Going Pro

The Professional CrossFitter

Welcome to my new life as a Professional CrossFitter.  And by that, I do not mean I am paid to CrossFit, nor do I mean I am a Games contender.  Not even close.  I mean I am a working professional who loves CrossFit.  Most of the CrossFit blogs I have come across are training blogs focusing on their “Road to Regionals” or running a CrossFit box or using CrossFit to lose weight.  For me, I wanted to share the adventure of keeping CrossFit a major part of my life – the struggle of making time to train and stay committed, training and eating on business trips, dealing with a commuting schedule, etc.  I have always admired the “hard core” CrossFitters whose commitment seems to be 24/7 – eat, sleep, work CrossFit.  Their spouses do CrossFit, they have an active job as a firefighter or police officer, their kids do CrossFit kids, they have an athletic background.  That’s not me…

I am a recent JD/MBA graduate.  I just started a job with an investment bank doing both financial and legal work.  I currently commute a little over an hour each way to work – from Tuscaloosa, AL to Birmingham.  I train at CrossFit Tuscaloosa, and have been working with Drew Shamblin since 2008. I started CrossFit in October 2008 to lose the freshman 15 that I decided to wait until my first year of law school to put on.  But the rates at that gym were astronomical for a meager student budget.  So I’d go a month, never miss a day, and then stop for 3 months to save some money.  I didn’t become a CrossFit regular until January/February 2010 when Drew started a gym that was CrossFit only and was far more affordable and accessible to my student schedule.  This is when the relationship moved past flirtation and we had our “defining the relationship” moment.  There were no more excuses. I began to CrossFit 5-6 times per week, but let’s be honest, even then I was still thinking of it as a weight loss program, just more fun.  During the first few months at this box, I decided that for this relationship to go anywhere it was time to give into some of CrossFit’s interests – I tried Paleo during our Paleo challenges, I put in the extra time to lift heavier weights, I cursed the green box and decided I’d jump up on 24” bad knee be damned!  At the same time I was doing half-marathons and had done my first full-marathon.  No one at the time would have considered me a runner.  I used CrossFit with a few short runs scattered around to train for these races, and since I was improving each time without doing any traditional training, I decided CrossFit was it.  Let’s make this official – I “liked” the CrossFit page on Facebook. 

So it’s been over a year and a half since then, and now I’m a Level 1 Certified trainer at Drew’s own box that he started with a few of us back in December 2010.  I started going to competitions to cheer for Drew and Sarabeth Phillips (SB) back in March 2010 with the Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee Sectionals – where Drew came in second to Rich (yes that’d be Rich Froning, Jr. who would become “that guy who lost the games” and then shut everyone up a year later as the “Fittest Man on Earth”).  Competitions are addicting.  You meet so many awesome people and you leave jacked on some serious CrossFit ‘roids that make you think “Hell yah!  I’m going to go to the Games!”  I’ve been the “CrossFit Mom” for SB and other competitors at several of the Garage Games Series and the Faction Games.  I spent my post-California Bar exam watching the CrossFit Games at the Home Depot Center (be jealous – it was awesome).  I finally competed myself at the Garage Games South Georgia Throwdown in Albany, GA….ummm hello awesome.  Placed 12^th…..in SCALED – damn 135 lb power cleans.  Talk about a humbling experience.  Definitely puts things in perspective to go from usually at the top of CFT’s leaderboard to the bottom of a competition.  But it was the perfect motivation to put me in the right frame of mind to stay committed to CrossFit despite the demands of my new job.

So here we are….get to know me, my training, my crazy work schedule.  Give your advice, your commentary, your questions…heck give me your heckling if you feel like it.  I want to get better as a CrossFitter.  I want to do better at competitions.  I want my sub-2 hour half-marathon.  I want a healthy running partner (my beagle, Rhett Butler).   Here’s the adventure to get what I want…