Meet Adrienne – Teacher and now CrossFitter

Coach Patrick sat down with Adrienne to let her tell her story.  

I’m a high school civics teacher. I’ve been doing that for about three years now. I come from a really big family, about 45 grandkids in that family. I’m the oldest of all of them. I think working with kids is a big part of who I am for sure.

What is your fitness or sport background?

I’ve been in sports for most of my life. My dad and my mom put us in sports pretty much year ‘round for as long as I can remember. My sister and I, Louisa. We were really lucky that we had our dad as our coach for most of the sports. I don’t know if he would say lucky, but we were lucky for him to be a coach. We did softball and basketball and volleyball and he coached us. I think one of the biggest things he taught us was to be coachable, whoever our coach was, and I think that’s something we carry with us still, no matter what we’re doing.

Do you have any obstacles that you are having to overcome that might hold others back from starting CrossFit at Sacris?

In the last few years I’ve had some medical stuff going on. I’ve had a couple surgeries, that’s really what my life has been about in the last few years since I’m managing medical stuff and dealing with some chronic pain.  After surgeries I rapidly lost 60 pounds and with that I lost pretty much all the muscle that I built from sports. Then when I started teaching I stress ate pretty much constantly, and so I gained back a lot of the weight… and it was not muscle.

 What made you realize that you needed help?

My doctors had literally told me at one point I couldn’t lift more than 10 pounds at a time. It was frustrating for someone who had literally thrown weights around that were 20 pounds at one point that I couldn’t lift more than 10 pounds. I’m somebody who brings a lot of stuff into my classroom. Lifting the boxes and trying to figure out how to get stuff into my room was really tough. And I get winded doing just like normal stuff like that. That was really frustrating to me that I couldn’t do those things, like really normal things, that I wouldn’t have ever thought of before that. And to be told that I couldn’t lift anything over 10lbs, that was really, really frustrating.

What made you come in to Northglenn Health and Fitness?

I’ll be honest with you, I was very nervous. I have a wonderful sister, Louisa, (she’s going to give me crap for saying that) and she introduced me to the idea of CrossFit. She had a friend in New York that had done it, and she was like, “I really want to try this.” And I was like, “You’re nuts. Why would we do that?” So we kept looking for different places that we could go, to just try a class. I was like, “This is insane. Why would we do this? All the pictures are people moving these big tires and doing all these really intense things” I’m like “I’m way out of shape for that. I don’t know what you’re thinking.”

lifting weight

And we just happened to see the ad for Sacris and I just, I don’t know, on a whim, signed us up. I almost didn’t come. I 100% chickened out almost immediately. And then she’s like, “Well, I’m doing it, and I was like, “Wow, okay. I guess I’ll go too.” We’re highly competitive with both of us. And I’d like to say we’re supportive, but we’re more competitive than supportive probably. And she’s like, “Well, I’m going.” And I was like, “Well, if you’re going, I guess I’ll go.”  It was really helpful to have somebody that was also doing it. And I think that’s one thing for most people. If you have somebody else to go with you, it’s really helpful.

What was different about Northglenn Health and Fitness than what you had expected?

One thing that I wasn’t expecting when I came in, just knowing what I’ve seen about CrossFit, is that all the workouts, the coaches will change them based on your fitness level. They will manage it and make sure that it’s something you can do. So for example, even just yesterday I’ve been doing this for a few months, I still really was struggling with the workout and you came up and were helping me kind of manage it and make sure that I could handle the rest of the workout and make it something that I can finish. I still felt like I was being successful.

I think that’s something that I wasn’t totally expecting. Especially with fitness classes in general. I felt if you didn’t do it you were failing. And I think that’s something, like the idea of like scalability or the coaches are there to help you be successful, is really a powerful tool in CrossFit that I don’t think a lot of people know about. I think with our coaches at Sacris, they are really extremely good about knowing the people that are here and getting to know us and really helping tailor those things. Everyone here is really good about doing that.

What would you tell someone about the “Community” at Northglenn Health and Fitness?  Community is something talked about but not everyone knows why it is important, or what it means.

You and Jennifer, from day one when I met you guys, I think you even mentioned it in our no sweat meeting, that you were really very intentionally building a community at Sacris, and I was really impressed when I came to the classes and I saw that with the people that are here.

I know that the people that are here really have helped motivate me come to class and they’re people that cheer us on. At first I wasn’t really excited about that. I really just was, “I don’t want to talk to anybody while I’m here.” But it really made me think of high school sports and how much it felt like a team environment and felt really supportive and really helpful and just really great to come to the class, and really positive energy the whole time right here.

They’re not looking at us and going, “They can’t do the workout.” They don’t care about that. They’re just really happy for what we can do when we’re here. And they’re really supportive and high-fiving us and we all just really care about each other in a lot of ways, not just what we can do in the gym, but as people. I think that’s a really powerful thing that you’ve built.

Come see us.  We will meet you where you are.

Start here

Book a free intro today so we can learn all about you, your goals and how we can help you reach them
Free Intro