Michelle Wright

Before I started cross­fit I weighed 96kg. I was over­weight and unhappy. I had tried many dif­fer­ent diet­ing pro­grams; made my annual dona­tions to gyms and swim­ming pools, gone to aer­o­bics and spin classes… the list of attempts to lose weight was end­less… until Cross­fit.  The prob­lem for me with gyms was that I didn’t really know a lot about fit­ness or strength so even if I were given a pro­gram I really didn’t know what I was doing or why and I also found it all com­pletely bor­ing – I can­not say any of those things about Cross­fit. My first ses­sion was at Cross­fit Chicks. I was very ner­vous and anx­ious when I arrived and was so embar­rassed to be in the com­pany of all the fit peo­ple I could see around me that I was con­sid­er­ing turn­ing around and going home. Luck­ily for me I didn’t.  The WOD we com­pleted that day was called Karen – 150 wall balls for time.  I had never heard of a wall ball before, nor had I ever picked up a med­i­cine ball. I could only do 80 of them with a 3kg ball (a HUGE effort for me) and couldn’t walk for a week after with­out feel­ing my legs ran­domly give way. I’m sure no one ever thought they would see me at cross­fit again.

Still, I came back to another cross­fit chicks ses­sion a week later.  I liked com­ing to these ses­sions because even though I was behind the other women in strength, fit­ness and knowl­edge, they were all so friendly and wel­com­ing.  After about 4 of these ses­sions I had enough courage to come to an intro­duc­tion ses­sion in the hope to join the other ses­sions dur­ing the week. For the first month I found cross­fit extremely hard and I strug­gled in every ses­sion because, yes I was unfit, but also all of these move­ments and exer­cises were for­eign to me. This did not go by unseen because even though cross­fit is a group ses­sion, Bren­dan is always there watch­ing and giv­ing peo­ple advice to improve their tech­nique. It almost feels some­times like you have your own per­sonal trainer.  Bren­dan could see my strug­gles but he also saw that I was deter­mined and knew I wasn’t going to give up and so he sug­gested some per­sonal ses­sions to work on build­ing my strength and improv­ing my tech­nique. This also helped me with my con­fi­dence and I now feel like I can give any­thing a go… although some­times Bren­dan sug­gests some­thing and I give him this look like you’re dream­ing but ok … to my sur­prise I always find out that I can do these things and turns out Bren­dan knows exactly what he’s talk­ing about.  He also helped me with my diet and put me onto a Paleo, zone diet. Even though my diet wasn’t a bad one, I didn’t realise how much bet­ter it could be. Thanks to the cross­fit pro­gram, hav­ing an awe­some trainer, a sen­si­ble eat­ing plan and a friendly and sup­port­ive group of peo­ple to train with, in 5 months I had lost 28kg and more impor­tantly I had so much fun doing it and now I feel I am a lit­tle addicted to it.

Before cross­fit I was very unfit and would fre­quently come off the touch field to sub because I was out of breath. I never ran… I could only jog slowly. I wasn’t really an asset to my team and didn’t ever do any­thing spec­tac­u­lar.  Now I can play the whole 40mins with­out need­ing to sub off, I can actu­ally run and chase after play­ers and my own team mem­bers often tell me how much I have improved or what a good game I have had. At cross­fit I can do so much more and I can see improve­ments in every area.. I can even see mus­cle too!  One of my proud­est ses­sions was recently com­plet­ing Karen, my very first cross­fit chicks ses­sion. Not only did I com­plete the 150 wall balls with the 8kg ball, I did it in 11mins and 16 sec­onds. .. Then I rode my bike home and I felt fit and full of energy (no prob­lems walk­ing this time). A Really BIG thank you to every­one at Cross­fit Ter­ri­tory  because I was very shy and ner­vous to start, so much so I was pretty much hav­ing a panic attack in the car before I came to cross­fit chicks. If the atmos­phere wasn’t the friendly and sup­port­ive one that it is I know I would of felt intim­i­dated and out of place and def­i­nitely would not have come back.

Matt Lucas

On the 24^th of Novem­ber 2008 I was seri­ously over­weight, roughly 140kg but I don’t know exactly as I was too embar­rassed to weigh myself. My diet was very ordi­nary, plenty of bread, pasta, beer and gen­er­ally bad foods. This was the day I decided to start turn­ing things around. I got a cheap crappy bike and started to ride to work. The first ride (9km) was pure hell! My legs were shot, I could hardly breathe and I swear I nearly fainted in the shower. Fast for­ward to Decem­ber 2010, I had fully embraced rid­ing, rid­den over 12,000 km includ­ing the 147km “Cullen Bay to Man­do­rah chal­lenge” in 6 hrs and a 5 day char­ity ride from Derby to El Que­stro Sta­tion along the Gibb River Road. I weighed 113 kg and was def­i­nitely “bike fit” but still fat and gen­er­ally unhappy with my over­all fit­ness. I was plan­ning to increase my rid­ing to 10’000km in 2011 and bought a med­i­cine ball to get some core strength. It was then that I invited one of my cus­tomers Shane to our Christ­mas party. He said he couldn’t go because he had a WOD on that after­noon. “What the hell is that?” I said. He explained Cross­fit which to be hon­est kind of scared the crap out of me. I got on Bren­dans web­site and checked it out daily right up to Christ­mas. I decided to give it a shot after a bit of pro­cras­ti­na­tion so on the 10^th of Jan­u­ary I rocked up after the 6.30 ses­sion for fun­da­men­tals. This half hour alone had me in agony! I was barely able to walk down the stairs at home. The first WOD the next morn­ing resem­bled a train wreck, 19 min­utes some­thing of run­ning and presses. I remem­ber Bren­dan say­ing to me after the sec­ond or third WOD which was burpees and pullups “geeze Matty you look thrashed” Well I prob­a­bly felt worse than I looked and I cer­tainly wasn’t look­ing too pretty! Since then I feel I have made con­sid­er­able improve­ments in my over­all fit­ness and strength. I’ve lost 10kg in the last three months includ­ing 5 kilos in 28 days due to eat­ing totally clean. Bren­dan has helped immensely with my nutri­tion which I believe is the most impor­tant part of fitness/strength gain. I realise I have such a long way to go but I know I’m on the right track. All in all I have heaps more energy for work and play, I’m devel­op­ing three won­der­ful “Cross­fit chicks” who think it’s great that dad can keep up with them all day. My only regret is I didn’t stum­ble upon Cross­fit years ago. Next year I will be 40 years young, I’m excited about what the next year of Cross­fit will do to my fit­ness lev­els. I have a goal of doing a hand­stand pushup on my 40^th and being able to dead­lift 2 x my bodyweight.

 

Leah Chan­dler

I have 3 beau­ti­ful chil­dren, ages 17months, 5yrs and 8yrs. I have always loved the fit­ness, fash­ion, well-being & lifestyle indus­tries and cur­rently run a busi­ness suited to this. My hus­band Gar­rith & I are cur­rently study­ing our cert 3 in fit­ness. It has been very hard (but never impos­si­ble!) to shed the weight after hav­ing each child, and I really strug­gled with this espe­cially after our last child was born. I have been gym fit for a long time, but found it hard to move the last 15 or so kgs to get back to a healthy weight. I am lucky though, as Gar­rith had been train­ing cross­fit style on his own, then hap­pened to run into Bren­dan and began train­ing at Cross­fit Ter­ri­tory. I started train­ing at the Box in Jan­u­ary this year, and I tell you I nearly died the first week or 2! Body sore­ness was taken to a whole new level!
I am proud to say that I have shed 12kgs since then, and am fit­ter, stronger, and health­ier than I have ever been
(there is a lot to be said for ‘healthy mind, healthy body’). Swing­ing my baby girl is like swing­ing a really light ket­tle­bell now!!
Oh…I almost forgot..how good is the fam­ily atmos­phere at the Box! Bren­dan, you have done a won­der­ful job in help­ing peo­ple feel com­fort­able around oth­ers. Go Team Cross­fit Territory!!

 

Terika Hor­wood

On the 12th of Sep­tem­ber 2010 I was involved in an acci­dent where I received 3rd degree burns to 20% of my body but only 15% need­ing skin grafts (as parts of my body healed on its own). This was an inci­dent of sim­ply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I have a his­tory of black outs which is due to my heart not pump­ing enough blood to my brain. I can feel them com­ing along and thought of doing the right thing to cool myself down by hav­ing shower. Within a minute of being in the shower my black­out occurred and on my fall down my body hit the hot water tap and was I left sit­ting under it for 15 min­utes uncon­scious.
3 weeks later I was released from hos­pi­tal weigh­ing 49kg and my skin grafts tak­ing 100% to its new loca­tion. Although I was out of hos­pi­tal I wasn’t allowed to exer­cise for 3 months because from where the skin was taken it just wasn’t heal­ing as well as other areas of my body were.
Once I got the ok to exer­cise I thought I would be a com­plete hero by play­ing a game of net­ball. As much as the peo­ple around me were against it I just wanted to mov­ing again. Min­utes into it I had torn a lig­a­ment in my back because I had no tummy mus­cles to sup­port it. There I was unable to move (again!) and scored a ride with the Paramedic’s.
Still to this day I remem­ber lay­ing there wait­ing for the para­medics and peo­ple were walk­ing over me, around me and look­ing down at me with a dis­gusted look on their faces telling me ‘’I should have lis­tened’’. But they didn’t under­stand that I just wanted to have that sense of free­dom again. I am no longer friends with these peo­ple.
The rea­son why I joined Cross­fit Ter­ri­tory in Jan­u­ary 2011, is because I wanted my life back. I want to get bet­ter. Here I stand 8 months from the day of being burnt, I still walk into every work­out com­plain­ing about some­thing but I’m def­i­nitely get­ting stronger and fit­ter from it.
My begin­ning back squat was 15kg and last week it was 55kg (which I do brag about) and so many more per­sonal achieve­ments I have con­quered in my jour­ney. The envi­ron­ment at Cross­fit Ter­ri­tory has been great help­ing me phys­i­cally and men­tally because I am not dis­abled, I’m burnt and I don’t want peo­ple stand­ing in my way of recovering.

 

Damien M

15 weeks ago now I started on this adven­ture called Cross­fit and what a life chang­ing adven­ture its been.  I was try­ing to psy­che myself up for a cou­ple of months before I started at Cross­fit Ter­ri­tory to make the call to Bren­dan to book into the intro.   I always had an excuse; too much work on, trav­el­ling away, wasn’t fit enough – well you know the story.  The intro was some­thing else, I was exhausted

and finally realised just how unfit I had become over the years.  Before I started my weight had peaked at 95kgs and well quite frankly,

I was fat and not happy with this at all.  The first cou­ple of ses­sions I pushed myself hard and felt it for the next week at least.  My body

hurt like it hadn’t for a decade, I think I went the whole Easter long week­end not being able to straighten my arms.  Thank­fully I kept com­ing back, feel­ing stronger, recov­er­ing quicker and get­ting bet­ter at the core exer­cises that we do. Now, just 15 weeks later I am 1kg from my goal weight of 82kg, had a 1RM of 170 kg Dead Lift and Rxd Fran at 8 minutes.

Bren­dan and the team at Cross­fit Ter­ri­tory have just been amaz­ing.  It is a true credit to him to have a gym full of such good peo­ple that push them­selves each and every day.  The nutri­tional advice from Bren­dan has been spot on.  With­out this there is no way I would have dropped so many kilos and still have the energy to get to the gym every day.  This together with what is effec­tively per­sonal train­ing every day at the gym is what has made the trans­for­ma­tion possible.

Cross­fit Ter­ri­tory has changed my life for the bet­ter and I can’t thank them enough for this.  If you want to make the change then make the call, do the intro and get onboard!!!

 

Bernadette Pet­zel,

Mini-testamonial for train­ing at Cross­fit Territory:

I may rock up to the box feel­ing flat and unmo­ti­vated, but I’ll almost always leave feel­ing ener­gised and capable!

 

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