White Mountain Crossfit: Bigger, Better, Best!

My Crossfit Gym moved. This isn’t really earth shattering news...businesses move all the time. But the gym space that White Mountain Crossfit occupied in Sanel Auto Park was special. Like a favorite restaurant or bar, the house you grew up in, Fenway Park… there are often strong emotions attached to physical places, even when the reality of it is that what takes place there is special….not the physical structure itself….still…it will be hard for me to drive down South Main Street for a while without feeling wistful and a bit sad. 

White Mountain Crossfit has changed my life and I remember with vivid clarity my first impressions of the space as well as the people I met when I walked through the door. The monthly photo Robyn Grant and I would have someone take of us in front of the sign outside to document our bicep development. Running to the manhole cover and back, the loud noises from the adjacent saw shop, the fact that I was working out next to a saw shop…all of these things are woven into my WMCF experience. Change isn’t always easy….even good change.  As human beings it is part of our nature to create safe predictable routines for ourselves. Our bodies adapt quickly to the physical challenges which we attempt and so too do our emotions adapt to the routines we create for ourselves. This very adaptation is what the Crossfit theory of fitness works to prevent. Adaptation= limitation, variety=growth.

The new gym at 54 Regional Drive is unbelievable. It will feel like home soon enough and for those who have been with White Mountain Crossfit from its inception this is home number three. For a business to grow so well in an economy such as this speaks to how special the folks are at “The Mount”. It speaks to the genius in Greg Glassman, the founder of “Crossfit” as a training method and it speaks to the excellence with which Jon Farwell and co-owner Brad Newbury have taken this method of fitness and used it (and their excellent selves) to create an incredible community of athletes here in Concord. This was evident on moving day.  When I arrived with my ancient moving truck there was a fleet of pickup trucks, trailers, and jeeps surrounded by an army of volunteers…all “Mountaineers” there to help make the move go smoothly and efficiently. Weightlifting equipment, cleaning supplies, flooring, kettle bells, dumb bells, plates….well you get the idea… all had to be taken from the “old” gym to the “new” one. It was a really fun way to spend the day. All of us working together to create our new home. Jon and Brad were orchestrating and giving direction but in general it looked like organized chaos. Brad’s wife and Dad was there, Jon’s new bride, women and men I work out with on regular basis and a small number of whom I had yet to meet.

There will not be a unisex bathroom at the new facility, which is wonderful, but the reversible plywood kettle bell on the bathroom door with a W on one side and an M on the other will be missed. We have turf in the new space…YAY!!! INDOOR RUNNING!!! But the large area and variety of actual places to lift seem to take away from the intimacy of the old place. When we had loaded the last of the garbage, scrap metal and wood onto my truck I stood with Jon and a few others in the empty space. The paint lines on the floor paid homage to how little amount of flooring they had brought from the first gym. Plain cement and then shiny grey paint…eventually covered over with more flooring. The small amount of space the rubber flooring takes up in our new gym pays homage to just how small that space had become. I am just a 16 month WMCF family member and I was overwhelmed with emotion.

I went at 7 a.m. on Friday for the first class ever in the new gym. I had worked out on Wednesday at the old gym. One day….just one day and we were set up and ready to go…Jon and Corrine, Brad and Steph (who is expecting their second child in April),Brad’s dad, Ian Butman a Concord Paramedic and longtime Crossfitter, Craig, Tim, Bob, that junior from MV, Vanessa, Ericka, Linda,  Jen and Paul Bourgelais, Tom and T-Tom, Craig, Josh….and on and on…all giving what they had to make the dream come alive and personal to those who would show up on Friday. I have to admit, walking into the new place made me a little nervous…how would it be? Where would I put my stuff? How would it all flow? I needn’t have worried. “Team Talk”, that 7:00am group of Chatty Cathy’s were all there as is the usual…Derrick and Bob doing their best to find a quiet spot…(much easier now with all this space)…the workout was hard, the lifting awesome and Jon was…well…Jon…all of the things that needed to be the same were…but the beautiful bathrooms, freshly painted lockers, full kitchen, actually office space and seemingly endless workout space gave an energy to the day that was electric. Everyone was excited to be there.

If you have been wondering where your next gym should be, how you can better your fitness, the best way to really keep those ten pounds off or better yet, how to transform your life, the new and improved space that is White Mountain Crossfit is the place for you. The knowledge, camaraderie and dedication you will find there has been around since the one bay garage on Integra Drive. But much like the space has grown to South Main Street and now Regional Drive….so too has the White Mountain Crossfit Family and the knowledge behind it. Don’t believe me??? Come see for yourself... and finally, thank-you Jon and Brad…for all that you have given the Concord community and also for making the Crossfit lifestyle a viable and anticipated option for my daughters….after their tour yesterday they are ready to sign up! (or at least walk Corbin until they are old enough to deadlift!)