Fit Mom's Blog

In case you didn’t know, I love Crossfit! For almost the last two years, I have completed a minimum of 5 crossfit workouts per week and my body has CHANGED. I went from a size 8 “healthy looking girl” to a size 2 very “muscular” mommy. My weight has fluctuated a total of 10 pounds, but, I’m settling at almost the same weight I started at around 140 for a 5’6″ female. No body believes how much I weigh when I tell them! I don’t remember the weights I was lifting when I started, but, I can tell you, it wasn’t much. My max clean and jerk is 130 and my Snatch is 97, which is NOT THAT bad for a girl my age!

What are the benefits of CrossFit, you might want to ask?

Improved strength, increased confidence, increased capacity for heavy loads over long or short periods of time. The best part of Crossfit is really the ability to go OUT and do adventurous things without too much extra stress- for example, a 2 hour bike ride or a 2 hour hike or an all day hike up a big mountain, or a even completing a six hour day of outdoor teaching and doing yoga (my day job) without feeling like I’m going to keel over at the end of the day.

What are my favorite parts of CrossFit?

I love the Olympic Lifts- particularly Cleans and Snatches. I have to say, though, that it took me almost 1.5 years of practice before I “mastered” them and I’m still no expert. These are hard as heck to perform correctly, and my coaches are still working with me on them. But, I love to practice them, I sneak extra practice in my garage and I secretly dream about lifting only someday!

What is the worst part about Crossfit?

Ok, this is very personal, but, I have a hard time when others beat me. I’m WAY too hard on myself and if I have an “off” day or if I just Stink on a particular day, I will feel bad about myself or repeat the workout later in my garage or work on the movement that I stank at later in the week. I don’t like to be beaten even if it’s by girls 15 years my junior, I just make myself practice more. Yes, I know this isn’t healthy and sometimes, I am little too obsessive about it. When this happens to me, I know I need to step back and go back to yoga and just CHILL out for a bit, life is too short to worry about crap like this. And, I do.

So, there you go! CrossFit in a nutshell, I hope you all can give it a try.

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Recently, I blogged, that I was on the fence about competing in the Next Level Invitational as I has a very hard time at the last one. It is still a costly, time away from the family event, but, I must be slightly crazy because I am training for it. Just last week, it was announced that Watt Bikes would be part of our next event, and that was ONE very cool light at the end of the tunnel for me, because I actually have experience with bike riding and happen to enjoy cycling. Not, that I am or was a pro at cycling or anything, but I do have significant cycling experience!! I was actually overjoyed when I was given this news!!

I won’t go into all my cycling history, but, lets just say that I have been cycling as long as I have been running and that time span is longer than 10 years!! It also makes me old (for a woman competitor) competing against girls half my age, but, because of my experience, I feel blessed with having years of competition under my belt. I mean, why should I at age 40, roll over and wait to get fat and old?! It’s a given, as we age, unless we drastically change our diets, will naturally gain weight. I can almost guarantee that I will still be competing in something when I’m 50 and hopefully even into the 60′s!! It keeps me YOUNG.

What about you, reader, what will you be doing when you’re 40, 50 or 60?! Will you be kicking a** and taking names like in a local 5km race, triathlon or a crossfit competition?! There is no time like the present to find something you love, and go do it.

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Currently, I am on the fence as to whether to compete or not in the Next Level Invitational coming up in November. Just two weeks ago, both my husband and I had the opportunity to compete together on the same day in the same crossfit competition, spend the day together and have two nights without our kids–all for the sake of competing.

Image Credit: Brittany Houston, CrossFit Unforgiven.

Rewind a bit on the last NLI competition:

Good- hanging with hubby all day, hanging with my CDR friends all day, competing {although not all that fun}, finishing at 15th with little to no sleep competing against girls half my age…
bad- rain, hail, lightning causing the events to be changed
ugly- my attitude can be in the toilet sometimes when it comes to big changes, lack of sleep, lack of confidence, negative thoughts running through my head, blah blah blah.

The Next Competition comes up on November 12th and I’m on the fence as to commit or not.

Anybody, want to chime in their opinion?
What it means between now and then is an even bigger time commitment for working out- possibly 1-2 days of double workouts, extra sleep, extra stress, time away from the kids, and an overall lack of motivation to be a good mommy when I should be XYZ (insert selfish thing like Epsom salt baths, recovery stretching, cooking and eating).
If I commit to it, I could potentially train for a top ten spot, zero prize money and a nice post-event party. What could I gain? Valuable competition experience that could come in handy if I were to be on another Regional Team. Strength and experience and an opportunity to improve my skills. Improve my overall ability to adapt and excel in any situation.

Side Note: When I was twenty I worked as a waitress in a hotel in Dallas. For some unknown reason, there was a plane delay that dropped 50+ people into our restaurant at 10 o’clock at night. All of the other waiters made them self scarce and left me to wait on all these people. I could have freaked out like they did and gone home, but, I didn’t. I stayed and ended up earning $100+ in tips and had a great time!! It’s all about the attitude.

Yes, even with this post, I’m still on the fence.  If I were to be honest, maybe my lack of motivation is fear that I’ll stink it up!

Thoughts, comments or suggestions?

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First, what is a Double Under? It is two spins of the rope for every one jump. Sounds easy, but, it isn’t. I’ve been practicing these since November of 2009, and although, I can do them…they are NOT very good. I jump too high and exert too much energy getting them done which results in exploding heart values and tired quads in a hurry!

Check out those high jumps! And, yes, the hair is ridiculous, I know.

A. 6 inches of the ground
B. 4 inches of the ground
C. 1 foot off the ground

The answer is 4-6 inches of the ground, or as little as possible!!

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Time to celebrate small victories over here….whoo hooo… It’s been a long six months of hard work, but, maybe it’s just now paying off! My new PR in the Snatch is 97 pounds and I am darn close to 102. For once the weight didn’t feel heavy, I did TONS of practice reps at lower weights and I’m super proud to have finally closed this gap over my last PR of 85!

Image Credit and Big Thanks to my Coach at CrossFit CDR.

Happy Friday!!

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is now live on Breathe Magazine.

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For those of you women or moms out there who were athletes in school and now, wondering years later…what should you do? Go find the nearest crossfit box in your town, and join up.  You’ll find your competitive spirit come back within three months.  I did, and if you read about lots of athletes in the Crossfit games this year, that you’ll find that they are doing the same.

In college, I ran track and cross country and not that I was addicted, but, I was committed to exercising, because at the time, I also loved food!  For two years, I ran.  Then, I transferred to a 4 year school and found bike racing through a friend.  I got addicted to that real quick because I was good at it without a lot of effort.  I also loved the competition, the camaraderie and the motivation to get better.  This lasted as long as I was in college working towards a goal– to get to Collegiate Nationals.  But once I graduated, I still enjoyed riding, but I lost my way for a while as I didn’t have any set goals.  {gained a few happy married couple pounds}. Few years later, I got married, and set a new goal– The Marathon.  Did my first one at age 28, and finished it in 4 hours or so.  And, I did it with almost no training.  Or, as I recall, it was run for an hour on Sunday, then, run for 1.5 hours on the following Sunday, and so forth until I got to three hours.  Lesson learned, you don’t need to run a marathon before actually running a marathon.  Years later, I got the running bug again, and trained for and ran the St. George Marathon– got injured, but, still got a 10 minute PR on serious training.  That was in 2008 and I haven’t run more than a 5km since then.  Guess that was enough of that, heh?!

Now, in 2010-2011, I’m addicted to Crossfit and loving it.  Why now?! Why must I have a sport now in my 40′s?  Because in order for me to stay fit and continue working on my goals, I have to find new goals to set.  I have to have accountability partner to make sure I do it right, and I have friends whom will say something if I don’t show up for a workout.  And, I have a coach who will text me asking where I’m at?!?!

What the heck is crossfit and why should you do it?

1. It’s a combination of gymnastic movements, weight training, and endurance through the use of a WIDE variety of modalities.  The 2011 CrossFit Games has athletes swimming in open water, throwing softballs for distance, handstand walking along with lots of heavy Olympic Lifting.

2. The cool part of it is you can always set new SMALL goals or new BIG goals to help you stay motivated.  You can compare your scores to other women in your area or just to yourself and see improvements..

3.  You can do it in your living room or you can do it in your backyard or at your local globo gym.  All it takes is time, effort and discipline.  But, I could say that about any sport, exercise or hobby you may find love for.

4.  The best part is that I am a seriously fit mommy and I could jump into any local running or triathlon race with little to no “training” and do just fine and that’s the beauty of it, we get good at LOTS of things we weren’t good at in college or high school.

Were you a collegiate athlete and do you still workout or compete now?

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In a recent battle of the sexes at our local crossfit box, we were four strong women competing against all boy teams all of random ages. There were six teams, 5 all men teams and 1 woman team. Oh yeah. I was one of those four women, of course. Where else would I be on a Saturday morning at “oh dark hundred”?

Exhibit A: The sled push race. One girl was resting while we each took turns pushing that damn sled for a distance of 500 meters. Problem?! We were too light and had difficulties keeping it straight. Lost major time here.



400 pound tire flip. As many times as possible in two minutes. We got 32 flips and the winning team got 35.

In the end, our team of four finished 5th out of 6 teams. We made tactical errors with the sled push, but, still sorta had a good time. I was completely trashed after all this business…fyi.

Thanks to CrossFit Unforgiven for the photos!

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Whether you are a two, three, five or six day a week, worker-outer, the key is to stick with your plan. Don’t skip a workout because you’re sore, or ate badly over the weekend, or drank too much…whatever the case may be, the important thing is to be consistent. There are days when I stink at crossfit! And, there are days when things go really well! Also known as the Highs and Lows of CrossFit.

Be Consistent with your food.
Be Consistent with your workouts.
Be Consistent with your sleep.

And, the results will be there!

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This is a subject I think about often.  I am now 40 and I am competing daily in CrossFit…And as you know, I just finished competing for CrossFit CDR’s Regional team and our team finished 10th out 54th teams in Southern California.  And, I am damn proud to be 40 and out there competing against girls half my age.  However, one thing for me, is that it sometimes TAKES a long time to get PR’s in events.  I don’t know why this is, but, I’ve been on a long plateau for six months, still training daily, but not hitting my numbers, so yesterday, I’m happy to report I finally got a legitimate PR.

Image Credit: CrossFit CDR

Yeah, for me!! That’s a 3 second PR and that’s a LOT for a sprint like that. And, guess what? The girl in front of me is 17, the girl behind me is 28 and numbers 4 and 5 are in their 30′s!!

Now, lets’ look at some of the women competing in the CrossFit Games:

Image Credit: The CrossFit Games Albums via Facebook

Becky Conzelman, age 39, mother of 2, competed for the USA National Women’s Cycling Team and then turned to CrossFit.



Angie Pye, age 35, mother of 2, lives and trains in Victoria, British Columbia.



Cheryl Brost, age 40, mother of 2, took 3rd in the North West Regional Competition.

Image Credit: The CrossFit Games Albums via Facebook

You can follow the CrossFit Games and read more about the women competing in the games, here, and I haven’t even looked at the women in the Master’s category!!

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