The beer and the accents may be different, but CrossFitters are much the same the world over, Coach Greg Glassman told participants at a Level 1 Cert at CrossFit Brisbane in Australia on May 16, 2009.

Coach Glassman said his goal is to provide opportunities he wished he’d had as a young trainer. To this day, there is no CrossFit business plan. His approach is to make the meatloaf he’d like to eat, and write the novel he’d like to read.

It’s been an interesting journey. As a teenage gymnast, he’d done something unusual by using weights and cycling in his training. “I understood that my moderate capacity in three different domains conferred a physical advantage that nobody got with a single focus.”

He began training people while still in his teens, working at what CrossFitters now call globo gyms. He saw lots of bad stuff, including training that didn’t get results and questionable business practices. Sometimes he would hang gymnastics rings, only to see them cut down. He often disagreed with gym owners and got kicked out of his gym—and his job.

After almost twenty years in the fitness business, he finally made the decision to go off on his own and do things his way. The CrossFit website was launched a few months later and the organization has grown rapidly ever since.

His hope for the future of CrossFit? More of the same.