Level One Athlete
[pullquoteleft] Tina Degraff[/pullquoteleft]
I distinctly remember the time when my mother made me choose what sport I wanted to play as a child. We were sitting at the kitchen table and she had a bunch of flyers for recreational sports in town. I choose soccer. From then on evenings and weekends consisted of soccer only and eventually I would be playing on two teams at once. I guess you could say I enjoyed it.
By the time high school came around, I became more interested in hanging out with friends and ditched soccer for tennis, which in my book was great because I didn’t really do much. My athletic career stopped there. College rolled around and it just got worse, it was even more about friends and partying and drinking and eating late and wouldn’t you know it, I got fat. Real fat.
Then I was introduced to the real world and friends that were motivating to do more than eat and drink. After college, I was still living at my parents in NJ commuting to NYC all week and when I would come home a few friends and I would hit the local track and running that first mile felt like a dream and as they say it was history from there.
Over the next ten years, I became a gym rat and at first it was great because the weight literally melted off me. I eventually got certified to be a personal trainer/group instructor, but that was short lived because I quickly realized that people in the real world were not even half as motivated as I was personally and this was a real shock to me. So, that career ended due to being uninspired by others in the fitness world.
In the last 5 years though, exercise had gotten boring and I was tired of the same old routine- run, lift weights, do more cardio, take a bootcamp class, go to yoga- it all got very monotonous and I became uninspired. At that point, I was just doing it because it was part of my everyday. What would I do without exercise?
In 2010, a friend mentioned CrossFit and said it was kind of cultish but that it might really push me. With this information in hand, I did a google search and found some cryptic website (CrossFit.com) where none of the information made sense to me and mine as well have been in a foreign language. What I did find was that there was a location around the corner from where I was working at the time- CrossFit South Brooklyn. After another two people mentioned it on separate occasions, I finally took the free class at South Brooklyn. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t convenient for me and on my budget I couldn’t afford it.
So began my CrossFit website stalking of any all information I could gather. I wrote everything down that I could do at my local gym and recorded all my times. This lasted for about 6 months until one Saturday, 30 minutes before the free class at 718. I knew I just had to make the jump because I had been stalking the website for a good few months and thought if you want CrossFit in your life, you just have to do it. So, I went and I just felt so great, so alive (I know this sounds corny) that I signed up that day and knew it was the right decision. CrossFit is not just about exercise- it’s about community, empowerment, struggle, defeat, friendship, and love. Everyday I continue to be inspired by the people around me and I hope I can do the same for others as I began this new journey.
Yay Tina! I find your motivation inspirational and am always happy to see your face at 718.