Don't Put Yourself Down, It Puts Other People Down Too
The other day I posted a video of me doing push presses on Instagram with this caption: “Finally back at it after injury flair and a two week ridiculous cold. Light weight, but no back pain. #pushpress with a bit too much knee bend, but still good and I felt great. #crossfit #crossfitcoach” Ugh. Why, why, why did I write “light weight?” Because our society messes with our head. No matter how much of a believer you are in body positivity, being shame free, not competing with o
Diversity Over Specialization: CrossFit Creates Exceptional Youth Athletes
I talk to a lot of sports-specific coaches about coaching amazing student athletes, and they all say the same thing- early specialization is detrimental to creating great athletes. Early specialization in sports means exclusive training only in one sport. Early specialization has become more prominent with the creation of year-round sports teams, such as baseball, basketball, and soccer and due to Malcom Gladwell’s questionable “10,000 hour rule” from his book, “Outliers.” Ho
Eating Disorder Awareness: Community Messaging Matters
Today is World Eating Disorders Day and I want to talk about how important community messaging is in recovery. Binge eating disorder has been such a part of my life (since I was ten years old) that it just seemed normal to me. Normal to sneak food, eat food out of the garbage can, eat sugar out of a bag with a spoon, hide food in my room and car, and drive around at 3am to multiple fast food restaurants eating from every one of them while parked in dark and random parking lot
How CrossFit Taught Me Distress Tolerance
What is distress tolerance? “Marsha Linehan states, ‘DBT [Dialectical Behavioral Therapy] emphasizes learning to bear pain skillfully. The ability to tolerate and accept distress is an essential mental health goal for at least two reasons. First, pain and distress are a part of life; they cannot be entirely avoided or removed. The inability to accept this immutable fact itself leads to increased pain and suffering. Second, distress tolerance, at least over the short run, is p
Five Things to Look For to Safely Combine a Fitness Coach with an Eating Disorder Recovery Program
Recovery from binge eating disorder has been really hard for me. Even with a great recovery program and a great therapist, what I was taught about food, exercise, and our bodies for decades before keeps getting in the way. While intellectually my recovery program has been helping me, it is the daily practice of the program that actually helps reprogram your brain. I have found that this practice has become much easier now that I am back at CrossFit and in a community that is
