Controversy over wall-ball judging at Hyrox events

In 2001, Greg Glassman, a personal trainer in Santa Cruz, California, was kicked out of the upscale fitness studio where he had been training clients for several years.

- Calum Marsh

NEW YORK - In 2001, Greg Glassman, a personal trainer in Santa Cruz, California, was kicked out of the upscale fitness studio where he had been training clients for several years. Having already cycled through most of the gyms in the area, he moved into a jiu-jitsu studio owned by one of his clients, Brazilian martial artist Claudio Franca.

Over the next year, Glassman used that small space to teach his unique fitness methodology, which he called CrossFit.

Franca's academy was built for jiu-jitsu, and its floors were lined with smooth, padded grappling mats. To account for that, Glassman's clients could not wear shoes and instead of doing Olympic weightlifting, which uses heavy steel barbells, they practiced their technique with medicine balls.

As a drill, he had them pick up a medicine ball, perform a squat, then stand and throw the ball at a target on the wall about three meters off the ground. He called it a wall-ball shot, or just wall balls.

When CrossFit exploded in popularity, it became one of the practice's defining moves.

In the years since, this simple movement has become one of the more controversial exercises in the world of fitness and sport, thanks to social media critics who police the move at Hyrox events. And that criticism is changing how the sport is judged.

A popular fitness race created in Germany, Hyrox combines 8km of running with eight functional fitness movements. Most of the movements are straightforward and practically impossible to perform incorrectly: a 1km row, a 200m farmers carry with kettlebells, a 100m lunge with a heavy sandbag draped over the shoulders.

But the eighth and final segment of a Hyrox race is a wall-ball station - participants must complete 100 wall balls for time. And this station is the focus of outrage and debate.