CrossFit in the United States has become an increasingly popular sport, around which a fascinating culture has developed centered on the workout’s tremendous difficulty and its organization of everyday life for the people devoted to it. Professor of Anthropology, author, and champion weightlifter Katie Rose Hejtmanek has explored the CrossFit phenomenon in her latest book, The Cult of CrossFit: Christianity and the American Exercise Phenomenon, which examines how this exercise program is shaped by American Christian values and practices, connecting American religious ideologies to capitalist, secular institutions in contemporary American culture. Drawing upon interviews with gym owners and participants, CrossFit media, and the author’s experiences in CrossFit gyms across six continents, Hejtmanek argues this fitness regimen is both heavily influenced by and deeply intertwined with American Christian values. 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.
