Dear CrossFit,
We’ve known each other for 5 years. When we first met I was so intrigued by you, confused by you and quickly fell in love with you. I had never met anyone like you. You challenged me in ways that i have never been challenged before. You are full of surprises and complexity. You taught me how to move, how to breath, how to believe in myself.
When we first met I didn’t know the possibilities of my strength and what I could lift seemed like decades away. You taught me that consistent hard work is not just a season of my life but all the seasons of my life.
I remember spending the first few years wanting to spend every waking moment with you. Talk about you all the time to strangers walking by, posting about you on my instagram, and talk to my friends and family about you even when they didn’t ask. I wanted the world to know about my new found love. CrossFit.
Spending 5-7 days a week together didn’t feel like enough. I remember you teaching me how to olympic lift and having bruises on my legs like I was a peach. Thank you for the coaching staff that provided the encouragement, the cues and the love that I needed to keep trying. To fail a lift and try again. Thank you for that time I hurt my shoulder and went from snatching 95 pounds to a PVC pipe. Thank you for that journey, and reminding me to keep going and nurse the injury I had. You were right. You knew that if I kept working hard even with my shoulder injury that it would heal and I would be back before i knew it. Thank you for believing in me. And now years after that injury is gone my snatch is up at 115# and the work keeps going. I remember ripping my hands for the first time and thinking to myself how much of a BA I was. Now I know that’s just me not taking care of my hands.
You introduced me to athletes in all walks of life with different career paths, with different desires in life, different ages and you put us all in one room. To sweat to work to go through pain. To be upset to be sad. To cheer to yell to cry. Thank you for the people you put in my life that have molded me into the woman I am today. Thank you for the friendships I’ve made in the community. Thank you for providing me with a place I call work, I get to call home.
I have shifted the way I look at myself the way I look at body. You’ve given me a passion to seek strength seek agility seek balance and look beyond what my body looks like but what my body feels like.
You and I are in for the long haul. I am so happy we met. I know that I will continue to use all of the awareness you’ve shown me. All of the skills you taught me. And as I get older the journey continues. And changes.
I am so thankful for you.
With love, An athlete in the process.
-Karina
I love that my fitness is not tied to one thing. I can do yoga love yoga, be a yoga teacher and still lift and do CrossFit. At the end of the day nothing can replace it. I have found that out over the last 5 years of doing CrossFit. I have seasons in which I go 4-5 times a week with 4-5 times a week of yoga and other seasons where I will take CrossFit classes 1-2 times a week. And that’s just a choice.
It’s science though. If I want to be strong I have to pick up heavy things. I desire to be strong now in the last year of my twenties for the soul purpose of staying strong in my fifties. The work is never done. Fitness is a lifestyle
After failing the Level 1 CF Cert.
Its been 2 years since taking the CF level 1 Certification and failing. At this point I have not gone back to retake it. My life and desires have been molded and lead in a different direction other than obtaining a level one CF certification. At least for the time being. CrossFit has lead me to deepening my yoga practice and now becoming a yoga teacher. I get asked a lot if I am a yogi or a crossfitter. I am both. But at the end of the day CrossFit is the foundation of my strength. CrossFit is the heart of the community I love so much. Even CrossFit realizes the importance of mobility and breath. And I believe it is such an amazing pair for my body for my heart and mind.