10 Years Later and the Lesson Still Stands.

(Part 6/10)

A huge turning point for me was when I finally walked into a CrossFit gym in 2015.

It had taken me a whole year of thinking about it, analyzing it, and hyping myself up before I ever got the courage to open that door. A year of talking myself out of it, convincing myself I wasn’t fit enough, and imagining how embarrassed I’d be if I couldn’t keep up.

If I’m honest, most of that year was spent in fear. Fear of being judged, fear of failure, fear of not belonging. And if you’ve ever wrestled with those voices in your head, you know they’re loud. They tell you it’s safer to stay the same. They make you believe the risk of trying is scarier than the reality of staying stuck.

But one day, I just did it. I was still scared, but I went anyway.

And everything shifted.

The reality was so different than what I had imagined. Nobody cared what I looked like. Nobody cared how “fit” I was. They just cared that I showed up.

For the first time in my life, working out wasn’t about punishment. It wasn’t about burning off food or trying to shrink my body down to some smaller version of myself. It was about what my body could do.

I picked up a barbell and realized I was stronger than I thought. I finished workouts I didn’t believe I could. And each time, I walked away a little more confident, a little more proud, a little more in awe of what my body was capable of.

It lit something in me I didn’t even know was there.

I wasn’t just working out anymore. I was building strength. I was building confidence. And maybe most importantly, I was building a love for my body that I had never experienced before. That is the lesson that has stuck with me all of these years. That workouts are for celebrating what your body can do, not punishing it for what it’s not.

And here’s the part that matters most: that shift is available to you too.

Sometimes the hardest step isn’t the workout itself, it’s walking through the door. It’s choosing to start even when you feel scared, unprepared, or “not enough.” But the truth? That first step could be the beginning of a completely new story.

Coach Liz