“I had expressed to the gym that I really enjoy coming here, it’s just such a great community,” Wolniakowski said. “But my finances are so tight.”
JP CrossFit came to Wolniakowski with a solution: a need-based solution, sliding scale scholarship that would lower its membership fee.
The compromise worked. So well, in fact, that Wolniakowski was able to leave the plan and now works as a social worker and part-time trainer at JP CrossFit.
“If I hadn’t been able to get on that escalator, I wouldn’t have been able to keep going to that gym,” she said. “[JP CrossFit] is really focused on equity and looking after their members and meeting their members where they are in terms of financial burden.”
The scholarship program has expanded since it began more than two years ago to serve 13 members of the JP CrossFit community, “most of whom are people of color or queer people or both,” said Jasmine Gerritsen, gym. the head coach. “It’s had a huge impact on our demographics.”
Improving access across racial and socioeconomic lines was a logical next step for a gym that prides itself on accepting all athletes. The decade-old gym’s membership is older (an average age of 36) than is typical for CrossFit gyms, and most of its 200-plus active members are part of the LGBTQ community. However, its membership was predominantly white, middle-class people—a demographic that has dominated CrossFit in the United States since its inception 20 years ago. Now he hopes to change that too.
Gerritsen said the gym has become more intentional about inviting more people of color, those with lower incomes and trans people to better reflect the makeup of the surrounding Jamaica Plain neighborhood.
“I know these people are here. Why don’t they appear? What are the obstacles?” Gerritsen, who is Latina and comes from a low-income background, said she asked herself that when building the framework for the scholarship program. “In my experiences, money is a big obstacle.”
For those who need the reduced rate, they must apply to be considered and come to the gym at least two or three times a week to stay eligible. Staff check in with them every six months to see if the rate they are paying is still working for them or if they require a further reduction or can contribute more.
But JP CrossFit doesn’t want gym-goers to feel how much they pay determines their membership, so it keeps anonymous who’s on the sliding-scale exchange.
The program isn’t the only economic initiative JP Crossfit has to increase accessibility. It also hosts weekend classes that are open to anyone for $5 per person, allows members to waive their fees (if they’re going to be out of town for a few weeks, for example), and offers discounts for first-year teachers. and social workers. AmeriCorps service members, paramedics and firefighters.
“Once we remove the barrier of finance, then the next challenge is to make sure people see each other. You know, like there’s no person of color in the classroom because that’s very uncomfortable,” Gerritsen said, adding that they’re looking to get more people of color on staff as coaches as well.
Damaria Joynar could be that coach. Joynar, who is black and currently on a sliding scale scholarship, said entering the JP Crossfit training program is “my next step now because I’m inspired and I feel like my community deserves this experience.”
Jarron Saint Onge, an associate professor of sociology and population health at the University of Kansas, researches how the social determinants of health affect disparities across race, class, gender, and location lines.
“The thing that’s important in maintaining all health behaviors is social support,” and people from marginalized backgrounds often struggle to find that support, he said. “It has to be a team effort, and it’s the same thing when you get into physical activity, this idea that you feel accountable to someone or you feel accountable to a group. From my understanding, this is how CrossFit really works. It’s a social thing.”
At the start of a recent noon class, Gerritsen asked everyone to share their name, pronouns and the highlights of their weekend: one gym goer enjoyed Christmas shopping with his daughter, another lit the menorah for Hanukkah, a the third had participated in a dog competition. For the folks at JP CrossFit, the thinking is that knowing a little something about the person sweating next to you makes a big difference. Four rounds a day exercise, as they struggled on the pull-up bar, class participants encouraged each other, complimenting form and progress by looking for breath.
“It’s not intimidating here, that’s the beauty of JP CrossFit,” said Michelle Flynn, 47, who has been coming to the gym for a year and a half.
Gym owner Logan Miller said he grew up “a social outcast,” so fostering that sense of belonging among members is important to him. Besides, Miller said, being flexible with members financially makes good business sense.
“If we’re loyal to our clientele, then our clientele will be loyal to us,” he said, adding that the average length of membership at JP CrossFit is three years. “It’s about that sense of loyalty. If people are deeply engaged in community, why would they hurt us to be generous? This is not what the community does. The community supports each other.”
Julian EJ Sorapuru is a development associate at Globe and can be reached at julian.sorapuru@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @JulianSorapuru
