Stephanie Remrick

CrossFit never crossed my mind as a workout regimen that would appeal to me. I was always cardio heavy, having run track in high school and then marathons as an adult. Once I achieved my running goals, though, I fell into a workout rut.

 The workout rut intensified when I got pregnant in 2018. My husband and I had to do in-vitro, so I was super worried about anything happening to my body. It was 9 months of little to no activity.

 After my son, Scot, was born in July 2019, I did want to get back in shape. I didn’t want to hang on to any pregnancy weight! Through Mothers of Northern Arlington (MONA), I met Heather and she organized a yoga class at BCF for the MONA group. She’s the one that convinced me that BCF was a great option for anybody and it was at least worth trying. She came with me to my intro session, helped me get signed up for Foundations, then was my accountability buddy for making sure I went to class.

 That was over two years ago and now I’m a mom of two! My daughter, Ruth, was born in February 2021. Unlike my first pregnancy, I continued to workout. I did CrossFit through week 36 of pregnancy and I was less uncomfortable in my second pregnancy because of it. With both pregnancies, CrossFit got me back to a physical state that was stronger than I had been before and I was able to lose all my pregnancy weight.

Now my goals are just to keep showing up and BCF makes that easy! The coaches at 5:30am make mornings fun and relaxed (which is kind of an oxymoron given what we’re doing). And the group of people is very consistent, so we have a very supportive environment. I have yet to wake up at 5am and dread going to CrossFit. This definitely is a testament to the variety of the workouts and the people with whom I do those workouts.

 My advice for newbies is to not look at the workouts before coming. Well, at least this works for me! I think it would be easy for me to see “squat snatches” or “rope climbs” and be like, no thanks! But if you just show up and do what you can, you will see dividends in your fitness. Every move has a modification and there’s no shame in the Fx- approach!