Katrina Chapman

I grew up active from the start. I swam club competitively from age 4-15 then high school swimming from 15-18. I knew I needed something to keep me moving when I quit club so I started working out at the YMCA, where I coached swim team and taught lessons. A friend taught me how to do a HSPU, how to snatch, and how to clean and jerk-from there, I was sold. I started in \"olympic lifting\" (I use that term loosely, it was rather atrocious initially) then eventually found \"real Crossfit\". I started at a local gym where two incredible people took a chance on me and gave me so many incredible opportunities (and I'll forever be grateful) and a couple years later, I got my L1. Over the years, after the beating my body took from swimming for so long, I had 3 significant orthopedic surgeries over 5 or so years that took me completely out of commission. I took MANY breaks from typical crossfit but never left the gym. I took long breaks to simply work on strength or olympic lifting after these stretches and didn't do a single metcon. But what stuck was always the people and community Crossfit brought to me. For the first time in a long time after lifting at a conventional gym for so long, I learned to love my body not for what it looked like, but for all of the incredible things it can do. I could chase performance, not physique. I'll never be the same, in the best way possible and I'm incredibly grateful I get to help create that for someone else.

I started coaching because I had some amazing coaches and truly just wanted to hang. The course itself were things I was interested in so it was easy enough to want to at least try. Once I started coaching, I realized how rewarding it was. The relationships I made, the lives I could impact positively, the people I could empower... I wanted more! What has kept me coaching however is the firm belief that I have that our \"healthcare\" system should be a last resort. A hospital is not healthcare, it is sick care. As someone who spends more time with very very sick people than with well people, I can tell you firsthand how awful the debility in this country is. There are always things outside of people's control and things happen to people, seemingly with no real reason (and it's awful to have to witness). But the hard truth that it seems people struggle to reconcile with is that many of the comorbidities that will impact outcomes from hospital stays ARE to a certain degree preventable or at least helped by physical activity, proper nutrition, and proper sleep habits. I stay because it is refreshing to the soul to get to coach those who choose to do something good for themselves, their families, coworkers, community... and are truly doing what they can to control becoming entrenched in and reliant upon the traditional healthcare model. Muscle matters. Movement matters. Metabolic health matters. This is true healthcare.