Review: "The Cult of CrossFit" by Katie Rose Hejtmanek

The Cult of CrossFit by Katie Rose Hejtmanek
Published March 2025 via NYU Press
★★★★

Here's an association most of us wouldn't think to make: The fitness company CrossFit and white Evangelical American Christianity. But in The Cult of CrossFit, Hejtmanek makes a compelling argument for just that association, connecting CrossFit with theme after theme that at first glance looks unremarkable, and at second glance is yet another thread tying it to cultural Christianity broadly and to salvation, militarism, and embedded -isms more specifically.

Hejtmanek got involved with CrossFit through research; in her two years of direct research, she went from a newcomer to completing the basic training to be a CrossFit coach. She learned the lingo; she learned the movements; she got stronger. My body went from specializing in sprinting to being generally fit, the CrossFit way. (10*) It's clear that she got value out of the program. It's also clear that, well, she didn't drink the Kool-Aid.

This is an academic work, not a memoir; while Hejtmanek is in the book, that's more for context and narrative structure than it is the point. I read this because it hits at two topics that interest me (certain types of fitness, and interrogation of religion), I love a twofer, and anyway my academic roots run deep, but it's worth noting that you should go in prepared for academic rather than, e.g., pop science.

Because I was reading this just for fun, my takeaways are admittedly less academic. I've never tried CrossFit and never really had any interest in it, and I came away more convinced than ever that that is just as well. There's so much sexism embedded in certain types of exercise already, and CrossFit in its previous form—the book doesn't go into depth in CrossFit in more recent years, presumably because the primary research had been long since completed by the time things changed—sounds like a double whammy of sexism and racism with a side of American exceptionalism. I'm particularly intrigued by the differences between the American boxes (CrossFit gyms) Hejtmanek visited and the international versions, though that wasn't the point of the book. I'm also intrigued by this obsession with functional fitness and what it actually means in practical terms: What differences are diligent CrossFitters seeing in their daily lives? Not the changes in physique, not the amount they're able to lift in the gym or the speed with which they can complete their WOD (the assigned workout du jour at CrossFit boxes), I mean; I don't really care whether they can row four kilometers on an erg on a whim, but it's interesting that CrossFit's focus on "functional fitness" that Hejtmanek observed seemed to be less about current function and more about a hypothetical future when you might need to scale a wall with your similarly fit friends in the zombie apocalypse (but not to help a stranger over, say, or someone with a disability...).

And finally: again not really the point of the book (though it's touched on), but now I really want to go dig up some papers on injury rates—and types of injury—in CrossFit vs. other fitness programs and types of exercise.

Again, this is one for people looking for something fairly specific, but I found it to be a pretty engrossing read.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.