• Morning Chalk Up
  • Posts
  • 🚦 Green-Light or Red-Light Gym? See How You Stack Up With Two-Brain’s 2025 Report

🚦 Green-Light or Red-Light Gym? See How You Stack Up With Two-Brain’s 2025 Report

November 12th, 2025

POWERED BY

Good morning and welcome to the Morning Chalk Up.

In today’s edition:

  • 🏋️ From a childhood built on grit to nine straight World Championships, Mattie Rogers doesn’t practice resilience; she lives it.

  • đź’Ş From glycogen to sleep, here’s how everyday athletes can turn exhaustion into adaptation without supplements or guesswork.

  • 🧠 Two-Brain’s “State of the Industry Report” has just dropped, analyzing 7,000 gyms and revealing five key metrics — a data goldmine for affiliate owners.

QUOTE OF THE DAY
âťť

My career shows that you don’t have to be a prodigy or born to be this, that, or the other but you do have to be fucking relentless.”

Mattie Rogers in The Untold Story of Mattie Rogers.
PROFILE

The Untold Story of Mattie Rogers: Resilience, Redemption, and Redefining Strength

Credit: Carlos Bown

Few names in American weightlifting carry the same weight as Mattie Rogers. The 30-year-old has spent over a decade redefining what it means to be strong, not just in kilos, but in character.

  • Now, a new YouTube documentary, The Untold Story of Mattie Rogers, produced and directed by Rogers’ boyfriend, Carlos Bown, uncovers the medals, heartbreaks, and mental struggles never before shared publicly behind one of USA Weightlifting’s most acclaimed and beloved athletes.

A Star Forged in Struggle

The film follows Rogers’ journey from a difficult childhood in Florida to international stages. When her father died of colon cancer at age six, Rogers’ world changed instantly.

  • “It was a fend-for-yourself situation from six years old on,” she says in the film. “I don’t think I had a good childhood, but it built my work ethic. It was survival.”

That instinct to survive carried her through a winding athletic journey, from gymnastics, track, and cheerleading to CrossFit, before discovering weightlifting in 2013.

A MESSAGE FROM NOBULL

One Shoe. Every Workout. Now $99.

Gear up for the season of strength–with $50 off Drive this week only. Our most versatile workout shoe. Strength. Cardio. Hybrid. Drive goes as hard as you do.   

Knit for flex. Mesh for breathability. Ripstop for locked-in security. However you move–Drive keeps up. 

*This newsletter relies on our sponsors. Please consider supporting them.

SPEED READS

📺 🏋️‍♀️ Ariel Loewen’s Rogue Rollercoaster: From Nando’s dinners to near-tears, Loewen’s 2025 Rogue Invitational recap is raw, funny, and honest.

🤢💪 The Definitive Guide to Burpees: Invented in the 1930s, refined in the 1940s, and turned into a training staple today, this guide from CrossFit delves into why burpees are brutal and brilliant.

💸🏋️‍♂️ The Fitness Market Is Getting Jacked: A new industry report projects the global gym and health club market to more than double, hitting $235B by 2034. Hybrid models, wellness tech, and recovery-focused memberships are fueling the surge, but traditional gyms will need to adapt fast to keep pace.

🎥🔥 James Sprague’s Rogue Redemption: Between coach-corner pep talks (feat. dad, Pat Sprague), pacing lessons, and confidence checks, the 2024 Games champ’s Rogue vlog tracks a healthier, sharper Sprague turning pain into momentum for Copenhagen and the WFP Finals.

ICYMI: 🔥 Halloween fire hits Mach983 CrossFit — Owner Fred Dayton woke up to every gym owner’s nightmare: a 2:15 a.m. call that his gym was on fire.

MEMBER EXCLUSIVE

Recovery Strategies After a Big Training Day

Credit: @ctpcam / Instagram

You’ve finished a big session, a long run, heavy lift, throwdown with your buddies, or an all-day hike, and now you’re feeling that mix of accomplishment and exhaustion. 

  • You know recovery matters, but what exactly does good recovery look like for everyday athletes?

Recovery isn’t just about “rest.” It’s an active process. What you eat, drink, and do after training shapes how your body adapts, rebuilds, and performs next time.

Whether you’re training for fun, fitness, or competition, here’s how to do it right.

INDUSTRY

How Does Your Gym Stack Up? Two-Brain Business Releases Annual State of the Industry Report

Credit: @twobrainbusiness / Instagram

On Monday, Two-Brain Business published its annual “State of the Industry Report,” offering key insights into various important business metrics, including revenue and profit, average revenue per member, and client retention. 

This year’s data was collected from gym management software companies Wodify and Kilo, covering approximately 7,000 gyms. For the second consecutive year, the report categorized gyms into four different groups.

  1. Big Group – Including CrossFit gyms, bootcamps, and HIIT done in classes.

  2. Small Group – Including semi-private and individual program design gyms.

  3. One-on-One – Personal training.

  4. Other – Non-coaching gyms, such as those selling access memberships, or gyms with diverse service offerings.

From there, Two-Brain developed a green, yellow, and red light system that allows gym owners to easily see how they compare to gyms that are below average, average, and above average in the dataset. 

  • Worth noting: Most gyms in the data – 68.6 percent – were big group gyms; therefore, we can infer that CrossFit and functional fitness gyms comprise the majority.

Continue reading for the key revenue, retention, and pay benchmarks shaping the CrossFit affiliate landscape in 2025.

HIGHLIGHTS

Celebrating a PR, hosting a fundraiser, this, that, or otherwise? Send us a tip.