In contemplating writing a history of the Performance Menu, the first thing that struck me was how long it’s actually been—16 years. That’s nearly 40% of my lifetime. This journal straddles multiple eras of my life, major events, and dramatic changes of everything from where I live, who’s in my life and marital status. I’m not going to get unnecessarily emotional on you—suffice to say it’s been a huge part of my life, and putting it out to pasture was a tough decision. It’s had a great run, and it’s been a launching pad for a lot of names you probably know now, along with the first or one of the earliest sources of information of a number of topics, such as intermittent fasting thanks to propeller heads like Robb Wolf.
 
Origins
 
In 2004, I was living in northern California and had recently partnered with Robb Wolf and his now wife Nicki in the fourth CrossFit affiliate gym in the world—CrossFit NorCal. This was a time when no one knew what CrossFit was… and didn’t care. We virtually begged people to train with us, hardly charged anything, and all had multiple jobs while still putting in long hours there.
 
In late 2004, the two of them came to me with an idea. They showed me a sample layout for a nutrition journal, and their question was obvious before they asked: Can you help make this not look terrible? They knew I had a background in publishing and design, so yes of course I could.
 
The original intent was for the journal to serve essentially as a nutritional supplement to the young CrossFit Journal—to get into far more detail and breadth than CrossFit’s narrow focus on the Zone Diet and how to meet your blocks with Coors Light and French fries. Robb secured CrossFit founder Greg Glassman’s blessing for the project, and we got busy collecting contributions and putting together a layout (Those of you who go way back with CrossFit can probably guess how that Glassmanian Blessing turned out.).
 
We launched our first issue February 2005—I’m irritated to this day that we couldn’t get it done by January to start with a full 12-month volume. At this stage, I had no editorial involvement—Robb was writing articles and wooing new contributors while I just edited and did the layouts and website work.
 
Changes
 
In August 2006, I moved down to Southern California to train under coach Mike Burgener. I sold my third of the gym to Robb & Nicki, for which they would pay me over time, and we continued to run the Performance Menu together. However, it pretty quickly became apparent they’d lost interest in it, while for me it was an important part of my income as I tried to focus on competitive weightlifting. We changed the gym buyout deal to simply be a trade—my third of the gym for complete ownership of the journal. It made things simple and kept everyone doing what they preferred doing—they were the best partners AND former partners a guy could ask for.
 
Of course, I’m about as interested in nutrition as I am in collecting pebbles for making crafty signs to sell near the beach, so I shifted the focus of the journal to the training side of things, with an emphasis on Olympic weightlifting. This instantly rendered the name Performance Menu obsolete and somewhat curious, but it was too well established to change, so I just gritted my teeth about it for the next 15 years.
 
I was running the journal out of my apartment kitchen while working on the first edition of my book, Olympic Weightlifting: A Complete Guide for Athletes & Coaches, and doing personal training to pay my bills. My now wife Aimee started helping out by doing the PDF layouts for the next year or so.
 
Sometime in 2007 (Not sure exactly when—all I remember is I was still living in that apartment), Greg Glassman called me. He did his usual charming routine, and then worked his way around to fishing for info on the Performance Menu… namely how many subscribers I had and how much money I was making from it. I avoided answering either query explicitly because I file such things securely in the None of Your Business category. He finally got to the point and made the offer to buy it from me. It was pretty obvious, for reasons too numerous and complex to get into here, that his intention was to buy it so he could shut it down because he viewed it as competition for the CrossFit Journal despite having given Robb his blessing at the outset (remember that?). I declined.
 
Maturity
 
In 2009, I brought Yael Grauer on as managing editor—I had way too much on my plate and needed someone else to be responsible for wrangling submissions, finding new contributors, and copyediting (I also had zero interest in any of those things). She was a massive contributor to the journal’s continuation and growth, along with the quality and quantity of content each month. I can confidently say that had she not been around, I would have had to shut it down years ago.
 
Soon after that, Alyssa Sulay, who we had just hired as a trainer at the Catalyst Athletics gym in Sunnyvale, CA and was one of my weightlifters, took over the monthly layout responsibilities along with most of the related administrative work.
 
Matt Foreman had become a regular contributor in 2008, reliably supplying an article every month and eventually also an interview. He ended up contributing over 250 articles—more than I did myself—and regularly reminding me that what we were doing was worth it.
 
We chugged along this way for year after year, reaching our 100th issue in May 2013, reaching 10 years in publication in February 2015, then 15 years in 2020, the our 200th issue in September 2021… the thing just kept going and going. We surpassed 200 contributors and 1300 articles.
 
Demise
 
The final year of the Performance Menu was a tough one—all of us have continued to get busier, and the unfortunate fact is that the format is obsolete. As long as it’s lasted, it can’t go on forever without a complete overhaul, and I simply don’t have the time, energy or interest in doing that. It wasn’t an easy decision, but it was simple—it was obviously the only reasonable course of action.
 
I’m forever grateful for this small gang—Yael, Alyssa and Matt—who allowed me to keep this thing running for so long, for Robb & Nicki for creating it and losing interest at a convenient time for me, and of course for all of the subscribers who gave the journal a purpose. See you guys on the next one.