Hi - I’m Dan.

In 2011 my brother and I opened up CrossFit Strongtown, aka Strongtown Fitness in Southbury CT.  Many affiliate owners open their gyms because fitness, a gym, or a workout program has drastically impacted their lives and my story is very much the same.

What makes my story different is that my background is in Landscape Architecture. I graduated from UConn in 2006 and completed my Postgraduate studies in International Planning between 2011 and 2012.

There aren’t many overlaps between owning a gym and Landscape Architecture but planning comps seems to be the sweet spot.

In 2012 we started running an annual local comp that we call “Battle for the Bell”. We ran the event a total of 8 times between 2012 - 2019. Out of the 8 years we ran the event we sold out 7 of the 8 times and had a waitlist of teams trying to get in.

We developed a reputation for putting on one of the best run and well-organized comps in the area. It was an event that people looked forward to being a part of each year and that local businesses were interested in sponsoring. Most importantly it got to the point where it was a profitable event for the gym to run.

How did we do it?

By applying the methods & tools that I use as a design professional to organize and plan our competitions.

Drawings were created for each event to communicate the equipment layout, athlete transitions, general flow of the workouts, changing of equipment between heats, spectator areas, etc... Score sheets were made with the workouts and Judges in mind to avoid any confusion and potential issues. And the entire flow of the event was organized and tracked through a master dashboard

The goal was to communicate as much information about the day & inidividual events as possible to the Judges, Volunteers, and Athletes. Creating the drawing, score sheets, and dashboard became an invaluable part of the success of our competition.

This is something that is 100% being done for the higher-level events like Wodapalooza, The Granite Games, and the CrossFit Games but no one was doing it, or talking about it on the smaller scale, local throw-down level.

For anyone who’s hosted a comp before you know it can be one of the most rewarding, or stressful experiences as a gym owner. We’ve all heard the nightmare stories of people going to comps that run late, aren’t organized, and overcharge for what they deliver.

My primary objective of Compitecture is to both inform and help gyms run better comps.