Ben during the San Diego / AZ Sectionals
Growing up in Phoenix was tough at times. As a kid he moved a lot, so it was hard to keep friends. Later, when he got to high school he tried playing sports but was never “cool” enough to fit in with the other kids. After failing at most conventional types of sports he found his niche with skateboarding, an independent sport that, while more fun with friends, was also a calming peaceful thing you could do by yourself.
At 6′ 155lb full grown (22yrs old at the time), he was by his own account “skinny and weak.” He decided he wanted to change that, so he got into body building, or what he thought was body building, minus all the steroids. So over the course of the next 5 years he transformed into a 210lb, chubby but strong guy. His montra was eat a lot, lift a lot. Playing sports he felt out of shape and weak, just like in high school.
With computer nerd roots he was working at a consulting company in downtown San Diego when he needed to find a gym nearby. By coincidence he found CrossFit Invictus. Here he was suprised to learn that all the body building stuff he had been doing didn’t make him a stronger person, it just gave him stronger isolated muscles. As one coach put it “Body Builders train muscles to be strong, athletes train their bodies to be strong”. That was a defining moment; he wanted to be strong, but also athletic. In just over five months he’s lost 35lbs and still just as strong plus a heck of a lot faster and more capable to take on the unkown and unknowable.
Here he met Shane Farmer, who pretty much smoked him at every workout they did. Okay, he still pretty much smokes him but there are times when it is pretty competitive. Shane approached him with the idea to make a book about all the great stories out there about how CrossFit has affected peoples lives and over time started to formulate how they could accomplish this from a technology standpoint.
The original website was up in about a week and the rest of the time was spent thinking about content and how to get the word out. Since then they’ve received a great amount of support from social media connections as well as peers from the local San Diego community. Both of the guys hope to form some key partnerships with big names in CrossFit and really start hitting the pavement capturing those precious stories about how CrossFit has changed lives.
Shane at the CrossFit Games 2010 Southwest Regionals
Shane grew up in Minnesota and was an avid, albeit average, athlete all through school playing football, baseball, running track, and slalom skiing. His love of sport took him to college in Colorado for two years where he intended to become a ski instructor for the rest of his life while obtaining a Kinesiology degree and playing baseball.
After his second year he was encouraged to transfer schools by a mentor and took the opportunity to make the move to San Diego where he finished school as a business major and happened upon the sport of rowing which for the four years he spent at the University of San Diego became his passion.
While rowing he was introduced to Stephane Rochet and the CrossFit community as a way of training for rowing. As a team, they spent summers become versed in the sport of CrossFit as they prepared for the upcoming seasons. Upon graduation it was a natural progression to enter the CrossFit realm and begin training as well as coaching rowing for the CrossFit community. He ended up at CrossFit Invictus and entered into training for the 2010 CrossFit Games.
It was in this training that Shane met Ben Sullins. The two began a friendly but highly competitive training program that pushed them to great heights as athletes. After the San Diego/Arizona sectionals, Shane pitched Ben the idea of creating a book to tell the true story of what CrossFit is. It was here, that CrossFit Story took its first steps.
Meet the other half of the team tomorrow…
Yours in CrossFit,
The CrossFit Story Team
In case you hadn’t noticed, we’ve added something pretty special to our site. Before we go about touting the great things we’re doing though, we know you’re asking yourself “That’s fantastic guys, but how does it benefit me and my love of CrossFit?”
So instead of telling you what’s new, we’ll start with what it’ll do for you.
The first bit is what you can expect to see from us every day. If you read it and don’t like or agree with it then you don’t have to tune in any more. It’s awesome because you have a clear description of what we’re aiming to do and you know what we’re looking for in a story about CrossFit. A win/win for everyone. “Wait a second” you might say, “That seems too good to be true.” It’s not, we promise. What we’re talking about is our Mission:
“CrossFit Story captures and cultivates the life-changing, sweat-inducing, leave-your-excuses-behind stories that breed inspiration every day. Period.”
The second bit will inspire you the same way it drives us every day to keep going. We all need a pick me up on a cloudy day or motivation when we’re feeling sick. That’s what this will do. It’s like a CrossFit approved paleo energy shot using words instead of a physical drink. It’s our Vision statement of where we will be in the future and what we’ll be doing along the way:
“CrossFit Story exists to be the spark that ignites people to live a beautifully fit life using every means possible.”
Bring your stories to CrossFit Story and help us inspire the world through fitness.
Yours in CrossFit,
The CrossFit Story Team
Around January of this year, a small group of individuals from our Box began a journey towards a lofty goal, to compete at the CrossFit San Diego/Arizona sectional competition as individuals. Many people go through the trials of CrossFit workouts on a regular basis, and to accept the challenge of competition is adding one more level of complexity to the already intricate engine that is our body.
Most knew each other in fleeting but had never identified too intimately. Their day’s had passed in relative steady flow as training before this commitment was mildly consistent and akin to casual socializing. What happened as they asserted their willingness to devote the near future to a common goal though became an epoch of their life’s timeline. It materialized with a realization that to appropriate the sheer amount of time and energy to such an endeavor would be near excruciating without training partners.
Therefore, they collaborated. Slowly at first, then like a snowball that grows as it picks up speed, they began to come together. They gained greater understanding of each other’s strengths and weaknesses, met families, shared their accomplishments and failures together, and found deep seeded friendship growing by the day. What began as multiple individual goals for different reasons, had transformed into a unified group, bound tightly by the bonds of sharing a common experience that trancended preconceived notions and created a brotherhood in the finest sense of the word.
