First there was Greg Glassman, then Eric Roza and now US Marine veteran Don Faul has become the latest CEO to step down at CrossFit LLC. After nearly four years in charge, the departure came amid a continued depression in 2026 Open registrations, one of the clearest annual barometers of the sport's cultural reach.
By the time the dust had settled on the final thruster of the 26.3 workout, 253,926 people had registered in this year's Open. While 9% up on 2025 participation, that's 26% down on the sport's recent peak of 344,000 in 2024 and 39% below its historical high of 416,000 in 2018.
For a sport with community at its core, these metrics matter, but they also reveal broader trends across a category that CrossFit has been instrumental in helping define. The competitive fitness landscape has never been more, well, competitive.
HYROX is the obvious counter point. It has become a legitimate alternative for elite and everyday athletes, offering a standardised format and race calendar that athletes can plan for. As the globe's fastest growing mass participation fitness concept, sponsors have piled in, raising standards and prize pots year-over-year.
Brands including Adidas and Red Bull have similarly invested in emerging events like the World Fitness Project and ATHX Games, with the latter expanding to Europe and the US this season. The Crucible, now in its third year, is also starting to draw top athletes and a generous prize purse.
Now XENOM, the "decathlon of fitness", has emerged at pace. Built around a standardised 10-event format, its founder Keith Barlow says it has been tailor-made for the regular CrossFit community yearning for a repeatable, measurable and globally recognised test of all-round fitness. Eleven dates have been scheduled for 2026, with plans to quickly scale to 60 global competitions annually.
And yet, it could be argued that none of this would be possible were it not for CrossFit themselves, Glassman and the mastermind of the sport's mass appeal, Dave Castro. Castro's inaugural CrossFit Games at his family ranch in 2007 laid the foundations for gym culture to escape the confines of the weights room and enter the amphitheatre of competition. It sparked a movement, forged a community driven by the pursuit to do hard things together. Boxes around the world welcomed men and women, young and old, in their droves.
CrossFit crystallised around the concept of general physical preparedness. That people should develop all-round fitness to handle anything life could throw at them. For Glassman, this principle should apply to all people, from Olympic athletes to our grandparents. And it worked. Open registrations soared from 26,000 in 2011 to 416,000 seven years later.
Under Roza, whom Glassman sold the company to in 2020, this founding premise evolved into promoting CrossFit as an accessible, inclusive health intervention, bridging people from sickness to fitness. HYROX, XENOM et al have since taken up this baton, lowering perceived barriers to entry for everyday athletes while retaining an exclusive appeal for the elite.
Faul's remit might have been to stem the exodus of athletes and sponsors to rival formats, while righting the ship for a lucrative sale. Yet he's been fighting against a tide CrossFit set in motion when they turned functional fitness into a mass participation sport.
CrossFit LLC's fourth CEO since its inception will have his or her work cut out to reclaim its narrative, land a sale and grow participation amid turbulent headwinds. But while its immediate future might be at stake, its lasting legacy for competitive functional fitness will always endure.
Read our piece on XENOM.
Open registration figures taken from tracking by independent data analyst Mike Halpin (Known & Knowable) and sourced from the public CrossFit leaderboard.
