Underground Throwdown 2026: The Community Fitness Event You Don’t Need a Team For
On Saturday, September 26, we hosted the Underground Throwdown, our biggest community fitness event of the year. Nobody signed up with a team.
That’s the format. You register on your own, our coaches build the teams, and every team takes on four workouts over four hours. Think of it as a giant sports day for grown-ups.
How Our Community Fitness Event Works
Most team competitions ask you to bring your own crew, and that one rule keeps a lot of people from ever trying a community fitness event.
If your friends don’t train, or you’re newer to the gym, finding teammates can feel harder than the workouts themselves. So we took that step off your plate.
You sign up as an individual and our coaches put the teams together. Then they choose the workouts with those teams in mind.
The movements are ones you’d see in a regular class, and every workout comes with scaled options. We also try to bring in something new each year, so even long-time members get a few firsts.
Why a Team Makes You Push Harder
If you’ve ever talked yourself out of a community fitness event, the reason was probably some version of “I’d hold my team back.”
The research points the other way. A 2023 meta-analysis of 19 studies, covering more than 1,900 people, found that exercising as part of a team, where your effort counts toward the group result, produced more effort and persistence than exercising alone.
It’s called the Köhler effect, and it’s specifically about the less experienced member. When the team’s result depends on you, you find effort you wouldn’t find on your own.
The social side matters too. In a small 12-week study of medical students, the ones who took a weekly group fitness class reported lower stress and better physical, mental and emotional quality of life. Students who trained on their own logged more hours but saw no significant change in stress.
Most people read that hesitation as a sign they aren’t ready yet. It isn’t. It’s a structure problem.
The Throwdown is built to solve it. The coaches handle the teams, the workouts scale, and the people beside you are counting on you in the best possible way.
The 2026 Underground Throwdown Awards
The day closed with our award ceremony. Here’s who took them home.
Rookie Award: Burak Gulseren
Brock is new to the CrossFit community and new to many of the movements, and he excelled anyway. The effort he brought on Saturday is exactly what this award is for.
MVP: Gadi Gomez
Gadi took MVP for how he showed up for his team. He pulled his weight from the first workout to the last.
Spirit Award: Sonia Shanbag
Sonia is who we picture when we talk about the spirit of this event. She supports the people around her, gets genuinely excited about their success, and that energy spreads.
Miss Congeniality: Abby McGrory
This award is new for 2026, and Abby set the standard for it. She was warm, high-spirited and supportive of everyone she crossed paths with.
The Podium
First place went to Rock Hard. Congratulations to Secret Ninja Turles in second and Three Little Burpees in third.
Thank You to Our Partners
A community fitness event this size takes a lot of people, many of them working behind the scenes.
Thrive, the Canadian protein and hydration brand we carry in the gym, donated prizes. Alpha and Omega donated prizes too, and were on-site offering complimentary tune-ups for our athletes.
Our newest community partners, Hotel Victoria and Mossop’s Social House, donated the prizes for our top three teams.
And Julieth from Athlete Inside captured the day in photos. Thank you.
What a Community Fitness Event Shows About Training at 6S
The Throwdown happens once a year. The structure behind it runs all year.
On Saturday, nobody had to find a team, write a workout or figure out how to scale it. That’s our job, on Throwdown day and in every class. We coach the person, not just the workout.
Coaching is there. A coach runs every class and adjusts each movement to where you are today.
Programming is done for you. The workout is planned before you walk in, so the only decision you make is to show up.
Class times are set. Training has a fixed place in your week, so it isn’t fighting everything else for a slot.
Community is built in. The people you’d meet at the Throwdown are the people you’ll see in class on a Tuesday.
That setup is also why routines stick here. We made the full case in our post on fitness consistency.
Your First Step Toward Next Year’s Throwdown
You don’t have to wait a year to find out what our community fitness event feels like. The same coaches, structure and people are here every week.
Book a free No Sweat Intro and we’ll talk through your goals, your schedule and the best place for you to start.
Here for you, Your 6S Team
