I was born competitive

From a young age I have always been competitive with the attitude second place was the first loser. Throughout my schooling I was always an athlete, from track and field, a long distance state runner, Camden representative cricketer, rugby league. You name it, I played it. Well except soccer, that was, and still is something that doesn’t interest me.

Moving into my mid to late teens I dropped the footy and cricket and moved into triathlons which I excelled at winning both my age and senior champion in the first year. I competed at my club and competed in a lot of the major Sydney and south coast competitions. One of my best finishes was within the top 10 in the sprint event in a field of two hundred.

Then life happened. I had to get a job. I had 2 boys at a very young age, so sport took a back seat to family life until my kids were old enough to play sport then it all started again.

I had my first assistant coaching role at age 13. This was for my younger brother’s rugby league team. Once I had my own kids I started coaching again as well as coaching development officer for the local Junior Rugby league club, and in the off-season assistant coach in baseball for junior teams until baseball became life and my coaching took another step being accepted on the Macarthur Colts representative coaching team. During this time, I was also playing local baseball in the first grade local competition then moved to the Blacktown league where it was more competitive.  

Fast forward a bit more to 2012 and I found CrossFit. Over the next ten years and still currently today, to a lesser extent, this is where I got to become competitive again and blow off steam. 2018 I moved to more of a weightlifting based training, and I quickly rose up the Masters rankings within Australia and in 2022 took fourth place worldwide in the Masters World Championships in Florida USA. In the 2023 CrossFit open I finished in the 89 percentiles in the world rankings.

Coaching has always been part of my life naturally. Over the last 5yrs I transitioned into taking classes at a local gym in both their functional fitness groups, when needed, but mainly the weightlifting classes which then turned into MM Weightlifting House you see today. I’m currently in the process of gaining both a AWF level 3 weightlifting and CrossFit level 1 certificate.

For me, the key to progression is to be always learning, never except just being normal and always better yourself that 1% every day.

From nothing to fist pumps

I was never a fan of exercising.

Never played team sports as a kid.

I had, as my sister likes to point out, no co-ordination. I’d like to describe it as having no understanding of how my body moved through space and time, but I agree with the lack of co-ordination.

I did stints of running, stints of yoga but mostly controlled my skinny fat physique through diet.

My sister and her now husband did CrossFit in their late twenties, and I scoffed. I would never. I couldn’t think of anything worse. I don’t sweat.

When I met Matt in 2015, he was neck deep in CrossFit, coming off his own fat to thin-ish transformation, and really enjoyed the lifting side of the sport. I went to Europe for six weeks August – September 2015 and came back feeling bloated – thirty-four years old, full of beer, cheese, bread and meat and decided maybe a little exercise was probably a good thing.

I found a Scoopon voucher for $15 unlimited boot camp for 30 days local to us with the thought of even if I absolutely hated it, big deal I just wouldn’t go back.

I remember my first attendance vividly astonished by the fitness level of everyone. Was I really this unfit? These seemingly normal looking people my age crushing sprints and sandbag carries. The coach had us doing walking lunges passing a sandbag between our legs on each step. I sat down on the sideline halfway through and gave up. “I’m done!” Matt said, “You have to finish.” I replied “No, no I don’t.”

I couldn’t walk for a week.

If you have been to my house, you understand the stair situation. This was an issue. I couldn’t walk, let alone walk downstairs and was doing that thing where I had to hold the sides of the toilet seat in order to lower myself down onto it.

What a bs this fitness thing was. That week the pain just got worse day by day. 

I did go back, much to the surprise of my coaches who were certain I was not returning. Fast forward twelve months and I was attending six classes a week ranging from typical bootcamp drills to tabata style station workouts. I felt empowered, stronger, in control of my body and continually surprised at what I could do.

Around September 2016 Matt, missing the barbell, went back to CrossFit and was enjoying it. I was so intimidated by the thought of real barbells, gymnastics and fit people but just before the Open in 2017 I attended my first CrossFit class at a local box.

I did not compete in the 2017 Open but I was in awe. It was exciting, exhilarating, people yelling encouragement, others holding clip boards, scoresheets, and pens. The anticipation as Open workouts were released and Dave Castro teasing out the announcement. I was hooked. The idea that thousands of people were all as nervous as each other waiting for a workout to drop that would be challenging to all, I loved that and why even now six years later I’m still excited and encourage everyone to participate. The Open creates an environment where magic happens. I got my first pull ups in open workout 18.3 (scaled), first chest to bar 19.5, first toes to bar in 20.2, first RX HSPUs 20.3 – you never quite know what you can pull out of the hat under pressure.

Six and a bit years of Crossfit down I am not an RX athlete. I do not have a three minute Fran time and I have never RX-ed Murph. I do not have ring muscle ups, heck I don’t even have bar muscle ups.

I am there for the fist pumps, the smack talking, the shared suffering knowing we get to do this. The fact that all these people have left the comfort of their lounge, that warm blanket on their knees and choose to push themselves and I bloody love that.

How lucky are we.

-A