Garage Gym II: The Revolution

Three years after first exploring the topic, Coach Greg Glassman revisits the garage gym concept to report on the successes that have met hundreds of CrossFit start-up gyms. He also discusses the aspirations and motivations of the people behind the garage gyms.

The market dominance of the big-box model is an interesting phenomenon. If we accept the need for distinct exercises and dedicated machinery for each body part, we create a need for acres of floor space and scores of machines. Square footage, number of floors, and pieces of equipment are to the big-box modeling what “location, location, location” is to residential real estate.

The micro gym is vastly more than just a scaled down big-box gym. Not only does the trainer make more money in his own small facility but also, ironically, the programming generally improves precisely because of the lack of resources— i.e., machinery.

At CrossFit we teach people how to move their bodies, not machines. CrossFitters are united around constantly varied, functional movement executed at high intensity.

We want to fuel a revolution in fitness that advocates the pursuit of function, not form—that measures performance, not anatomy. We want rings and bumper plates in our gyms, not machines. We believe that where you train is less important than how you train and that who you train with matters more than what gear you have. We know this can be done in little boxes and we’ve proven that the garage is as good an environment as any for forging elite fitness.