Roosevelt not only wrote prolifically, but he was also an American frontier hero as the leader of the First United States Volunteer Cavalry, made up of cowboys, Native Americans, small-town sheriffs, and other frontiersmen, as well as city police officers, elite college athletes, and even some men from high society. He was named lieutenant colonel of this unit, which became known as “Roosevelt’s Rough Riders” and were outfitted with special cowboy-like uniforms and Colt revolvers, the Wild West weapon of choice.
Roosevelt and the Rough Riders were known for their battle in Cuba against the Spanish army. Seriously outnumbered but rigorously trained and highly resolved, they took, according to legend, San Juan Hill in Santiago de Cuba and planted their cavalry flag (some historians believe it was African American Buffalo Soldiers who did). Roosevelt borrowed the term “Rough Riders” from Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show, popular entertainment at the time. The Rough Riders are one of the most famous examples of U.S. military glory and bravery under fire. They also serve as a precursor of contemporary Navy special forces units, the SEALs, which also embody the tenacious hunter-hero of the American frontier and are connected to CrossFit.
Superman, Captain America, and other comic book heroes emerged in the late 1930s and 1940s, as did the special forces units of the military, which took shape during World War II. These heroes resemble the frontier heroes; they were marked by rugged individualism, enacting vigilante justice outside of social institutions. They were individuals willing to commit ruthless violence to ensure the safety of humanity or Americans. The American military hero is molded on the hunter-hero as epitomizing the frontier characteristics of American culture. The enemy has changed, but the hunter-hero, with his use of vigilante justice or violence, has remained. CrossFit taps into the meanings of the frontier—not because the frontier thesis is correct but because it is the story we tell about ourselves and of our heroes.
In a short video on ReasonTV, a libertarian YouTube channel, featuring Glassman and deputy sheriff Greg Amundson of Santa Cruz, Cal., talking about CrossFit, we see the frontier myth, CrossFit edition. A man out west broke free of conventional fitness, economic, and physiologic institutions and forged his own way. He put up an outpost, and local sheriffs and special forces members, “a different kind of people,” found their way to him. They soon realized that this was the way, and it was predicated on being rough-edged, authentic, and willing to make violent sacrifices to prove their character and win “against the man.” While the frontier looks a bit different, the afterlife of the myth remains; the frontier is fitness, and CrossFit, as Roosevelt claimed of the Rough Riders, will take the mountain.