Who is Greg Glassman?

We all know about the lives of Rich Froning, Samantha Briggs and other top CrossFit athletes. However little is known about the 56 year old Californian Greg Glassman, who one day began posting a workout of the day online to form CrossFit.

With a growing affiliate base fast approaching 10,000 worldwide Gregg Glassman the founder of CrossFit has created a phenomenon  that has spread worldwide in a matter of years.

Glassman is not one to hide his beliefs:

“I’m a rabid libertarian,” Glassman proclaimed in an interview with Reason. “You know, you make me do something — if I’m already doing it, I’ll stop doing it. Even if I thought it was a good idea and it’s something that I wanted to do.”

In the interview, Glassman defines the fitness regime and now sport that is sweeping the world like wildfire:

CrossFit is the principal strength and conditioning program for many police academies and tactical operations teams, military special operations units, champion martial artists, and hundreds of other elite and professional athletes worldwide.

Our program delivers a fitness that is, by design, broad, general, and inclusive. Our specialty is not specialising. Combat, survival, many sports, and life reward this kind of fitness and, on average, punish the specialist.

Never one to backdown from addressing a concern head on, Glassman addresses the detractors:

“We’re asked all the time, ‘Is this a cult?’ And we just get pissed off and say, ‘No, it’s not a cult,” Glassman quipped. “But we’ve heard it so many times and it was asked sincerely enough that early it became important to ask the question ourselves — ‘What if we are a cult?’”

Check out the candid interview with “Coach” from Reason TV: