CrossFit Gym Owner Defends 'Sexist' Video Of Women Taken Mid-Workout

The owner of a North Carolina Crossfit gym is facing continued backlash over his controversial photos and captions of women’s posteriors while working out in addition to his ensuing apology that accused his critics of being “butt hurt” over the issue.

Blue Ridge Crossfit owner Tom Tomlo’s social media woes began when he posted a video to Instagram Friday showing several women mid-workout in the Buncombe County, North Carolina, gym that specializes in the popular Crossfit brand exercise routines. Although the Instagram video was later deleted, screenshots were taken showing that Tomlo had placed captions such as “Dayum!” over images of the women bent over in black workout pants.

An image showing another female member’s posterior bent over a piece of gym equipment had the word “blueridgegirls” branded over her and another screencap from the video reads “humpday.”

In an interview with WLOS-TV, Tomlo initially apologized for the incident saying that he was “having fun” with the members of his gym and that the hundreds of negative social media reactions pouring in on the company’s pages were misguided.

“We do pictures of guys' butts around here, we have an informal loving family and it's not a negative thing," Tomlo told WLOS Monday. "We were having fun. We were videoing, talking about booties that day. I can't control the way this is being portrayed, and I'm regretful for it. Someone took offense to it. They took a picture of it and put it in a way, I can see how it would be misunderstood."

But Tomlo’s apology coincided with a profanity-laced Facebook post in which he blasted people making a “public” issue of his posts labeled sexist by hundreds of women on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

“It has been brought to my attention that some people chose to get butt hurt today and make a public post in this group also some other bullsh*t in private,” Tomlo wrote in the now-deleted post to the Blue-rijj Koche page that is a subsidiary of the Blue Ridge CrossFit Facebook page.

“You must have lost your f*cking mind if you for one moment think this is a platform or community for you to reate some bullsh*t like that. No one in this establishment has the green light on that. I do not play those games and we do not acknowledge that type of petty, feeble minded garbage,” continued Tomlo’s Facebook post.

A three-year member of the gym, Dalton Buchanan, told WLOS that he and several others quit this weekend after being made aware of the owner’s offensive video.

"I know that a lot of people have left at this point. A lot of the coaches have left, because they just don't want to be associated with that mindset," Buchanan said. "If it takes a news organization contacting you for you to say I'm even a little bit sorry for what I said, then you probably are sorry for the wrong reasons.”

Buchanan also criticized Tomlo’s aggressive apology, saying “This is not OK.”

"His message to the members, that anyone who agreed with her was in the wrong, and he was in the right, and that, if you did not agree with his point of view, you were not fit to be there, that in my opinion says that I shouldn't be there," Buchanan added.