Adam D. - President/CEO

As a high school sophomore, Adam Dittrich embarked on his banking career by doing part-time odd jobs, wrapping coins, and shredding documents at Americana Community Bank in Sleepy Eye. It was a job he kept throughout college, transitioning from Teller to IT (including managing the bank’s conversion from dumb terminals to area networks) to starting the finance department at Americana shortly after graduating from Augsburg University. He became President/CEO in 2008.  

While Adam has thus far spent his entire 24-year banking career at Americana Community Bank, banking is just one of his passions.  It was another, baseball, that ultimately led to Adam’s second career as owner of Crusher Fitness + Health in Waconia. He found that as he got older, his body was having a difficult time keeping up with the demands of adult amateur baseball. After trying a bunch of different workouts, he gave Cross Fit a shot and found his magic bullet.  

Buoyed by his results, Adam began to share the workouts with his baseball teammates, then with their wives, and then with friends and family, eventually taking over a corner of the Victoria fieldhouse for group training sessions. Now wholly hooked, Adam earned his Cross Fit training certification and told his wife he wanted to start a gym.  He’s not sure she really took him seriously, as this was right in the middle of the great recession and they were dealing with a lot of stress and sleepless nights. Like many community banks at this time, Americana was struggling and according to Adam, it came as close to not surviving as any bank that did survive. Adam found that during this time of incredible pressure and anxiety, working out cleared his brain and allowed him to shut it off for an hour a day. Cross Fit kept his body and mind healthy and this convinced Adam more than ever that he wanted to share what he had learned. 

Eventually Adam located a foreclosure property in Waconia. He recruited a friend’s wife to run the gym and along with a group of friends and family, did all the demo and rehab. In December of 2013, they opened Crusher Cross Fit*. The name Crusher is very special to Adam. Crusher was the nickname of his nephew Lucas who tragically passed away in an accident at the age of 18. Adam says, “Crusher loved life. He gave it his all at everything he did, work or play. He loved large. Crusher was a big kid who put others in front of himself and didn’t let anyone pick on ‘his’ people. That is how he earned his nickname (along with some resemblance to the former wrestler), but he was also much more than that.” Crusher continues to inspire Adam to be his best self every day.  

Nowadays, Adam doesn’t work a lot in the business of the gym, but he embraces being present, teaching youth classes, and being part of the Waconia community. In this way, he sees the parallels to his day job at the bank where he gets to help people and businesses and see the positive impact they have on their communities. When he’s not at the bank or the gym, Adam enjoys time with his wife Jody and their four children. 

*Adam dropped Cross Fit from the name earlier this year in response to controversial statements made by the (now former) owner of the Cross Fit corporate brand. While Crusher Health +Fitness embraces and teaches the Cross Fit methodology, they are not a franchise.