[LIVE] CrossFit: Community, Commitment or Cult? (EP. 031)
The CrossFit Podcast
CrossFit LLC
4.3 • 757 Ratings
🗓️ 29 August 2025
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s livestream, we’re unpacking why and how CrossFit’s community is different — to the point that some even call us a cult.
- Is it the culture or the community that makes us different? What’s the difference between them? What defines them?
- What does “community” even mean if everyone says they have it?
- Do you believe that walking into a CrossFit gym is palpably different from walking into any other brand of gym? What creates this?
- Why have we been called a cult?
- What are the social components of health and fitness? How important are they?
- What role does the methodology play in promoting and preserving the culture?
Guest host Matt Souza is joined by Nicole Carroll and Jenn Pishko.
Let us know what you think –> podcasts@crossfit.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Yeah, it's a cult that has you take ownership of your health. And what I love about the whiteboard |
| 0:04.3 | is not just like, yes, obviously the measurability, the being able to measure your progress, |
| 0:09.4 | all of that, but it's also this moment of vulnerability. There's no hiding, right? So we're all |
| 0:16.0 | kind of showing our ass together. Imagine a place that you go that has given you so much value and enriched your life |
| 0:23.2 | that all you want to do is talk about it with other people. |
| 0:31.2 | I just got so nervous. |
| 0:32.7 | Oh my goodness, we are alive. |
| 0:34.8 | And I don't know what happened. |
| 0:36.3 | I definitely didn't kidnap James. I promise. I didn't kidnap him. But now I am hosting the show. Yeah, he's gone. Now where to be found. I have the pleasure of chatting with these two ladies today. Jen, Pish, wait, how do you say your last name? I screw everybody's last name. Yeah, I should probably change it. It's Pishko.O-P-H-K-O-P-E-C-O. Okay. Everybody wants to throw a different K in there, an extra K or something, but it's Yeah, it happens from time to time. And the lovely Nicole Carroll here, no one to say her last name, so I don't have to worry about that. How are you doing? Good. Good. How are you? I'm nervous. I'm nervous to be live. I'm just going to say it live on live TV. Well, that's good. And it's important because our show today is going to be about community commitment or is it a cult? CrossFit has often been referred to as a cult a lot in the past. And I think we're going to |
| 1:29.4 | dive into a little bit of that discussion today. And I'm just going to jump right in because |
| 1:33.7 | Nicole, I remember we had had a conversation that I thought was like super important a while back. |
| 1:39.4 | And it was about the whiteboard and how everything has kind of got digitized. I think one of the things that bonds all of us together that might give it this cult-like feel |
| 1:48.8 | just because we're so, like, connected with what we do in our shared suffering, |
| 1:54.4 | that when you was to put the score on the whiteboard, regardless of what you did that day, |
| 2:00.2 | it was like yours to own. And that was |
| 2:02.4 | that kind of like raw accountability is something that, um, to my knowledge, and I don't want to |
| 2:08.6 | overstep here like I did last time. It said it only exists in CrossFit because we know that |
| 2:12.2 | that probably exists in other places. But it was, uh, it was a fact that like, regardless of |
| 2:17.3 | what you did, you kind of just showed your |
| 2:19.1 | effort and it got put on it got put on the whiteboard there. Yeah. Yeah. I remember that conversation. |
| 2:24.4 | Yeah. And it's, I think, right, so oh, I have so many thoughts. But if I would just cut to the cheese with |
| 2:30.9 | the whiteboard, I think it's such an important ritual. So I think the |
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