September’s Extraordinary athlete is very soon to be 10 year old Thomas Westerman. Thomas is in 4th grade at St. Rita’s Elementary School and he is interested in Boy Scouts,
MineCraft and CrossFit Kids! Thomas has been with us in some way or form from the very beginning over on Sherry Lane. He has done CrossFit Kid camps and Martial Arts and now he is doing a mixture of CrossFit Kids and personal training with Coach John. Thomas discovered early on that group sports were not really his cup of tea. However he and his parents knew that he needed to find something to keep him active and healthy. So, we started personal training! Thomas’ favorite thing to do is weight-lifting. If you have ever seen his dad, you can see that he probably has a natural gene to be super strong! While dad has a deadlift around 500, Thomas has a deadlift of 95 lbs! That’s about what he weighs!
If you know much about CrossFit Kids you might know that most CrossFit boxes don’t train kids to lift heavy weights. However, we found that as soon as those kids left the box, they went and picked up the absolute heaviest thing they could find. In fact, pretty much every kid who enters our gym goes straight to our kettlebells to see what is the heaviest kettlebell they can pick up. Because of this, we decided to make sure that the kids know how to lift the weight the correct way so that they don’t hurt themselves. We also found that some kids don’t thrive doing tons of cardio, but they experience success, gain strength and burn calories while lifting weights. Thomas is one of those kids. Give him a running metcon and he is miserable, but challenge him to pull a sled and that kid will get busy! Thomas has also become great at jumping rope!
The greatest change we have seen with Thomas is his attitude. He used to get upset easily when things didn’t go his way and he would withdraw for the rest of the day. Now, he is much more relaxed and understanding, he helps others who want to learn and he is more sociable with the adults and other kids. Part of that is the natural maturity that comes with age, but part of it is an increased self-confidence that comes from the little everyday successes in CrossFit. He is now much more willing to try new things, and more importantly – try new things, work hard, fail and try again. That is a huge success!
We are so proud of you Thomas and we can’t wait to see what you do with your Journey to Extraordinary!