BY NANCY GOODMAN
client since 2016
When I started at Second Wind CrossFit, I had literally never done anything athletic in my life. I’ve always struggled with being overweight, but I’m also competitive so if there was a chance I’d do poorly at something I never even tried.
I would occasionally have periods of time in my twenties where I’d go to a standard gym every few days and do the elliptical and wonder why it wasn’t “working”? Everything revolved around my weight. Once I even went to a CrossFit gym just for an orientation and left in tears. How would I ever be able to participate in THAT as out of shape as I was?
Then the week of my 32nd birthday, having had my second child about six months earlier, I decided to try something radical. I decided to stop worrying about my weight, to stop making excuses, and to try Second Wind. I live in the neighborhood and had seen their Barbell Betty’s, a lifting class by women for women, advertised in the window.
I emailed Steve, the owner, to ask about the class and he put me in touch with Liz and Gayle, the two coaches. Already the experience was different than anything I’d had before, but going was still scary. I circled a date on the calendar and even made my sister come with me.
That Betty’s class changed my life! I felt welcome! I felt successful! I felt sore as all get out, but it felt productive. I cried walking home that night because I felt proud of facing my fears. It wouldn’t be the last time I cried at Second Wind, either because I was proud or frustrated, but really just because I cared so much.
It took about six months of attending Betty’s at Second Wind – of easing into the movements and the programming, of watching myself grow stronger – to decide to attend a regular CrossFit “Workout Of the Day.” Even after six months of doing essentially the same thing, I was still intimidated by the class. Many of the participants feel like real athletes… and here am I, just a mom who’d never done anything athletic in her life.
Trust me, I get it…walking into a CrossFit workout is scary. It’s scary the first time. It’s still scares me a little every time. But everyday I choose to say to myself that it doesn’t matter when I finish or how much I lift, I’m going to push myself as hard as everyone else pushes themselves in this class. Everyone else is suffering too!
Even if I end up minutes slower than everyone else, I’ll know that I gave everything that I had. Every day I feel supported in that goal by my classmates and coaches at Second Wind, whom I’ve come to trust and I know are cheering me on always.
Even though I still often come in last, with the help of this awesome community, I’ve learned to trust my body the way it is. I’m proud to live that truth and to model it for my kids.
– Nancy