CrossFit Reykjavik Readies for Games at Pit Fitness Ranch

The Pit Fitness Ranch in Three Rivers, MI became the heart of teen CrossFit with the Elite Teen Throwdown in 2020. But with trails, a lake, 65 acres, and of course, a world-class gym, it’s becoming a prime location for training camps as well. Team Reykjavik, along with their individual athletes, caught onto the amazing facilities and claimed the gym as their own for pre-Games training.

• “We were all like, “this seems too good to be true!” Team member Khan Porter said. The team originally set out to find a temporary home-base while training in the United States close enough to both Chicago and Madison, and the amenities of the Pit made the choice easy. “I’ve spoken to a few athletes in the past about how we came here and how the facilities are, so I think we might get a bit of a boost next year!”

While The Pit may have all the right options for a small army of CrossFit Games athletes, Three Rivers, MI is a one-Culvers town. This close to the Games, many athletes might be interested in a full-team effort, complete with nutrition companies, physical therapists, and all the other odds and ends taken care of for them, but Porter says the bare-necessities style of the town is perfect.

• Porter: “It’s probably better anyways, the less I have to do outside of training, the better.”

For an Icelandic team needing to acclimate to the heat and humidity of the Midwest, it seems like the perfect set-up. For Pit Fitness Ranch’s Brock Yost, though, this development into an international training destination was completely unsurprising.

•  “Obviously it’s a privilege to have all of these guys here and it’s very humbling to know that they picked our space,” Yost said. There aren’t many CrossFit gyms on a ranch in a rural area, but Yost chose his place intentionally, just for this purpose. “We planned on this someday, and it’s here and it feels great because it’s reassuring that we’re doing the right thing. Our platform is reaching the right people.”

Autumn Yost, co-owner of Triple River CrossFit and the Pit, has taken special care to make sure the visiting athletes feel the warm welcome she says is synonymous to their gym’s community.

• “Our community has been nothing but accommodating, rounding up supplies for them, making sure they feel welcome, doing everything they can to make sure they get the full Pit experience that our community has to offer,” Yost said. Through their internal Facebook group, members brought together baby items for Annie Thorisdottir’s daughter.

CrossFit Reykjavik has been under a microscope all season as a potential threat to Mayhem Freedom’s sixth Affiliate Cup Championship, but in a recent Miles to Madison episode, shot around Quarterfinals, Thorisdottir admitted that the team wasn’t ready yet. But with four months of training and some of the complications that come with moving across the ocean taken care of for them, Porter says the team has seen significant progress since Quarterfinals.

• Porter: “We are a completely different team than the one in Quarterfinals, we’re just excited to see how we stack up.”