How the Reebok CrossFit Games Changed My Life | Your Inner ...

One of the questions I get asked most in my everyday life is ?How did you give up your full-time job in the agency world to buy a gym and what was your turning point??.

I?m not entirely sure when I would consider myself a CrossFitter. ?I had been doing CrossFit on and off for years to train for sports, doing a lot of the main benchmark ladies and following some of the programming on the CrossFit.com website, but I was always just a member of a Globo gym and did it on my own. ?No matter how much I liked the functional training, I was still a ?Monday is chest, Tuesday is back, Wednesday is arms?? kind of guy.

May of 2012 is when I joined my gym and started working part-time as a personal trainer and it?s when I started training using functional fitness as my full-time regime. ?We are not a CrossFit box however we do programming using functional movements, bodyweight, gymnastics and Olympic lifting as well as high-intensity interval training and tabatas. ?For the most part our programming isn?t as intense as CrossFit?s, but it is along the same lines.

After training and working out in this kind of environment for only a month and seeing the results I did, I decided I wanted to step up my game and learn more about CrossFit and I started reading and researching more and trying to learn how to do Olympic Lifts, kipps, double-unders and all that other fun stuff on my own. ?I started training myself daily using CrossFit.com, the CrossFit Journal and a lot of YouTube and instantly fell in love with the type of programming and the feeling of almost dying after each workout. ?I had a small taste of the Kool-Aid and I liked it.

At the time I was still working full-time behind a desk from 8:30-5 and then personal training clients in the evenings and on the weekends. ?It made for very long days and I really felt like the desk job was slowly sucking the life out of me and killing my soul. I had been working for 13 years behind the desk and it?s what lead to me putting on over 100 pounds 10 years ago and I was now miserable doing what I use to love. ?It seemed I was happiest after 5pm and on the weekends when I was training people and teaching classes. ?Helping people get healthy is what I really wanted to be doing but I knew that I couldn?t afford to do it full-time financially.

Flash forward to July and I?ve got an amazing opportunity to fly down to California to attend The CrossFit Games with FitFluential and GNC as an ambassador. ?At that point in time in my training I was still a CrossFit newbie and hadn?t had the chance to train with what I would call other ?real? CrossFitters and didn?t really know a lot of the athletes that were competing in the games, but how could I pass up this opportunity? ?I couldn?t! ?I mean, it was the CrossFit Games AND California, we had to go!

So, off we went to spend 4 days in sunny Cali watching the fittest people on Earth compete against each other to see who would be crowned champion and what we witnessed is indescribable! Not just from the athletes competing but from the community and support and fitness level of the FANS! These had to be the fittest fans on Earth as well. ?Meeting the people I got to meet, talking to others about CrossFit, all of the vendors that were there for CrossFit specific reasons, seeing the athletes and just the overall awesomeness inspired me to no end! ?Like I said, I really can?t put it into words (which is bad considering this is a blog and depends on words!).

While we were down there we also got to workout a few times with Reebok and some of their CrossFit athletes and that was worth the trip in itself. ?Just seeing how they move, having them correct my form and to see how humble and nice they were, like I said, inspiring.

I keep using the word inspiring to describe how I felt and I looked up synonyms to try and use another word to describe the experience for me, but no other word cut it. It was inspiring to the point that when we got back home I left my full-time behind the desk job and started doing personal training full-time. ?I had had enough of being miserable and needed to be doing what I was passionate about and I needed to be getting people healthy. ?This was all brought on by my experience at The CrossFit Games and it completely changed my life. ?If it weren?t for this opportunity to see The CrossFit Games, I don?t know that I would have ever taken that step in changing my life.

So here we are, almost a year later, and I?m now a part owner of the gym I was working at last year, I?m a CrossFit Level 1 Trainer and I competed in the CrossFit Games Open this past Spring. ?Who woulda thunk it? ?I?m heading down to Vancouver on June 6 to watch the Canada West Regionals and to cheer on a few of my friends that I?ve met through CrossFit that are competing and I?m pumped! I can?t wait to be immersed in the CrossFit Community again!

Unfortunately this year I don?t think I?ll make the Games in July simply because I?m getting married in August and all of our funds are going towards that. Who knew weddings were so effin? expensive? ?I?m disappointed that I can?t go but ?I will say, if you can go, you should! I promise you?ll be inspired!

Source: http://www.yourinnerskinny.ca/how-the-reebok-crossfit-games-changed-my-life/

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