Name: Brian Wells
- What do you do for a living?
Financial Planning & Analysis at Adobe
- Tell us your story of how you came to do CrossFit and how long have you been doing it (at 1976 and/or others)?
I have always been a runner and for years have done strength training (boot camp style) to help improve my running. Running is my mental therapy. It helps keep my head somewhat clear. Last fall (2014), I pulled my groin muscle and couldn’t run and it was really starting to weigh on me, mentally. My wife had started working out at CrossFit 1976, but I had been doing the free fitness class at work. Finally, over the Christmas break, I came to the box to try it out and was instantly hooked. CrossFit is the first form of exercise I have found that does the same thing for me, mentally, that running does. It has, quite literally, changed my life!
- What are some of the successes you’ve experienced?
I’m hitting lifts at weights I haven’t done since high school. I love doing benchmark WODs that I did 6 months ago, and beat my old time. I was pretty excited when I got my first bar muscle up, cleaned 200 lbs and OHS 145 lbs.
- What are your current goals?
Be consistent and strive for balance (in all aspects of life and health)
Oh and ring muscle ups and kipping T2B
- What is your favorite movement/exercise?
I like cleans (power and squat), DU’s, pull-ups and of course running
- What keeps you motivated?
Keeping my mental health in check. There is a history of depression and anxiety with the men in my family and I’m the only one in 4 generations that is not on medication for it. Running has been and now CrossFit is also my mental therapy. I NEED to be there!
- Any tips or advice for a CrossFit 1976 newbie?
No matter how hard it feels like it is, don’t quit and don’t stop. “That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do – not that the nature of the thing is changed, but that our power to do has increased.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- If you could have a super power what would it be and why?
It’s a toss-up between flying and moving things with my mind. Flying because it’d just be so much fun, and moving things with my mind because I wouldn’t have to get up to go get things.