FDNY's Official CrossFit Team Trains for Competition, Camaraderie, and Accountability

The Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY) supports its firefighters’ many fitness endeavors.

“We have various sports,” Ricardo Roman said. “Boxing club — we have a football club.”

To get officially recognized as a club by the FDNY, “you write this affiliation with bylaws, and you put forward your pitch on why, you know, you feel like you should have a team or a club. So I had done that in May of 2019,” Roman said.

For more than a year and a half now, Roman has served as the president of the FDNY Barbell Club, also known as “The Official CrossFit Team of the FDNY.”

Roman said they decided to go with “barbell” in the club name rather than CrossFit because they thought that might catch the interest of the traditional Olympic lifters and powerlifters. “There’s firemen that love to just get under the bar, just lift weights,” he explained.

The club’s programming, however, focuses on classic CrossFit.

Roman found CrossFit the same way many of us do: People around him kept mentioning it and “getting in his ear,” he said.

His first brush with the methodology came while he was coaching high school baseball. A coach he worked with from George Washington High School “was so adamant about being involved with doing CrossFit,” Roman said.

Then he heard about it again while serving as the assistant strength coach at Fordham University. The head strength coach was “completely into it,” he explained.

CrossFit is “so abstract when you hear somebody speak about it,” he said. “The only way that you can get a better understanding is you have to either try it … you probably have to, you know, dive into one.”

Roman took the dive. He tried Fran.

“At the time I was doing Joe Kenn’s Tier program. He’s a big-time strength coach with the Panthers. And I was like, ‘Oh, you know, I’m fit.’ Then you try to do something with variance … some weightlifting and gymnastics.”

He recalled being on the floor after Fran’s devastating combination of thrusters and pull-ups.

“I was like, ‘Man, what happened?’”

“It’s a beautiful couplet,” he added.

The Club’s Origin Story

Roman not only became a CrossFit athlete after picking himself up off the floor after Fran. He also became a fan of the Sport of Fitness. His first inclination that he might want to start a CrossFit club came while watching the CrossFit Games.

“I had had this vision in my mind for a while, you know, seeing the Games. … It would be awesome if FD went against PD in CrossFit,” he said.

When CrossFit added first-responder categories to the 2016 CrossFit Games Open Leaderboard and partnered with the World Police and Fire Games the following year, Roman’s dream grew.

“So I reached out to a buddy of mine … Sasha, because Sasha had run CrossFit competitions,” he said, referring to Sasha Gomez, now vice president of the FDNY Barbell Club.

Gomez and Roman went back and forth with the NYPD for a year and a half without finalizing plans for a competition or co-sponsored event.

“Just never came about,” Roman said. “But, you know, we were so bought in, we were like, ‘You know what? Forget it. We don’t care if the idea doesn’t come off the ground. Why don’t we just start an official team?’”

They went forward with the new plan, put together the necessary paperwork, and got the approval of the commissioner. The FDNY Barbell Club was born.

Throwdowns Inside and Outside the Club

“At (FDNY Engine Company) 74, where I’m at … we actually created a box,” Roman said. “I mean, it has everything. It has a rope, bumper plates, a clock, rings, GHDs, every piece of Concept2 equipment. … It’s in our firehouse.”

The members of the club, who hail from different stations around New York City, attend a monthly meeting where they throw down, push each other, and compete.

Pride is on the line when the members of the team compete against each other in a workout.

“There’s certain members of the club from different boroughs,” Roman said. “There’s just that natural, like, ‘Hey, let’s see what you got.’ You know, stuff like that. That’s just professional shit talking at its best.”

Several members have competed in events near and far as well.

“There’s a couple of really good athletes on our team. Like, we got a guy who just won this huge competition with the U.S. Army, a PT competition,” he said.

Earlier this year, the club sent a team to the Battle on the Border competition and several teammates landed podium spots.

In 2019, Roman competed in the CrossFit competition at the World Police and Fire Games in Chengdu, China. He took the silver medal in his age group.

“We’re hoping our athletes are able to podium at the U.S. Police and Fire Championships in San Diego next year,” Roman said. They even have their sights set on the World Police and Fire Games taking place in Rotterdam in the Netherlands in 2022.

The competitive element of CrossFit is a big draw for the club’s members, Roman said. “They’re so passionate about the formula of CrossFit. But they wanna compete. That’s why they’re in the Barbell Club.”

This year, club members plan to compete together in the CrossFit Open, and the club will cover their costs for the 2021 CrossFit Judges Course.

“We usually get together as a team. And then whatever the workout is, you know, try to do it earlier on, because sometimes people try to attempt it twice,” Roman said, once again speaking to the competitive drive of the club’s members.

Camaraderie

While competition is an important aspect of the club’s culture it is not the only thing motivating the firefighters to keep pushing themselves with CrossFit’s fitness methodology. Camaraderie is just as important.

Roman said they like to have fun and push each other during workouts. They also support each other outside the gym.

The station is like a second home. The firefighters shop for groceries, cook, and share meals together.

“Cooking is such a big part of the tradition,” Roman said. “Guys going to the supermarket together … you know, in unison prepping the meal, cooking, and eating it together at the table. It’s a huge tradition.”

The cooking tradition is such a strong part of firefighter culture that it, too, has been carried over to a competitive field. Many have heard tales of spicy chili cook-offs among fire crews. When Rachael Ray offered her own take on the tradition with her “Five-Alarm Hoagie Challenge,” Roman was there to represent his station — one of New York’s real-life heroes competing to make the best hero sandwich, Ray joked.

As the tradition continues to evolve, the firefighters have shifted their menu choices to support each others’ dietary needs and preferences.

“Some just want to be fed, have a good meal at work, and then go home. But other guys are like, ‘Hey, you know, I want to eat more on the healthier side,’” Roman said, and the others who are on duty try to accommodate that.

Gomez is “adamant about being vegan, and when he’s at work, the guys bend towards that,” Roman said.

Accountability

In addition to competition and camaraderie, the members of the FDNY CrossFit team are motivated by the shared knowledge that a firefighter’s fitness can affect their effectiveness on the job.

“The FDNY Barbell Club was built with the essentials of the CrossFit methodology. We are a community. A family. A team,” wrote Vice President Gomez. “At the age of 44 and 20 years as a firefighter, I CrossFit because my life depends on it, and my community needs me to protect life and property as a New York City firefighter.”

Gomez, Roman, and their fellow firefighters support each other in Fran so they can support each other better in emergency situations. CrossFit helps prepare them for whatever unknowns they may face fighting a fire while encumbered with 59-130 lb. of gear.

“There’s that accountability, you know what I mean? Like, I wanna give. I wanna give my all on this,” Roman said of the feeling he gets during a CrossFit workout.

“You wanna do it right. You wanna do it hard. And then, inevitably for us, you know, that speaks even to being at work at the firehouse,” he said.

The countdown timer for a workout gives a rush of adrenaline similar to the firehouse bell, Roman said. “Bell rings, you gotta go out. You know, whatever it’s gonna be, you’re held accountable to be able to do your job to a certain standard, get it done and go back to work, home safe to your families and to the guys at work.”

At the end of the day, “You want everybody to go home,” he said.

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The FDNY Barbell Club has an official Instagram page where they share workout motivation as well as a monthly CrossFit workout programmed by one of the members. Click here to keep up with the club and try one of the workouts.  

Click here to visit the club’s website and learn more about its mission and members.

Register for the Open here.