Athlete Spotlight

Welcome back to Athlete Spotlight – we hope you’re enjoying getting to know the stories of your fellow athletes. For this edition we asked Karen Williams to be our feature. Karen has an inspiring story which details how she has lost 40kg over the last few years and and how she has trained around a shoulder surgery earlier this year.

*Be sure to read to the end to see some before and after photos.

1. Tell us a bit about yourself? I am 48 years old, an Accounts Manager for a private business that designs and builds kitchens for restaurants/cafes/hotels and sells commercial catering equipment. I suppose one of my hobbies is CrossFit as I spend a lot of my free time doing it. I enjoy going to watch CrossFit competitions and love encouraging our athletes when they compete. I also enjoy going out with friends, a weekly date with girlfriends for the movies and I have a Border Collie dog that I walk as much as possible.

2. How did you get into CrossFit and how long have you been doing it? I have been doing CrossFit for about 2 1/2 years. For about 3 years before CrossFit I was doing a combination of going to the gym, personal training and bootcamp style workouts, before that I played hockey for about 20 years. I met Tess and Drew while doing bootcamp and when they moved over to CrossFit I thought I would give it a try, not knowing if I would be able to do it.

3. You underwent shoulder surgery earlier this year, can you elaborate on your experience of returning to CrossFit post surgery? When I was diagnosed with a Rotator Cuff tear, I thought that would be the end of me doing CrossFit. Chris assured me that with or without the operation he would be able to scale workouts so that I could still train. Probably against most medical advice I decided to get it operated on, knowing that the recovery time would be long and involved. It is now 6 months since I had the operation and I can’t believe it has gone so fast. I was amazed at how much strength I had lost during the six weeks that I was in a sling but Chris built things back up slowly and I am now getting back to lifting the same weights that I was doing before I hurt my shoulder. Chris and Marie have been great with scaling workouts and building my strength back – there are still some things that I can’t do, but hopefully they will come with time. I am currently trying to build my push up strength, you may have seen me strung up with bands doing push-ups, it is amazing how quickly it is improving my strength and hopefully soon I will be able to do a push up under my own steam.

4. You have achieved some impressive things with regard to your nutrition and body composition, can you tell us a bit about your journey with nutrition? About 6 years ago I saw some photos from my work Xmas party, I could not believe that was what I looked like. I had been overweight for all of my life, but was living in denial as to how bad it had gotten. From that point I decided to do something about it. I started out with Weight Watchers and lost about 30kg which I maintained until I came to CrossFit. When Chris was doing one of the nutrition talks I asked him for some help with my diet, we made some changes and I lost about another 10kg. I have managed to maintain that loss even with having time off for my shoulder surgery. I am quite disciplined with my eating habits during the week and a bit more relaxed on the weekends. I find it easier if I am organised and now do a cook-up each Sunday so that I have my breakfast and lunch precooked for the week. Basically I am eating a combination of Paleo and Zone and eat meat and vegies at each meal. I don’t eat bread/pasta/rice and very little fruit. I do notice that my body behaves differently if I eat foods that I don’t normally. I intend to carry on with the way that I eat now but know that I fall into bad habits if I am not organised and have good food readily available. It is still difficult to pass up on the birthday cakes and treats at work.

5. Do you have any advice for other CrossFitters who have the goal to improve their nutrition? I had to realise that I was not going on a diet – as I had done that before and then go back to eating the way you used to and you end up back where you began. It needs to be a change of lifestyle that you can maintain, so you need to find foods that you are happy to eat in the long term. I still struggle with my sweet tooth. Being organised is the best advice I can give, it is also easier because I am only organising meals for me.

6. You’re one of our most consistently attending athletes, what keeps you coming back and what goals do you have for the future? I think you need you make fitness a priority, I spent too many years being unhealthy and I am now trying to turn it around. I really enjoy the fact that you are basically having personal training in a group environment and doing things that you would never contemplate on your own. I know when I used to go to the gym I just did the things that I liked doing, probably not what I needed to be doing. I want to continue with my attendance and hopefully other skills will grow with perseverance, I know that I am never going to be the fastest or lift the heaviest but am happy that I can continue to improve my fitness.

7. Any advice for someone who is just starting their CrossFit journey? Just give it a try – you will be amazed at what you can do – I didn’t think I would be able to half of what I now can.

karen before Created with Nokia Smart Cam

Comments are closed.