals made headlines, Ahmed thinks a deeper problem was always lurking in the background: the sport just wasn’t approachable for most people.
“It had a high injury rate before they even had dysfunction as a company,” he said. “It’s a pretty intimidating workout out of the gates.”
This intimidation factor meant CrossFit was always going to have a ceiling, unless it evolved. “There’s a lot of people it’s going to turn off right out of the gate,” Ahmed added. “You can go and plod along in a 5K, but you can’t do that in a CrossFit class.”
Fitness Is Fragmenting — And That’s a Good Thing
As CrossFit recedes from its former position of dominance, other fitness tribes are rising in its place. Ahmed sees this fragmentation as a natural evolution — and perhaps a healthier one.
“You’ve got F45, you’ve got Barry’s, you’ve got OrangeTheory, you’ve got these different types of Pilates studios,” he said. “It seems like people are looking almost for the new thing, and that allows for these different micro-communities to pop up around a particular activity.”
This diversity is partly driven by the emotional nature of fitness. “Exercise is lonely and hard,” he said. “It makes sense that there are these boutique communities, so to speak.”
Will CrossFit Ever Come Back?
CrossFit isn’t dead. But its ability to lead the global conversation about fitness — and grow in the way it once did — may be permanently over. For Ahmed, that’s not just a shame; it’s a case study in how not to run a revolutionary fitness brand.
“If you’d said in 2017 what the next seven, eight years had in store… no one would have believed you,” he said. “It’s outrageous.”
And that’s coming from a man whose company tracks millions of bodies around the globe — and who’s seen firsthand what success and failure look like in the modern fitness landscape.
In his eyes, the biggest failure wasn’t technical or financial. It was a failure of culture, vision, and humility. CrossFit didn’t just lose relevance. It lost the trust and enthusiasm of the very people who once championed it.