In CrossFit boxes across the world, you will find the most diverse group of people participating in the sport. Showing up every day, getting to know each other, sharing in each others joys and tough times, all while sweating and doing movements they never thought possible.
Our box, Roxbury CrossFit, is fortunate to have built an incredibly close community that always shows up for each other inside and outside of the box. We are also fortunate that we have the opportunity to work with younger people, teenagers to be exact. There is one teenage athlete we want to tell you all about. We believe her story is triumphant and can serve as a template for youth across the world.
While only 15, you would think that Madisyn Keith or how we know her as “Maddy”, has lived a very long life, a life beyond her years. As a person in general, when you experience self-doubt and suffer from low self-esteem, the outside world can be brutal. The words that people use to degrade and demean us leave forever scars on our spirits and our hearts but for Maddy, she has overcome and risen above all of it.
For most of her life Maddy had been overweight. Struggling to find a time she ever felt confident about herself, Maddy had a hard time growing up. She would be called “Fat” and “Fatty Maddy” on a daily basis by her peers. When she would get into arguments with her peers, they would know exactly what to say to make her feel defeated. Maddy did a lot of typical teenage things differently than others because of her weight. A usual pastime of teenagers is to shop for clothes. Maddy learned to hate shopping because she couldn’t go into trendy or age appropriate stores for clothes. If she ever did go into a trendy store and found something that fit the only thing she would be able to hear in her head is “Fatty Maddy.” When that happened Maddy would quickly leave the store in tears and not return.
Maddy spent a very long time not being able to look in the mirror or take pictures of herself. Maddy has spent a large amount of her youth not liking herself, hating herself as she said when being interviewed for this piece. Who would have thought that seeing an ad on Facebook for a six-week challenge at Roxbury CrossFit would be the thing to change the course of Maddy’s entire life?
Maddy describes walking into Roxbury CrossFit for the first time similar to being on a roller coaster:
“You tell yourself you are going to go on this crazy roller coaster and then once you get in line you start to get scared. Yet you continue to wait in the line. When I found Roxbury CrossFit, I was scared of what it was going to be like, I’ve never even heard of CrossFit before. Although I was scared I continued to walk into the building. Then there’s the moments when you get onto the ride and it starts going up that big hill and you hear the cart on the tracks. This is the moment you realize you can not get off the roller coaster.”
Maddy has found a love for CrossFit that she only dreamed of. So much so, her original plans were to go to college to study photography and nutritional science. Maddy now has dreams of opening her own CrossFit box and becoming a coach one day and sharing what she continues to learn with other people who are looking to change the course of their lives as well.
The perspective of the peer community Maddy interacts with daily has changed drastically. Her peers were shocked she started doing CrossFit, stuck with it and now they are just downright impressed with her progress. We see this with Maddy inside the box as well. Her smile is contagious and her enthusiasm is inspiring. Who couldn’t use some of that?
Maddy loves talking with her friends about CrossFit and sharing her experiences. She always emphasizes that it is not always about losing weight or gaining muscle but about your perspective on the world and your place in the world.
To say that Maddy has found her place in the world would be an understatement. “I literally owe my life to CrossFit. Not matter what I do in life, where I go to college, what I do for a living, where I reside, CrossFit will always be my biggest achievement. It will always be my golden ticket,” says Maddy Keith.
To follow Maddy’s progress, please follow on Facebook and Instagram. To get your golden ticket, contact us today!
By:
Jess Guberman
STF Contributor
