Growing up, I was never a fan of exercise. Up until starting in crossfit, I never really enjoyed exercising because I was never taught how to do it or specifically how to make physical activity work for me. As I came of age, my physical education teachers did not try hard enough to get me and other kids into the idea of working out. Having a rare condition and being queer and not knowing how to deal with it gave my teachers the excuse to bench me. I was a basket case for physical education teachers. I didn’t care, and they didn’t either.
During the first few months of the pandemic, I discovered a rare love for exercise. Along the way, I started to also eat healthier and started to feel a bit more in sync with my body. These small but eventually significant changes in my everyday life had a huge impact on my self-esteem (but I’ll talk about self-esteem in another article ). I’m the type of person that does something as soon as I notice something I don’t like. I grew tired of not liking my body nor my eating habits and the first lockdown seemed like the perfect place to start making changes without any distractions, alcohol or fast foods nearby.
Eventually I saw little progress. Without knowing much and trying to filter all of the different opinions on eating and working out online, I kept going. Eventually, as things started to open up again, I began to lose focus and home workouts eventually got boring. Throughout my workout journey, I didn’t realize that more than working out for the sake of mental health and some aesthetic, I needed the challenge and the rush of pushing myself to places I did not know I had in me.
When 2021 started, I was not in my best moment. Between personal struggles and an undiagnosed depression, I wasn’t doing fine. I stopped working out and for a few months I fell back into my old eating habits and I slowly started to go back to a dark place mentally. Again, I found myself looking in the mirror and not liking what I was becoming.
However, one random day I was in a Burger King drive-thru (I know, I was not okay) and I saw that a Crossfit center, or box as us crossfitters like to call it, had just moved very close to my house. A week later, I went in and the rest is literally history.
If you would’ve told me a year ago or in high school that I would be doing crossfit, I would’ve probably laughed at your face. Not because it wouldn’t be possible, but because I was never taught to believe that someone like me, a queer, average-bodiedguy with a rare arm limitation, would be doing crossfit, exercise and actually turn out to be some what good at it.
Along with the pain, discipline and strength (both mentally and physically), I’ve learned from the people in my box about love, friendship, kindness and situations that sometimes make yours seem like nothing.
Before I knew it, I was hooked! I woke up and the first thing I would do was to run and workout. I started working out with an empty bar, to know having said bar filled with weight and new skills acquired along with it. I discovered that the bench I was forced to sit in while in high school was just an excuse everyone made for me and I believed it.
Within the people in the complex, I found some that helped me with nutrition and others with my emotions. In a year, I have never heard a coach tell me I cannot do anything because of my condition. In essence, my crossfit box is a community, there is always someone to talk to and workout with. I have never felt alone when I’m here and that is something a year ago I did not know I needed.
Aside from the emotional and personal rewards I’ve obtained from crossfit, I also fell in love with it because of its challenging complexity. Every day is a new day in crossfit. While most exercises are the same, you never do the same routine twice. Although most days can seem the same with our routines, the one thing that is always different about my day is my workout. It helps me break my routine and allows me to relax while also challenging myself.
I won’t say that every day here has been perfect. There have been days where I’ve questioned what I do and when life gets in the way the first thing to leave behind are always the things we enjoy the most. Just like in crossfit, I’ve learned to accept the bad days because they always try to teach us something. As I look back in the year that has passed, I owe most of my success outside of my training to crossfit. My box, its coaches and people have seen things in me that I once struggled to see. I look forward to competing soon and seeing more progress in a year.