Reggie has been a member at Queen Street Fitness for almost a year and a half now, and consistently comes out to the 4:30pm class. Reggie typically trains 2 hours a day, 6 days a week, participating in the class, and throwing in some extra training after class. Read more below to see how Reggie balances his training life with work life, and how his work with disease prevention intrigued him to start CrossFit in the first place!

What does an average day-in-the-life look like for you? (food, training, work, recovery, leisure time, etc.): In the morning I'll generally wake up around 6 AM and immediately grind coffee beans to make a fresh cup of coffee and then prepare my food for the day, which is often a selection of steamed vegetables, 2-3 baked potatoes, unsweetened jello and a typically a kiwi and apple. I often don't eat breakfast as I have found that intermittent fasting is something that works well for me. I'll typically head to work at KGH where I am a research assistant looking at people with severe COPD and ILD. My workday typically ends at 4 PM where I head off to the 4 30 class with ERIC!! after that if I have the energy, I'll stay for another hour doing strength training. typically, when I get home, I'll immediately eat (cuz I'm STARVING!!) and I'll typically end the day with a 45-minute yoga or range of motion session.

Have you changed the way you eat since you began CrossFit, If so, how?: about 3 years ago I started eating a mostly plant-based diet as I had really packed on the freshman 15 and was looking to make a change. Nowadays I find that the amount of food that I eat in a day is largely dependent on what type of training we are doing in class. Endurance WODs like MURPH will have me packing away the calories post workout!

How does training/CrossFit fit into your life?: Training has become a huge part of my life and is often the thing that I look forward to the most in a day. The QSF community is amazing and has allowed me the opportunity to make a number of new friends. Training regularly has also resulted in me being the fittest that I have ever been in my life and has provided me more confidence in myself which has carried on benefitting not only my personal but professional life.

What reasons did you have to train when you started CrossFit? Have those reasons changed? If so, how?: I really care about disease prevention and maintaining a high quality of life not only for myself but for my community. Having worked with a number of patients with preventable disease I have an understanding of how important something as simple as daily exercise is. This is initially what got me through the door at QSF. Nowadays this is very much still my mindset however, I also really love the competitive and community aspects of CrossFit which is what keeps me engaged and wanting to come back.

What improvements have you made in the past 6 months that you are most proud of?: 6 months ago I could not do a single set of 2 double unders and I'd always look at a WOD that had double unders in it and think "man... here's another workout I have to scale" and "damn! That looks so cool”. So, I'd talk to Eric about how to scale the double unders and he'd tell me to go for a minute of double under practice during the WOD instead of hitting the actual rep scheme. From there, double unders were something I incorporated into almost every extra session after the class. During one of the Saturday sessionsI was in, Scott Shallow reached out to me and helped me with the timing of my double unders which was super helpful!! From there I started stringing them together to the point where last week I completed a workout with 400+ double unders programmed in it! I'm super happy with the progress I've made with that movement.

Do you currently have a main focus or goal(s) with your training? : Lately, I've been focusing on two goals. 1) to perform better in this year's open than I did last year. 2) to get my first ever bar muscle up. I've been using extra sessions after the class to hammer in my weaknesses and perform better.

What would you consider to be your greatest strength as an athlete?: I think I am an endurance athlete! I tend to perform better on the longer WODs than the high intensity fast WODs especially if there are a lot of body weight movements!!

What is one thing that you do everyday that you feel is essential in contributing to your success in the gym? : I am a big advocate for walking!! I walk everywhere and try to hit 10,000 steps every day. I think this helps a lot with my bettering my circulation and my recovery from especially difficult workouts. I've also found that it's tremendously important for helping me maintain a healthy weight.

If you could give yourself one piece of advice when you started CrossFit, what would it be?: I would tell myself to set aside my ego for the first month or two and focus on developing proper form for the more technical barbell work rather than loading up the bar with weight! Luckily Eric knows this was a weakness of mine and would constantly tell me to lighten the bar and focus on proper form in the WOD. Since then, my mobility and form are miles better than what they used to be and I can focus more on strength development now.

Do you have a go-to self-pep talk? (i.e. something you tell yourself when things get hard with training or during a workout): I don't really have a "pep talk" but recently one technique that I have found super helpful in particularly hard WODs is to focus on my breathing pattern and depth. This allows me to take the focus away from the pain that I'm feeling and dial in on achieving full breaths to stave off the lactic acid build up.

Is there anything you would like to add? : Shout out to my homies in the 4 30 crew!!!!