Vivek Venkitaraman

CS&F has been home for almost 7 years. When I came in, I honestly didn’t know what to expect. Like most people, I started with the goal of losing some weight. I had always played sports (mostly soccer) but by the time I came into CrossFit, I had terrible knees (from injuries), was severely overweight and had a very meager understanding of what it meant to be “fit”.

Over time, I did lose weight, got a bit more toned and definitely built more endurance. I went from having poor knees to being able to do box jumps, lunges, squat 325, run a half marathon and achieve a whole list of small, personal victories. During this entire time, my goals shifted constantly between weight loss, lowering body fat% and to hitting specific weight and gymnastic PR’s. All this in the shadow of constant struggle with nutrition.

Today, I’m happy to report that fitness has an entirely different connotation for me. It means staying injury-free while performing all my workouts and still getting the stimulus from the programming. It means being able to maintain a balanced, 2000 calorie diet without the associated anxiety and seeing consistent gains.

While the coaches at CS&F helped me plan and achieve both long-term and short-term goals, the truly awesome community here helped me stay the course. This combination and the ensuing friendships helped me gain more than I’d hoped for.