- What was life like before you became a member?
Two of the three years before I joined Keystone CrossFit, my wife and I travelled full-time in a Promaster van we converted into a camper van. We worked for a marketing agency that would staff us to different events all over the country and used those bookings to visit 14 National Parks. We boondocked in the Arizona desert for almost 3 months straight at one point. It was tough giving up that freedom. I’d honestly say I was in a bit of a depression when we stopped traveling all the time. Getting back to CrossFit has helped me out of that.
2. At the time you enrolled, were you already exercising? What was your previous background in fitness?
I’ve been big time into fitness for the last 10 years. COVID knocked me off my game and set me back with my fitness goals. I was living in Maryland when the pandemic happened, and all the gyms in the area were forced to close for two months. Before the pandemic, I was in the gym 5 days a week, some days doing an hour of strength training or Olympic lifting, then attending a metcon. I had even started to hit some of the higher skill movements like muscle-ups and handstand push-ups. After the pandemic, I fell out of CrossFit for a few years, and also began dealing with a bulging disk and a shoulder injury. I spent most of the year before joining the gym doing rehab full time.
3. What originally prompted you to seek us out?
I dropped into the gym about 5 years ago, before I lived in the area. I don’t remember the specific workout that day, but I do recall Tim letting me buy a t-shirt instead of paying the drop-in fee, and it’s been my favorite workout t-shirt ever since.
4. What was your goal when you originally signed up?
I just wanted to get back to feeling healthy and strong again. My wife and I had our first child this year (baby girl Oakley). As soon as I heard she was expecting, I knew I wanted to get back into a better fitness routine and set a healthy example for my family.
5. have you liked best about working with us?
I think our coaches do an excellent job of encouraging appropriate scaling. We are always talking about the intended stimulus and what we want the workout to accomplish. There was a recent workout with pull-ups, and we talked about scaling to meet the volume and stimulus. In that particular workout, the idea was to hit a similar volume either banded or on the rings, rather than kip, or do many tiny sets of strict if you couldn’t hit the stimulus number strictly over all the rounds. It was a perfect example of coaching for progress.
6. What are you most proud of achieving since you started?
Dealing with injury has been a big slice of humble pie with lifting and CrossFit. Recently, I’ve felt like I’ve turned the corner with my back and shoulder. After struggling with shoulder pressing movements for a year, I suddenly made huge jumps over the past month. I PR’d my shoulder press and thruster, and three weeks later, I PR’d my thruster again, achieving something outlandish like 30lbs over my recent thruster PR.
It was a very gratifying lift knowing how much work had gone into improving my mobility and stability in those areas that, at one point, felt like they may never be strong again.
7. With everything that you have accomplished, has your view of yourself changed?
It’s undoubtedly easier to reflect on the work I’ve been putting in and feel good about the process I’m working on to take care of myself. I struggled with fitness, weight, and self-image growing up, and that sticks with you later in life. In college, the freshman 15 was more like the freshmen 50 for me. I went to the opposite end of the spectrum in my 20s with an obsession over body composition and weight. I was lean but not getting stronger, my routine wasn’t improving my mobility, and ultimately, it wasn’t sustainable. You are constantly changing, though. Now that I’m later into my 30s, I’ve had to learn that what worked 5 or 10 years ago isn’t possible or even appropriate anymore. The beauty of fitness is that it allows you to learn and adapt, keeping you sharp constantly.
8. What would you say to anyone else who might be dealing with any similar struggles you did?
I’d say fitness is a journey where resilience and consistency are more important than perfection. It takes thousands of little healthy choices to create an overall healthy routine. One of the things I love about CrossFit is how sometimes the days when you don’t feel like working out become the best days. Those are the days when you just have to show up, and more often than not, a coach, someone else in class, or the WOD itself will give you that little spark you need to put everything you have into the WOD. You come out the other side of it feeling way better than you went in.
The other thing I’d say is that your nutrition is like 60% of the battle to being healthy, and that is just as hard as building a consistent fitness routine. Whether it’s wanting to get stronger or change your body composition, making the right food choices can either amplify the work you are putting in or limit/nullify it. If only fried chicken and ice cream weren’t so dang tasty…
9. Do you have any special moments/memories?
My sister and I had the chance to spectate the 2019 CrossFit games, which was such a fun experience. That was the year athletes qualified as national champions, so there were around 110 men and women in the first event, and the cuts were chaotic. It was wild seeing the skill gap between the top 40 and bottom 40, knowing they were still absurdly fit people. They AMRAP’d “Mary” later in the week, and watching Kari Pearce do handstand pushups and pullups was like watching a cyborg. The last day was so exciting, Fraser and Toomey dominated the final event to repeat as champions and start their run as the best athletes ever to do the sport. I’d love to attend the games again someday with my camper; it’s like a festival but for fitness.
10. What is your favorite movement/lift?
The snatch is easily my favorite lift. Hitting a heavy snatch is like an out-of-body experience. That tightness when you set your shoulders and fold down to the bar. The feeling of your trunk being rock solid as the bar leaves the ground. That split second of patience as the bar glides past the knee, everything is moving in unison, and it slips into the power pocket, then just pure adrenaline as you finally explode out of it, extending with all your might. It finishes with a little bit of prayer as you slip down under it and punch it out. On the heaviest lifts, there’s a moment where I feel like I’m blacking out. When I come to and the bar is overhead, it’s such a rush. The sound of a heavy barbell hitting the mat after a successful lift is one of the best sounds on earth.
