The Cult of Crossfit - by Katie Rose Hejtmanek

About the Book

"Based on seven years of research on CrossFit, this book uses the fitness regimen as a window into the way American historical legacies are meaningful today. This includes cultural Christianity, frontier ideology, superheroism, scientific expertise, entrepreneurial capitalism, militarism, and end-of-times rhetoric. These ideologies are embodied one workout at a time"--

Book Synopsis

Reveals the Christian foundations of CrossFit

CrossFit in the United States has become increasingly popular, around which a fascinating culture has developed which shapes everyday life for the people devoted to it. CrossFit claims to be many things: a business, a brand, a tremendously difficult fitness regimen, a community, a way to gain salvation, and a method to survive the apocalypse. In The Cult of CrossFit, Katie Rose Hejtmanek examines how this exercise program is shaped by American Christian values and practices, connecting American religious ideologies to secular institutions in contemporary American culture.

Drawing upon years of immersing herself in CrossFit gyms in the United States and across six continents, this book illustrates how US CrossFit operates using distinctly American codes, ranging from its intensity and patriarchal militarism to its emphasis on (white) salvation and the adoration of the hero and vigilante. Despite presenting itself as a secular space, Hejtmanek argues that CrossFit is both heavily influenced by and deeply intertwined with American Christian values. She makes the case that the Christianity that shapes CrossFit is the Christianity that shapes much of America, usually in ways we do not even notice. Offering a new cross-cultural perspective for understanding a popular workout, The Cult of CrossFit provides a window into a particularly American rendition of a Christian plotline, lived out one workout at a time.

Review Quotes

"In the author's hands, the CrossFit gym becomes a valuable microcosm to show how such narratives and their attendant misogyny, ableism, and discrimination remain veiled but deeply rooted in American culture under the guise of self-improvement. It's an astute and illuminating analysis."-- "Publishers Weekly"

"Based on the deepest form of participant observation, Hejtmanek's ethnography of CrossFit has such vividness and immediacy that a reader can feel the effort and smell the sweat. She compellingly weaves together themes including cultural Christianity's hegemonic influence, militarism and violent intensity, science and pseudo-science, masculinity and superheroes, salvation and the apocalypse, the frontier and libertarianism, heteronormative whiteness and garage capitalism."--Thomas J. Csordas, University of California, San Diego

"Guides the reader through the American cultural imagination--a landscape populated by superheroes and animated by apocalyptic fantasies--as it infuses the experiences and beliefs of people enduring notoriously rugged, demanding CrossFit workouts.... Impressively, Hejtmanek submitted her own body to this grinding regimen. . . . The result is a fascinating and brave ethnography that generates profound insights into the spiritual sensibilities and class ideologies that inform this fitness empire."--John Hartigan, University of Texas at Austin

"Building on impressive ethnographic evidence, Katie Hejtmanek has provided brilliant insights into how Christianity in America is tied to the meaning that followers of CrossFit find in their regimen and community. By drawing on narrative analysis and other methods she has made an important contribution to anthropology and several other disciplines."--James V. Wertsch, Washington University in St. Louis

About the Author

Katie Rose Hejtmanek is Professor of Anthropology and Children and Youth Studies at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. She is the author of Friendship, Love, and Hip Hop: An Ethnography of African American Men in Psychiatric Custody and co-editor of Gender and Power in Strength Sports: Strong as Feminist. She is also a world and national champion in masters weightlifting.