Strength and Body Type-The Ladies

Congratulations on “Fran” yesterday everyone. Two standouts were the always lovely Mike G. who did his in 5:35! A significant personal best. And…drumroll, maybe? Midori S. took SEVEN MINUTES off her previous time with the same version of the workout!!! Sometimes, measuring and timing things is fabulously rewarding.

How are all you Get-Some Challengers doing?  Have you forgotten?  I wanted to inspire you all with a profile of a CrossFit athlete.  Nearly every day I hear questions from women about how they don’t want to look like a “crossfit woman” or if they don’t know what that is, about how they don’t want big bulky muscles. This is interesting to me, since the flip side of not wanting to appear too strong might be that you are more comfortable appearing weak, which breaks my heart.  I’m all for being proud of looking strong.  But each of us has our own world view and it is true that wearing those super skinny jeans is not always so easy when your quads are, well…existant.  However, my point today is that much of how you end up appearing does not have to do with how much weight you can lift or how strong you are, it has to do with your genetics.  I want you to look at this picture of Lauren Plumey, CrossFit Games competitor out of CrossFit Milford, 5th place at last year’s Northeast Qualifiers.

Now, I want you to look at her numbers:

Age: 29
Height 5′ 8″
Weight 131

Date of Birth Jan. 29 1980
Place of Birth New Haven, CT
Date Starting CrossFit May, 2008

Lives in West Haven, CT
Affiliate: CrossFit Milford

Fran 4.12
Cindy 23

Helen 8.12
Diane 10.32
Grace 3.08
Fight Gone Bad 321
Filthy Fifty 21.12

Deadlift 315
Press 95
Back Squat 205

Clean and jerk 145
Max Pull-ups 37

5’8″ at 131lbs means that is a pretty lithe girl!  But she is also very strong.  Pretty cool.