When Katie and her family moved to the Bay Area, they looked for two things first- a school for their son and a CrossFit box.

Katie started CrossFit in Cleveland, Ohio after seeing how much her friends loved CrossFit. However, Katie had never done any kind of sport before. The way she remained active when she was younger was with Flag Corps and Show Choir. During graduate school she reached one of her highest weights ever, and she was living with mental illnesses that we not well managed with conventional medicine. She did a lot of research and found how exercise helps treat mental illness so she decided to run because her dad and siblings are all runners. She hated running, but Katie will do pretty much anything for Disney, so she signed up to run the Walt Disney World half-marathon and she went on a popular diet where she counted what she ate every day. Katie lost weight, but she was always sick due to poor nutrition. Her pace for the half-marathon was slow, but she finished, and for a few years she ran in order to train for more races. While she liked parts of running and her mood improved for a few hours after running, overall it was too repetitive for her and she was always slow. When Katie became a care partner for her mother, who had Dementia, Katie was tired, sick, and running was no longer fun or mood-boosting. While Katie knew her friends loved CrossFit, she did not think she could ever do anything like CrossFit. After months of talking about CrossFit but never going to a class, her husband bought her a 6-week introductory set of classes for her birthday, and she was hooked.

Katie fell in love with CrossFit because the workouts were different everyday, the community was immensely supportive, and she continually saw improvements in strength and endurance. CrossFit became so much a part of her life that her husband joined and her son began CrossFit Kids classes at seven years old. Not only did the exercise at CrossFit help Katie, but the knowledge about nutrition, sleep, recovery, and lifestyle all helped Katie function a bit better.

At CrossFit Hale, Katie found a community that focuses on helping people function to the best of their ability. CrossFit is about mental and physical health and fitness. As a Unitarian Universalist Community Minister working as a life coach, with a speciality in helping people with mental illness and dementia, CrossFit fit perfectly with Katie’s view on how community of knowledgeable and caring people helps you live your best life.

CrossFit Hale coaches are knowledgeable about form, mobility, goal-setting, nutrition, motivation, and how to improve in strength and endurance. They know how to help people reach their goals both in and out of the box and Katie’s life changed the moment she came to Hale. Due to Hale’s whole-life approach, Katie has seen an amazing improvement in not only her CrossFit workouts, but also in her lifestyle (nutrition, sleep, recovery, mobility) and body composition, which has led to recovery from mental and physical illnesses. Katie wanted to be able to help do for others what CrossFit Hale has done for her, and so after her internship at CrossFit Hale, she became a coach in June of 2017.