Congrats to Erin, our March athlete of the month! Erin put her heart and soul into her Wolves team at our recent team series, an awesome team mate making poster's and baking and getting in the spirit! Erin has been super consistent with her training lately and has made wicked physical progress with her strength and tackled her mental game too. We look forward to watching this super flexible athlete hit more goals this year!
Lets hear what Erin has to say about CrossFit:
- Name: Erin Smithies
- Age: 24
- Occupation: Student (Masters of Wildlife Health and Conservation)
- How long have you been at CrossFit Access? 1 year and 2 months
- What do you enjoy doing outside of CrossFit? Reading, writing, sketching and baking
- What is your favourite and least favourite movements or WODs? Favourite would be back squat. Least favourite would be wall balls.
- What your biggest achievement so far? Back squatting 85kg
- What are your future goals? To keep getting stronger, fitter and more confident and achieve my first freestanding handstand.
- Tell us something we don’t know about you. Outside of CrossFit I love cake decorating and challenging my baking skills with new and alternative recipes and decorating techniques.
- Why did you start CrossFit? I started CrossFit because I was looking for a new challenge as well as a way to get fitter and more confident with myself. I’ve never been fond of normal gyms because, apart from specialized classes I could never find way to focus on technique and new skills. When I did attend a gym I found it tedious and boring, more like a chore than a challenge.
- My sister (Kate) had been doing CrossFit for three years before I started and suggested I give it a shot. I’d been to a few ‘bring your friend to CrossFit’ days at her CrossFit and greatly enjoyed the classes. However, I wanted to find my own CrossFit journey so I looked around for somewhere new. Within the week I was signed up to my first On Ramp class at CrossFit Access and within the month I was hooked. I haven’t looked back since.
- What do you love about CrossFit Access? The atmosphere. No matter what time you go, how often you go, how old or young you are or how fit or strong you are everyone in the class is welcoming and full of encouragement. I love that there is an emphasis on positive attitudes with enthusiastic coaches with the knowledge to back them up. We’re praised for our achievements and even when you fail there’s always someone to cheer you on, to keep you going even when you feel you’re going to collapse. I find this pushes all of us to do our best every day and achieve things we couldn’t do on our own.
- Any advice for anyone just starting their CrossFit journey? Just do it. The hardest part of the CrossFit journey is starting. You can um… and ah… about classes or say ‘I’m not fit enough’ or ‘I’ll never be able to do that’ but that’s the whole point of CrossFit. It’s designed for people of any fitness, strength and, most importantly, confidence level. Before you start a workout don’t think ‘How on Earth am I going to survive this one?’ think ‘What a cool challenge! Let’s see how far I can take this thing!’ And after the workout don’t think ‘I could have done better’ think ‘Awesome score! I bet I’ll smash it next time!’
