My CrossFit Story - Greg Kerschbaum

My CrossFit story started back in July 2011, but to understand where I was at that point I want to go back a little bit further. I grew up as the youngest of 5 children (4 boys) and we all played every sport we could, so needless to say I was very active as a child. I ended up playing football and tennis during high school, and was able to get a tennis scholarship to go to college. Being a part of sports teams kept me in shape, I had to lift and do conditioning during these years, and so I worked out hard and I ate A LOT of food (as many of you who know me know this is still the case today).

In 2008 After graduating from college, I attended law school at the University of Dayton. This is where the story starts to take a little bit of a turn. I wasn’t playing on a tennis team anymore, and law school had some very serious time demands. I was living off of a steady diet of fast food, and drinking a lot of Mountain Dew (I wasn’t a coffee drinker yet at this point) in order to stay up late reading and studying. I would go play tennis every now and again, but I definitely wasn’t training like I had previously. The one thing I was still doing, was eating the same way I always had. Eating a lot of food (most of it not exactly healthy) coupled with not training or working out consistently, I started to get heavier. Now in 2011 after three years of that, I wasn’t grossly overweight, but I was pretty heavy. I had jumped from about 205lbs in college up to almost 260lbs when I finished law school (being 6’5” helps spread the weight out some).

I realized at this point that I wasn’t happy being as heavy and out of shape as I was. I just really didn’t know what to do to get back in shape, I was never really a gym rat. I decided that what I needed to do was excess amounts of cardio and limit how much I was eating. I would run miles (I actually decided to train for a marathon at this time) and play tennis, and eat really small meals. In hindsight a very unhealthy way to try and lose weight. Well in July of 2011 we had a family reunion out in California, and two of my older brothers were doing this thing called CrossFit. I hadn’t heard much about it, and there weren’t the plethora of gyms around then that there are now (it was still kind of any underground thing). I went out to a park with my brothers, and watched them do a workout, I think it had some handstand pushups they did up against the pole of a basketball hoop, and I just remember watching being pretty impressed, it looked really hard. They then put me through a workout, my first real CrossFit workout. They had a set of rings they hung over that same basketball hoop, and the workout I did was “Cindy” 20min AMRAP of 5 pullups (on the rings) 10 pushups and 15 squats. I thought okay, that doesn’t sound too terrible. I was WRONG! I quickly realized that being heavy does not make pullups, pushups and squats any easier, I think I was able to do one full round as prescribed (RX) and then it turned into hanging from the rings, trying somehow to pull myself over the rings, and my brothers pushing me to give some assistance. My Pushups broke down to where I could only do one at a time and had to rest, and my squats were very rough ( I was inflexible and weak). I don’t remember my exact score on that workout, but it was probably something like 5-7 rounds, scaled greatly. We went back to the house we were staying at and I was tired, but the next three days WOW!! was I ever sore. It hurt to sit, it hurt to stand, it hurt to walk around. Most everyone who starts CrossFit experiences something similar, but it’s an eye opening thing, and to me was very telling that I needed to do more of this. Anything that has that kind of dramatic effect on the body, has to be making a change in your fitness.

After that vacation I decided to find a CrossFit gym, and start working out there. It was humbling for a long time. There were things I was pretty good at, power cleans, and double unders stick out at first, but I saw people doing many things I couldn’t imagine doing, muscle ups, handstand pushups, pistols squats, snatches, overhead squats just to name a few. In my head I thought that you had to be some kind of a super athlete to perform these movements, and it didn’t seem like something I would be able to do ever. I thought I would be stuck with the band or PVC pipe forever. So I scaled a lot of the gymnastics or more complex movements, but I worked hard, and I was smoked every day after leaving the gym. Slowly but surely though I started to mark things off my goals list. I eventually got a muscle up, I improved to where overhead squats and snatches were at least doable, I wasn’t great at them but I was getting a lot better, the elusive handstand pushup and pistol squat were two of the hardest for me. I spent many hours trying to kick up against the wall, or figuring out the silly kip (that until you get it feels like you are just flailing on the wall). I would watch Youtube videos about techniques and what other athletes were doing. Eventually things started to click. In the 4+ years I have been doing CrossFit, I have seen continual improvement in many areas, and am still constantly learning more and more. It is about getting better every day, little by little.

The beauty of CrossFit is it doesn’t matter who you are or what skill level you are at, there are still so many ways you can improve. Even after you learn how to do a skill, you can always become more efficient, and it is frustrating at times, but also it’s the very best way to get yourself in shape, and get yourself out of your comfort zone. I can’t even count how many times I have told myself I would never be able to do something, only to realize down the road that, hey, I can do that, I can do more than that. For me it started with a handstand against the wall, getting over that fear was big for me, next was the muscle up, and then getting over the fear of how much weight I could lift, I remember the first time I cleaned 225lbs, it was a benchmark number, and it feels so good to hit the goals you set for yourself. Slowly but surely if you stick with it, all the goals you have for yourself will start to happen, and there is an amazing community of people in CrossFit to help along the way.