DAN FOOTE

I have been with Central for a little under 1.5 years.

Before I joined Central, I was attempting the home gym life. I had actually bought my own bar, weights and even a squat rack. I would roll out sections of gym mats and do mini workouts on my driveway. It felt pretty good at first to be able to motivate myself to go out there and come up with workouts and build routines and stick to them. At some point though, I noticed that I would find excuses to skip my workouts and it felt like something was missing. I realized that even though I may not be the most social person ever, I really thrived and needed the community that comes from a CrossFit gym like Central. I did some research online to see what was around before landing on Central. It ended up being the first gym I went to visit to check out and I made the decision to stay basically the next night and have been grateful ever since. My goal of making it to 5 classes a week has become so much easier. It is all too easy for my brain to come up with any number of excuses not to show up. For me, just getting to the gym is 50% of my fitness routine. The first thing I said when I signed up for Central Downtown was to be more consistent. And I feel I am committed to that goal in all parts of my life, not just going to the gym.

I have been an athlete of some form or another since I was in middle school. I did the "gym bro" thing in High School and College and that eventually got a little stale. When I moved to Texas during the Pandemic I was looking for something new to motivate my fitness lifestyle and had wanted to try CrossFit for a very long time. At first all the different movements, Olympic lifts and gymnastics was a bit daunting. But now I couldn't imagine doing anything else. I think that is the beautiful thing about CrossFit is that it welcomes all forms and experience levels of athletes. Places like Central are very rare though in how the coaching staff nurtures growth in their athletes. The fantastic coaching staff and community are what keep me coming back to continue to learn and develop my abilities as an athlete.   

Committing to doing CrossFit at any level is not an easy task. When I am in the middle of a crazy hard WOD, it flat out sucks. There are so many things inside my head that tell me to take it easy and to stop pushing myself to newer limits and beyond them. The programming and coaching at Central have always encouraged me to push past "the suck" and not give up on my goals. When I first started at Central, I was not able to complete WODs at the Rx level. I made the commitment on day 1 to go for Rx regardless of how difficult or beyond my abilities I felt like the workout was. I may not be completing every single Rx workout currently, but there isn't a single day that I show up to the gym that I don't attempt the most difficult version of the WOD. And this mentality has absolutely carried over to my life outside the gym. Having Central in my life has given me more confidence to attempt many things that I initially doubted that I can do. And most importantly, I have learned to love the sucky things in life and know there is growth occurring.