Throughout high school I was always playing either soccer or basketball competitively, and then when I got to college I continued playing intramural soccer.  I never really lifted weights or went to the gym, I just figured playing sports and going for runs would keep be in good enough shape.  After college I found myself with less and less time to play sports and would just go on an occasional run or two each week.  In 2014 I decided to train for a marathon, but during training ended up hurting my IT band and had to postpone the race until 2015.  During the marathon in 2015 I injured my IT band again and had to pull out of the race at the 14 mile mark.  From then on my legs wouldn’t cooperate and would only allow me to run 1 maybe 2 miles at a time without any pain or discomfort.  Due to this pain/discomfort I started to go on fewer and fewer runs.
In January this year both myself and my father decided to challenge each other to see who could lose more weight in the first three months of the year, mostly due to the fact that we were both the heaviest we had ever weighed (right at 200lbs).  As I started to create some kind of self-made diet and exercise plan from different things I had seen on the internet, I saw an advertisement for the BCF New You 6 week program.  I figured I might as well try it out and see how it works since I was sure the people running the program knew far more about weight training and nutrition than I did.
I had heard how CrossFit was like a cult and how the people could be very serious and standoffish.  I quickly learned that this wasn’t the case at BCF.  Everyone was very welcoming and open to helping someone who was new to Olympic lifting (or lifting free weights in general) like me out whenever possible.  The Coaches were very engaging and encouraging throughout the strength training and WODs; they didn’t just tell you 
the workout and then go sit behind the desk.  It made the workouts bearable because I wasn’t struggling to figure out what I was supposed to be doing because they were there to actually coach me through them.
After  the new you program I had lost about 10 pounds, and thought to myself that if I could lose that in 6 weeks I wonder what I could lose if I came for 3 months, so I signed up for a membership.  In the six total months (inclusive of new you) that I have been doing CrossFit I have lost a total of 40lbs (and am now the lightest I’ve been since high school) and gained strength, stamina and overall fitness.  I am now able to go for longer runs without pain or discomfort and just have an overall better quality of life.  I am a firm believer that the atmosphere you work in (in this case workout in) can make or break the work you are doing, and the atmosphere I found at BCF makes working out fun, interesting and challenging.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Until I graduated from high school, I was a very active person. I played several different sports and generally spent my weekends doing something outdoors. After having to make the decision to drop out of college during the Great Recession and find a full-time job, I found it very difficult to keep with a fitness routine of some sort over several years. I was bored with doing the same things every time I would go to the gym, and my odd work schedule prevented me from maintaining a habit that involved being active on a regular basis.

 After years of becoming more and more sedentary, I ended up suffering from a major knee injury that required surgery to correct. I went through months of physical therapy to recover and then attempted to continue being active after ending my PT sessions. Again, I ran into problems maintaining a consistent fitness routine. I tried several different programs but would eventually get bored and quit over time.
Finally, after moving to the DC metro area for a new job and getting comfortable with my new surroundings, I decided that I had enough of being out of shape and gaining weight. I hit my highest weight at 345 lbs when I finally decided that I needed to do something to turn things around. I walked by Ballston Crossfit many times and one day made the commitment to join. I knew it would be a challenge but I was determined to stick with it.
My first day of foundations was terrible. I could barely make it through the warm up routine without feeling extremely winded. I struggled to make it back to my apartment after every session. But I kept coming back because of the sense of community that I felt as well as the extremely supportive coaching staff at BCF.
It has been seven months since foundations, and I am amazed at the progress I have made. I have lost 50 lbs, increased my strength much faster than I thought possible, and I complete workouts without having to scale as significantly I as did when I started. In one of my happiest moments since joining BCF, I completed my first Rx workout a few weeks ago, and since then I’ve Rx’ed a few more workouts. Many athletes are able to complete workouts much faster than I can, but for me, being able to make it through these workouts occasionally without scaling is something I am most proud of.
I have noticed a big change in my mental health as well. I have more confidence at work which has led to better productivity. I have also become more social and more willing to interact with people. My ability to handle stress has improved tremendously. On top of all of that, I finally feel like I am making progress on goals that I have put off for so long.
I know that because of the coaches and community at BCF that I will achieve many goals this month. Had I not joined and committed to being a part of the BCF community, I doubt that I would have made as much progress as I have so far.

 

Embracing fitness was without question the best change I made for myself in 2016. I recently passed the one year mark of starting Crossfit (my first foundations class was on 11/9) and while I wish I had done some things differently, I’m proud of the modest progress I’ve made so far and I’m in awe of the residual effects on my mental health.Growing up, I mostly did individualized sports: tae kwon do, gymnastics, diving, swimming, and flying trapeze. I preferred refined activities that required flexibility, grace, technical precision, and body awareness. To this day, I don’t think anything has been more satisfying than doing back flips or more exhilarating than a successful catch in a flying trapeze show, punctuated by the crowd’s roar.
As is unfortunately common, I picked up unhealthy habits when I went to college and fell into four years of lazy indulgence. Once in a blue moon I would do yoga with a friend or go rock climbing, but exercise was no longer a part of my normal routine. My senior year it dawned on me that I was about to lose free access to a 140,000 square foot state of the art fitness complex I had hardly touched. I started taking classes 3-4 times a week: pilates, total body, cycle. My main motivation was cosmetic; I was at my fattest and pastiest and wanted to do something about it. I measured success solely in how toned my legs and stomach looked. My experience with exercise was about as superficial as most college relationships.
In 2014 I moved to D.C. and told myself that all of the walking and stair climbing I was doing counted as exercise. By the time I joined Crossfit in 2015, I was as out of shape as I’d ever been. Dan encouraged me to take a foundations class at Ballston Crossfit and I did, since I liked the idea of utilizing personalized coaching and a group setting to learn how to weightlift. I’d never lifted a barbell in my life, except for one embarrassing experience in college when I tried to do a back squat and immediately fell on my butt, before exiting the gym as fast as humanly possible.
I was hooked from the start due to the constantly varied programming (combining cardio, gymnastics, and lifting) and the ambitious, inspiring culture fostered by the BCF members and coaches. The strength training and skill building sessions gave me the technical challenges I’d always loved in individualized sports and the signature short WODs (workout of the day) tricked me into enjoying cardio and allowed me to tap into a whole new level of sustained, intense focus.
In a year, I went from being completely incapable of a single knee raise to doing toes to bar. I learned to do double unders, rope climbs, scaled handstand push ups, and heavy, unbroken sets of wall ball shots and kettlebell swings. I can run farther and faster than I ever have before. I can strict press 70 lbs, deadlift 175, back squat 150, squat clean 110, snatch 70+, and clean and jerk 105, all big improvements from my meager lifts this time last year. And perhaps most importantly, I’m a much better arm wrestler.
For the first time in my life, I feel strong. Now that I know what a deeply empowering experience that is, I can’t believe our society has largely abandoned physical strength as the baseline for personal development. It pains me to think about how few women in particular take advantage of such a wonderful opportunity to boost their confidence and improve their lives. Lord knows I wish I’d had Crossfit when I was an awkward, miserable thirteen year old with body issues.
But the most dramatic evolution Crossfit has made in my life isn’t the physical feats or even the self-confidence, it’s the changes to my mental health.
When I first started to take control of my own life in high school, I identified obsessive, perfectionist tendencies in myself and acknowledged that I’d probably always be fighting to keep those characteristics in check. I still remember the day I first shifted my mindset by realigning my priorities and expectations. As a result, I became a more relaxed person, someone who lived more in the moment and didn’t overthink things or worry unnecessarily quite as much. It was easy to maintain this perspective while living inside the enclosed safe space that is college. But after entering the real world, I gradually felt myself losing those traits I’d carefully collected and with them, part of my chosen identity.
Most of the anxiety and stress that resulted began to manifest itself in my professional life. I developed a dysfunctional, obsessive relationship with work that launched me into a downward spiral and caused me to dissolve into tears in my boss’s office more than once. My behavior was sustained because part of me thrived in the comfortable familiarity of constantly throwing myself at task after task. Ticking off the check boxes wasn’t really providing me meaning but it gave me quick, addicting fixes of fleeting satisfaction. I fed that part of myself by staying endlessly busy, causing it to grow in power and size until it choked out the rest of me.
During that time, I started Crossfit and it quickly became my form of therapy. After furiously typing away at my keyboard for nine hours nonstop except to scarf down lunch, I would force myself to go to the gym. It seemed magical: I would enter the gym a zombie and would leave energized and full of life. And the best part was that it was 100% effective.
Crossfit became my refuge of meditation where I didn’t think at all. All I had to do was show up and do the proscribed programming, usually scaled down. Each time I gave the workout my all, but I didn’t spend any time outside of the gym setting goals. Crossfit was my space for anti-obsession.
As a result, it ended up being the place where I learned to develop real self-control. In the middle of a workout when I realized everyone else was way ahead of me and I felt myself start to despair, I would dial into the reason I was there in the first place and would renew my focus on my individual journey, letting go of the fear of being last. Or, when I was on the verge of giving up during a particularly tough movement or run, I would talk myself into continuing, latching onto whatever dumb thing came to mind to give me the motivation I needed to keep going.
These acts of mental gymnastics allowed me to exercise my ability to shape my own path through conscious decisions during emotionally taxing moments. Working out has helped reprogram my neurological pathways in ways that affect all other areas of my life. Just last night when I felt creeping anxiety and stress, I was able to hold the sensations at bay by simply recognizing the feeling and making the choice to relax and have a good time instead. It wasn’t easy — just like during a brutal workout, I had to keep recommitting to my decision, but it got easier as the night went on.
I used to think behaving obsessively was a sign that I was too controlling. Crossfit has helped me develop the self-awareness I needed in order to realize that it’s actually a sign that I’m allowing myself to be controlled by negative emotions and that I need to dial back into my sense of inner peace and purpose so I can live ambitiously in a healthy way. I’m still a novice both physically and mentally, but I’m grateful for how much I’ve learned already and for how much is still in store.
 

I’ve been a “runner” since 2007, when I realized my “freshman 15” had become “graduation 30.”  Not only did running help me lose fat, but it became my stress relief.  Unfortunately, in 2011, I began having knee pain that limited my runs to under 2 miles.  I tried other cardio, but it wasn’t the same.
I had to do something to stay in shape and keep from going “JUDI SMASH” so decided on weight lifting.  It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but was afraid of injuries. My first personal trainer got my endurance back up, but failed to push me or actually have me lift weights.  I eventually changed gyms and got a different trainer.  He showed me how to lift weights, but I knew my form was wrong because my knees and shoulders would hurt.
Finally, after months of sadness and gaining weight, I decided to look in to crossfit.  After doing some research, the box with the best reviews was literally right outside my apartment.  From the first week of Foundations, I knew I had found my fitness home.  The work outs were great, form was always stressed, and it was like a little athletic family.
Two months later I got back in to running, since the knee had been holding up during run WODs.  One day on a leisurely run, I checked my watch and stopped in my tracks.  3.5 miles!! I hadn’t run that far without pain in years.
Now, almost two years later, I’ve never had a recurrence of knee pain.  I was even able to complete the Army Navy Half Marathon with another crossfitter.
I will forever be grateful to the coaches for always pushing me to do my best, in a safe manner.  I’ve never been more happy with my body and plan to keep making improvements.