My life was on a different path…until it wasn’t.
Growing up I was a normal kid. Played on the monkey bars, ran around the playground, played soccer a bit. But that was the extent of my “fitness”. I had no interest in working out or learning how to eat right until much later in my life.
When I headed to college, I exercised even less. School became the priority and recreational sports disappeared. I could feel myself becoming less and less active, and more and more out of shape.
During college I ended up starting my own business. The business started to change my life as it slowly changed my priorities from school to work, in a good way. I realized what I was studying in college was actually of no interest to me, and what I really wanted to do was run a highly successful business. But, there was still a major step between what I wanted to do and what I’m doing today. We’ll get to that in a moment.
It wasn’t until a college roommate of mine dragged me to the gym that all of this started to shift towards the world of fitness. I was out of shape and my buddy knew it. He wanted me to go to the gym with him and do “CrossFit”. He’d already been going for a while, but wanted a workout buddy. I told him that I would go, but only on the condition that we’d go as much as possible and he would hold me accountable. And that he did!
So he introduced me to CrossFit. We started working out almost everyday and we were as consistent as we could be. Then things really started to change because the biggest transitional moment in my life was right around the corner.
I decided to drop out of college.
I’m sure you can imagine how everyone reacted to that news, especially my parents. But they were supportive in the long run. I had no interest in college because my business was growing so fast. It had the potential to take me places that a college degree never could. So I dropped out and ended up moving to Jersey City, right out of NYC, because that’s where the business needed to be.
When I arrived in JC, I quickly realized that a friend of mine owned a CrossFit gym nearby. The very first week I walked over and said “Hey I’ve been doing this for awhile, can I jump in?”. He welcomed me with open arms and I immediately learned that I was still out of shape!
I hung in there and continued to improve day by day. Then another big life moment happened, a coach at the gym asked me if I wanted to watch her coach the Fundamentals program. She thought I would be interested in it, so I said “sure, why not?”.
The rest, as they say, is history. I immediately fell in love with coaching and went all in. I started shadowing every fundamentals class the gym offered. I asked a thousand questions so I could learn as much as possible.
As time went on, I became even more fascinated with CrossFit. I eventually started coaching at the gym, became Head Coach, and started to build the coaching staff.
You never know where you’re going to end up. I started as a college student studying something I hated, then moved to the city to run a business, and ended up on an entirely new career path in the world of fitness.
Take that leap of faith. Try something new. You never know where you might end up.
Travis Dalrymple, Head Coach at CFJC
