Athlete Spotlight: Corey Salois

Whenever you talk to people about CrossFit you hear the phrase “CrossFit changed my life” from most of them. It was the same for me. I have always been an athletic person and played college sports but I had no idea of how far my athleticism could go or the limits to which I could push my body until I found CrossFit. I also had no idea of the amazing people I would meet along the way.

After college I became a gym rat as a means to stay in shape. I have always had body image issues and struggled for years with an eating disorder during college. I thought the only way to keep control of my weight and therefore my life was to spend hours in the gym. I would go in and do your typical 30 minutes of cardio and then alternate days, back and biceps, chest and triceps, and legs, forearms. I was at the point where I thought I was in pretty good shape. I was running 20-30 miles a week and lifting heavy…I had no idea what in shape meant. Two firefighter friends of mine finally convinced me to come and try CrossFit. I remember walking in the first day and thinking “this looks nothing like a normal gym…where are the cardio machines?”

My first WOD (workout of the day) was Murph (for those non CrossFit geeks that is a workout named in honor of Michael Murphy and consist of 1 mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push ups, 300 squats, 1 mile run…prescribed is with a 20lb vest on). I looked at the workout and thought ‘are you kidding me???? 100 pull-ups??? I am going to be here all day.’ I scaled the workout because of course I couldn’t do “real” pull-ups so I did jumping pull-ups, push ups from my knees and normal squats. As I was running the final mile, my legs on fire and my heart beating out of my chest I thought “man this sucks….I have to come back tomorrow.” And thus began my love affair with CrossFit. The next day as I hobbled down the stairs at work backwards because there was no way I could walk forward I couldn’t help but to check the website to see what the WOD was for that day.