Wodapalooza SoCal Puts 2,500 CrossFit Athletes on Huntington Beach Sand This Weekend

• Gymreapers Wodapalooza SoCal runs September 25 to 27 in Huntington Beach, California, with more than 2,500 athletes across upward of 30 divisions.
• Most of the field races in community divisions, from teens and masters to adaptive pairs, with open, first-come registration and no online qualifier in its first year.
• Justin Medeiros and Ellie Turner pulled out of the new Battle of the Camps team event this week after Medeiros was involved in an accident.

The Pros Get the Prime-Time Slots, but the Beach Belongs to Everyone Else

On Tuesday, two-time CrossFit Games champion Justin Medeiros posted a short note to Instagram with his fiancée, Ellie Turner. “I’m okay, but unfortunately I was involved in an accident and won’t be able to be at wodapalooza this weekend,” he wrote. “I’m in the best hands possible and will be back out there soon.” Turner later withdrew as well. Both were set to race for the Outcasts, one of four elite squads in the new Battle of the Camps format at Gymreapers Wodapalooza SoCal.

Medeiros shared no further details, and organizers had not named a replacement by Tuesday afternoon, according to The Barbell Spin. His absence will shape the evening livestream. It will not change much for the thousands of people who spend the daylight hours on the sand in Huntington Beach, California, from Friday, September 25, through Sunday, September 27.

Those people make up the bulk of the event. Wodapalooza SoCal expects more than 2,500 athletes across upward of 30 divisions this year. Only 24 of them compete for the $214,000 elite team purse. The rest are gym members, coaches, teenagers, masters athletes and adaptive pairs who paid an entry fee and trained for months at their local affiliate.

How an Ordinary Gym Member Ends Up on the Competition Floor

Wodapalooza started in Miami, where it has run each winter for more than a decade. The SoCal edition arrived in 2024 as a West Coast sister event, and its organizers made an unusual call for year one. Instead of an online qualifier, they opened community registration on a first-come, first-served basis. “Athletes are welcome to race against other athletes to secure a spot on the competition floor,” the event’s community page reads. It adds that there would be no online challenge or qualifier that first year.

For a newcomer, that detail changes the math. Most big functional fitness competitions ask you to post scores from a qualifying workout and wait for a leaderboard to decide your fate. Wodapalooza SoCal asked people to sign up fast. The event’s divisions reflect who shows up to a typical CrossFit box on a Tuesday night:

• Individuals at RX, Intermediate and Open levels, so a first-time competitor can race without heavy barbell cycling or advanced gymnastics
• Teens in 13 to 15 and 16 to 18 age groups
• Masters divisions for older athletes
• Co-ed pairs and teams of three, where gym friends split the work
• Adaptive pairs for athletes with physical impairments

The Barbell Spin described Friday’s opening this way: “all of the community divisions, individuals to masters to teens to pairs, will take to the beach.” Watching those divisions live costs viewers a $30 monthly FloElite subscription. The elite team event streams free on the FloElite YouTube channel.

What the Workouts Ask of a Weekend Competitor

Organizers published six community workouts ahead of the weekend, and they show what a gym member signs up for. One, called Golden Hour, is a 4K run on the beach. Soft sand loads the calves and ankles harder than pavement or a treadmill, so a runner’s usual pace per kilometer slows on the beach.

Another, Redline, asks for 45 chest-to-bar pull-ups, a 300-foot double kettlebell farmer carry at 70 or 53 pounds per hand, and 15 burpees over a log. A third workout pairs sandbag squats with bar muscle-ups and a 150 or 100 pound sandbag carried over a log, all under an 11-minute cap. Two Rounds Too Many strings together rope climbs, wall balls, toes-to-bar, a ski erg and box jump-overs inside a 20-minute cap.

Those numbers describe the top individual standard. The Intermediate and Open divisions scale the loads and swap harder gymnastics for simpler versions. In the co-ed pairs version of one event, partners alternate every 15 calories on a rower and trade sets of clean and jerks at climbing loads. In the team version, one of three teammates must hold a barbell in the front rack or hang from a pull-up bar while the other two work.

That format explains the event’s appeal to gym owners. A box can send a team of three members who have trained side by side for months, and those three people finish the weekend on the same beach where the pros raced the night before.

Battle of the Camps Replaces the USA vs. World Rivalry

The evening sessions belong to a new elite format. For its first two years, the SoCal team event pitted the United States against the rest of the world. This year, organizers dropped the flags and built teams around training programs. PRVN, Brute and Training Think Tank each field a six-athlete squad. The fourth team, the Outcasts, collects independent athletes who follow no fixed program.

The teams will race 11 workouts across three nights. The winners split $120,000, or $20,000 per athlete. Second place earns $48,000, third takes $24,000 and last place still collects $12,000. A $10,000 award named for Lazar Djukic goes to one standout athlete. Djukic, a Serbian athlete, died in the swim event at the 2024 CrossFit Games in Texas.

East Coast fans should brew coffee. The venue sits in the Pacific time zone, so Saturday’s final event, Bagged and Tagged, starts at 12:37 a.m. Eastern on Sunday. Friday’s action opens at 8:45 p.m. Eastern with an event called Modal Madness, and Sunday closes with Rope Randy at 10:40 p.m. Eastern.

The timing sits well with the community competitors, who race in daylight and can stay on the beach to watch the pros under the lights. 2026 CrossFit Games champions James Sprague and Aimee Cringle are part of the weekend’s buzz, too. The official jump rope sponsor, Velites, says it will sell leftover Games apparel prepared for both champions at its booth, and nowhere else.

What the Weekend Says About CrossFit Participation in the US

CrossFit has spent the last few years answering questions about its future, including a sale process. The participation numbers from 2026 tell a steadier story. Around 254,000 athletes registered for this year’s CrossFit Open, an increase of about 8.1 percent over 2025. Community festivals like Wodapalooza give those Open athletes a place to test themselves in person, on a real floor, in front of a crowd.

For anyone curious about trying a functional fitness competition, a beach event with an Open division and a team option makes an easier first step than a sanctioned qualifier. Most affiliates run in-house throwdowns first, and the CrossFit Community Cup lets athletes compete inside their own gym against people at a similar level. Those formats build toward a weekend like this one. You can follow more event coverage in our CrossFit section and read about the growing crossover with fitness racing in our Hybrid Training coverage.

Medeiros said he will be back out there soon. When he returns, he will find a sport where the headline purse goes to 24 pros and the sand in Huntington Beach holds more than 2,500 other names, most of them racing for a finish time and a story to tell their gym on Monday.