“If you quit, you are 100% on your own. No funding for college, apartment and that means at the end of this semester you either pay yourself or you are done.”
These words, written by my father are what turned my obsession of CrossFit into my career.
Since I was young I have always been interested in health and fitness. As a child, I had played almost every sport under the sun and was constantly in motion. My mom jokes about how I never came home with clean clothes and would always be getting into something. Whether I was at a practice or just home “relaxing” I would always find something to do. As I got older, my father introduced me to weightlifting to help me better prepare for my sports and to help burn off all my extra energy. At first I was very intimidated of weights and it took me a few years to get comfortable in a weight room. But as I got older I became obsessed with the benefits of weightlifting on my sports performance, specifically in lacrosse. I was constantly trying to learn about new weightlifting programs and diets to help me better prepare for the lacrosse season. Fortunately for me I was offered the opportunity to play lacrosse at Bucknell University, a Division I program.
Like any other college freshman will tell you, college is scary. I am a pretty introverted kid and do not drink or party, which put me in a weird situation. Being on a team that is known for it’s partying made me somewhat of an outcast. I still had friends but our interests were not really the same. The gym was my sanctuary and it kept me sane. I didn’t mind waking up at 6am to workout when everyone else was hung over or going to the gym at 10pm on a Friday when everyone else was out drinking because I had a drive to always be better. Over Christmas break during my freshman year was when CrossFit entered my life.
During break I was flipping through the channels and The CrossFit Games were on ESPN. Having no clue what the hell they were, I took a look. I watched two badass men duking it out in some workout with these weird looking ring movements, deadlifts, some version of a sit-up, and sprints. Those two badass men happen to be Rich Froning and Josh Bridges during the 2011 CrossFit games. Fascinated, I called up a local box the next morning and gave it a try. I remember walking in: the freezing cold garage, smell of sweat and this ominous feeling that I was about to get my ass kicked. And get my ass kicked is what happened. I was hooked!
Despite my newfound obsession I could only do a few workouts before break ended and I had to get back to school. Balancing being in season for lacrosse and schoolwork left little time for me to experiment with CrossFit. But in all of my downtime I did what I knew best, which was research. I watched all of the CrossFit videos on YouTube and tried to learn as much as I could from the CrossFit journal. I wanted to be as prepared as possible to dive in headfirst when I got back home to the local box. Near the long draining end to the season I suffered a serious concussion. To be honest it was terrifying not being able to function normally or sleep for nearly two weeks. This coupled with the stress of schoolwork just left a bad taste in my mouth to the finish my freshman year.
Over the summer I dove head first into CrossFit. I would do the main site workout everyday and then whatever else the owner of CrossFit 201, Keith Ferrara, could throw at me. It was an ass kicking everyday that I looked forward too. I became known around the gym as some sort of freak for my insatiable appetite for working out. Someone told me I should try to qualify for the CrossFit Games. I wasn’t really sure what that meant. At first glance, I really wanted all of the free gear but looking deeper into what The Games meant and the title “fittest on earth” was enticing. I didn’t tell anyone I wanted to go to The Games, just yet, so my training continued as usual because I knew nothing different. As the summer came to a close I was upset to leave but excited to start training at a new local gym at school.
This is where my story gets very interesting. Arriving at a new gym is always an awkward experience. There is a certain flow about each gym that takes a few days to pick up on and you aren’t quite sure how you should act. I kept to myself but eventually my name got around and I was introduced to Matt Sherburne. Matt was the head trainer at CrossFit Lewisburg and offered for me to train with him. His friends Drew Crandall and Seth Page were starting a programming blog called MisFit Athletics, which is what we followed. Still self-conscious to let anyone in on my ambitions of qualifying for the CrossFit games I kept to myself and trained hard.
What many people don’t know is that a Division I sport is a full time year round commitment. This commitment was just not something I was willing to make for another year. The long draining hours of a sport that became a job rather than something fun and the scary idea of another concussion took its toll. I decided to walk away from my college lacrosse career and pursue CrossFit. Despite my optimism for my own future, my parents were not pleased with me. The quote at the beginning is what my dad told me. My mom agreed with him as well. They thought I was giving up my lifetime of athletic achievements, which they had invested so much of their time and effort as parents into, for some weird fitness phenomenon. In short, they seemed emotionally hurt by my decision. It was difficult to explain my side of the story to get them to understand where I was coming from, which is why there was such a dramatic disconnect between our opinions.
From that day on my parents treated me like an outsider. They were extremely disappointed in me and as such I wasn’t welcome home. The hardest part was not hearing from any of my family on my 20th birthday. Despite this extreme situation my girlfriend (Genna) and her family (Anthony, Lori and Tori) all took me in as part of their family. I can never thank them enough for everything they did for me that year. They gave me a bed to sleep in when I came home from school and made me feel that I still had all of the support I needed to continue school and CrossFit. I finally told them about my ambitions to qualify for the CrossFit Games and they were nothing but supportive. Living on your own, being a full time student and trying to train for the CrossFit Games didn’t leave any time for working, which led me to run out of money for quality food. Genna’s parents were saints when they offered to stock me up with quality food every week to keep me fueled for training.
As the year went on there was still a disconnect between my parents and myself. Despite their lack of support, my drive to succeed in CrossFit and prove them wrong that I could make it and qualify for the games was stronger each day. Drew and Seth of MisFit Athletics pushed me and Matt to new potentials with each new training cycle as the 2013 Games season came closer.
The 2013 CrossFit Games Open was terrifying to compete in. I had never done a competition before and didn’t know what to expect. All I knew was that I was going to push as hard as I possibly could to qualify for regionals. Drew and Seth mentally got me ready for the pain of the Open by telling me to “Embrace the Darkness”. That’s exactly what I did. I went into every workout with a reckless abandon. I think I used all of the pent up frustration over the year and trying to prove my parents wrong. Nonetheless I managed to qualify for regionals in 11th place. Despite my extremely valiant effort my parents were unimpressed by my open performance and still had not begun to accept my choice to pursue a career in CrossFit. I was actually told “if you were that good you would have finished first.” This lit a fire under my belly like you would not believe.
After the open comes the long road of what’s called “regionals prep”. I had to balance schoolwork, two full training sessions a day and proper recovery. This was no easy task and my body was hurting. Although I knew the importance of recovery, I did not have enough money to buy all of the supplements I needed. I had been told countless times that Progenex had the best recovery products on the market. I was laying in bed one night and thinking to myself “What’s the worst they can say? They don’t want to sponsor me?” So that night I wrote out a long email discussing what I had gone through that year and my future intentions in CrossFit. Looking at the people on their website like Jason Khalipa, I thought I had no shot they would sponsor a no-name 160 lb. college kid like me. It took a couple days but Paul Gomez and the marketing team got back to me. I remember the moment I received their email so clearly it still gives me goose bumps. They not only wanted to sponsor my trip to regionals but depending on my performance at regionals I would have the opportunity to get a contract! I nearly cried reading their email. It may sound shallow that getting a sponsorship meant this much to me but it was a lot deeper than that. To me it was the fact that all of my hard work, tenacity, and dedication to this point was being acknowledged by people I didn’t really know. I think Progenex helped fill that void of support lacking from my family.
With Progenex, MisFit Athletics, Genna and her family behind me I went into regionals with a hard nose attitude. I was just going to put my head down and work. Watching Gladiator the night before regionals was probably the best decision I had made all year because at the 3-2-1-Go call I just put my head down and went to work. I knew the odds of qualifying were slim but I wasn’t going to let something I could control hold me back. Over the course of the weekend I had 5 top 10 finishes and finished in 8th overall. I was happy with a top 10 finish, since I was only 9 months into CrossFit at the time. Drew and Seth were blown away by my composure on the floor, being that it was my first real competition and I didn’t panic once. Progenex was happy with my performance as well and I was lucky enough to sign a contract with them. Despite not making The Games, I think I proved to myself, and those around me that I could do this.
Although my family was not in attendance at Regionals, which hurt, they told me after that they had watched the heats online and were blown away by what I was actually doing. And when I told them about my Progenex contract they were ecstatic for me. Once they realized I wasn’t wasting my potential they began to turn around. My parents and I sat down one day and had a long talk about the past year. We had both apologized to each other for everything that happened over the year. We began to grow closer over the next year and they are now in full support of my CrossFit endeavors. They even came to the 2014 North East Regionals at the Reebok Headquarters and got to see for themselves the mayhem that is regionals. After seeing thousands of fans cheer for his son, I think my dad got tingly inside and realized I would make it in whatever I did.
What I learned over that year was something that will stick with me for as long as I live. It’s that when you have an insatiable desire to succeed and surround yourself with good people, good things will happen. I can’t thank the Mergolas, my Misfit Athletics family, the CrossFit community, and my Progenex family enough for everything they did for me that year and continue to do for me. Without them I wouldn’t have been able to make my 2013 CrossFit Games season a success.
Desire to Succeed + Surrounded by Good People = Good Things Happen
- Joe Kearney
The post The Story Behind Joe Kearney appeared first on Progenex.