Hello, everyone! Coach Garrett here. You’ve been receiving a ton of great articles on nutrition, exercise, sleep, and creating healthy habits. Awesome! But how about we get a little personal, yeah? I’m going to take you on a brief journey into why I started doing CrossFit.
I’ve played sports my entire life. I’ve always loved the competitive aspect of them, the team environment, and, of course, the physical challenges. I started exercising when I was 17, and that was mostly Sports Performance training at a gym in Kansas City. I went off to college, decided college athletics wasn’t for me, but I still wanted to continue exercising. I did mostly bodybuilding and basic strength training, but had absolutely ZERO guidance. Once I moved back home, that all changed.
I returned to Kansas City after school and joined a group training gym that “did CrossFit” but wasn’t officially labeled as CrossFit. While there, I learned some of the basic CrossFit movements, discovered what a Metcon was, and understood what a structured program could look like. I also witnessed a man, David Pope, doing Handstand Walks and I thought, “That’s cool! I wonder if I’ll ever be able to do that?”
Fast forward 1-2 years, and I started doing all these Strongman Saturday workouts with David. He was teaching me how to do bar muscle-ups, dumbbell snatches, and having me do sled drags, SkiErg sprints, and dumbbell push presses for time… I had no idea what was happening. I just knew it was really hard, I wasn’t very good at it, but I had so much fun doing it because of the people I was doing it with.
David explained to me that that is basically what CrossFit is; people doing hard things together, but loving the journey because of who they do it with (of course, this is focused on exercise).
I knew I wanted to get better at everything we were doing because it involved things I wasn’t good at, and it was hard and humbling. I was told, “If you want to get better at CrossFit, you have to go to a place that does CrossFit and do CrossFit with those people.” I joined CrossFit Northland one week after David told me that.
I knew I wanted to get healthier, stronger, and build a fun, sustainable lifestyle, and that’s what I’ve been able to do at CrossFit Northland for the last 6 years. I’ve grown in ways I wouldn’t have imagined possible elsewhere. I’ve done things I never thought I would. Plus, I’ve met some of the best people ever, including some of my life-long friends. CrossFit is more than a brand or a title. It’s a community, and an opportunity to make life-long changes. That’s what I wanted, and that’s what I got.
