Name: Phil Quinn
Hometown: West Islip, NY (Long Island)
Age: 24
Occupation: Software Engineer
CrossFitting Since: On and off since 2010.

Favorite WOD or Movement:
Rowing. Not sure whether it’s my long dancers’ legs or my inability to control my pace, but it’s one of the things I do at CrossFit that I’m confident in my ability to do well.

Least Favorite WOD or Movement:
Overhead squats. Poor overhead shoulder mobility + poor squat mobility = one entertaining spectacle for observers.

What is your fitness background? What were you doing before CrossFit?
I played one year of Little League Baseball when I was in 4th grade- so, pretty sparkling. I loved playing sports, but hated training/running so I gravitated towards things like more non-athletic competitive pursuits like mathletes/video games. I didn’t really do anything fitness related until I got to college when I’d decided to read Starting Strength and start lifting weights, badly. I did that for about 1-2 years before I found CrossFit Boston. Haven’t looked back since.

How did you get into CrossFit?
When I was living in Boston during college, I’d run into a few friends near my apartment who had appeared to have just come from the gym (we were fairly far from our campus gym) and they both seemed pretty smoked. Naturally I inquired, and they proceeded to describe CrossFit to me and I was instantly intrigued, even as someone who had a very sparse athletic/weightlifting background. It also helped that that particular affiliate was less than a 5 minute walk away from my apartment at the time. I scheduled my intro a few weeks later and the rest is history, I guess.

Do you have any fitness goals for 2014? Where are you in terms of achieving them?
I have a lot of fitness goals, but as far as ones that might be achievable (or not; looking at you, muscle-up), I’m trying to add around 100 to 150lbs to my CrossFit total that I took in June 2013. On a good note, preliminary observations lead me to believe that I’m well on track to achieving that.

What makes CrossFit Virtuosity unique?
THE PEOPLE! That includes the members and the coaches. Everyone is super unique and varied and interesting and welcoming. No matter how far I move from CFV, I will keep coming back as long as I live in this city. I can’t imagine working out with a cooler group of people.

How have you changed since starting CrossFit?
Well, besides the obvious quantitative stuff like weight (having less of it, being able to move more of it), the changes I’ve made in my life spurned by CrossFit and through CrossFit itself are pretty far reaching. My initial goal of just “losing weight” kind of evolved into generally being “more healthy.” Without trying to sound cliche, it has kind of changed my whole outlook on “fitness” and what the word really means to me, in both definition and operation. There’s been a fundamental shift in how I view my gym time, to the extent that I actually start to look forward of it and am proud when I accomplish some goal that I set out to accomplish previously.

What advice do you have for people just getting started? Anything else?
Don’t be intimidated – CrossFit is made to be scalable to anyone and everyone has your back when you’re struggling. Don’t give up – it gets easier and when the progress you’re making incrementally every day starts to become realized, it’s a really empowering feeling. Finally, trust the coaches – I’ve only been to a few boxes in my time doing CrossFit, but the Virtuosity coaches are bar none the best that I’ve interacted with. They’re all well trained, very accommodating and super friendly. A lot of the horror stories I’ve heard about CrossFit (mostly rooted in poor coaching technique) are non-issues at CFV because the coaches know (and you should too) that adding weight to a movement is always secondary to being able to do it correctly.