The former competitive gymnast, who once trained with Olympic gold medalists, could no longer do a single push-up.
An extremely humbled Edington looked around the abandoned warehouse. It was a bare-boned CrossFit gym. It had a few barbells in the corner and pull-up bars made out of pipes hanging from the ceiling. When they drove up that first day, her daughter had taken one look at the building and decided she'd be safer sitting in the car in the parking lot.
Yet Edington wasn't intimidated. While she may not have been launching into cartwheels and backbends anymore, she was in her element. It wouldn't be easy—and sometimes she'd feel like it was impossible—but the former athlete believed that if she persevered, she'd get back into fighting shape. And that's just what she did.
Fast-forward more than six years. The powerhouse mum of three can now easily bang out 21 handstand pushups (which are as hard as they sound) and 28 pull-ups at a time. She still trains at the gym, which has since moved locations and now has all of the bells and whistles of a more sophisticated facility. At 52, she's preparing to return to the CrossFit Games for the fifth year in a row, to defend her championship in the Masters Women 50-54 Division.
So how did this former athlete get her competitive fire back later in life? Here's her story.
The rise of an athlete
While most competitive gymnasts begin tumbling between the ages of 2 and 4, Edington didn't begin practicing gymnastics until she was 12. (Starting sports at a later age and excelling at them seems to be her thing.) She showed great talent in gymnastics, but her anxiety took its toll. She ultimately gave up a full gymnastics scholarship to college.
"Anxiety caused me not to perform as well, and I didn't know how to handle it as a young woman," Edington says. "Back in the 80s they didn't have any sports psychologists or anything like that."
So she left gymnastics behind, went to college, and threw herself into academics, graduating with a business degree. She went on to teach pre-school during the week and gymnastics classes on the weekends, and it eventually dawned on her: She could combine her passion for teaching children and gymnastics and start her own business. In 2000, she opened a gymnastics company, which she owns and operates to this day. (She currently instructs up to 300 children, from ages 2 to 12, every week.)
Ten years into Edington's new venture, a parent of one of her gymnastic students asked if she'd ever heard of CrossFit Kids. She hadn't. The woman referred her to Mitch Potterf, the owner of a CrossFit gym, and encouraged Edington to check it out, as the CrossFit Kids programming was similar to Edington's Tumblin4Kids classes. So, competitors Potterf and Edington struck a deal: If Edington went to a CrossFit class, Potterf would attend a gymnastics class. And so began Edington's ride on the "crazy CrossFit train," as she calls it.
CrossFit is a workout program unlike any other—it's based on high-intensity movements and combines aspects of weightlifting, gymnastics and running. The workouts are constantly varied, and tend to be short and intense.
A one-hour CrossFit class at a gym, or a "box" as it's known in the CrossFit world, starts with 15-20 minutes of weight lifting, where a coach leads the class through a strength movement that usually involves a barbell, like squats, deadlifts or cleans. The second portion of the class is spent completing the "WOD" or "Workout Of the Day." The WOD is short, usually no more than 10-20 minutes, and focuses on varied movements such as weightlifting, calisthenics, gymnastics and sprints.
"I drove home after that first workout, and an hour later I still wasn't recovered. I couldn't breathe, my heart was still racing and I was shaky," she says. "And I said 'I'm not going back. I'm never doing that again.' And the other side of my brain was like 'You're scared. So you're going back.' And that's what did it."
The road to the CrossFit Games
"In the beginning, it was just very humbling," Edington says of her first few weeks of CrossFit. "You have to check your ego at the door and just realise that you're going to suck at a lot of stuff. And that can be hard for people."
But her background as a gymnast came in handy, and helped her to understand the progressions in movements that have deep gymnastic roots—like a pull-up, muscle up or anything involving the rings. "Some people just refuse to listen to the coaches and take the necessary steps to building strength and stability before lifting that heavier weight or trying to do that new movement. It's hard for people to understand that, but as a gymnast I learned all of these skills at a young age," she says.
Her first goal was to master the push-up that had taunted her in that first class. She started by holding a plank position to build core and upper body strength. Once that became too easy, she practiced doing pushups on her knees, until she had enough strength to completely lower and raise her body from the full plank position.
After five months of attending classes, Potterf, who became Edington's coach, recognised her natural talent for the sport and asked Edington how old she was. When she told him she was 47, he replied two simple words: "You're competing."
At the time, Edington had no idea you could even compete in CrossFit. "I paid no attention," she laughed. "I'd go in, do the class, and leave."
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The CrossFit Games—essentially the Olympics of CrossFit—were created in 2007 in search of the "Fittest on Earth." After a grueling qualification process, the world's fittest 40 men, 40 women, 40 teams, 80 teenagers and 240 masters are invited to the Games, an annual four-day event where the athletes compete in a variety of workouts.
Competitors who make it to the Games don't know what the workouts will be until right before the competition. In Edington's division, athletes compete in two events a day for four days straight.
In 2011, Edington participated in her first CrossFit Open—step one in the qualifying process to reach the Games—and placed 70th in the world for her age group. That might not sound impressive, but it takes some athletes years to place that high in their respective age groups. That's when Potterf told her that she had the potential to compete in the Games.
"I had no idea what the Games even were. The reason I started CrossFit was to be a better gymnastics instructor, and because I could really feel I was losing that strength I had when I was younger," she says. "But when Mitch told me about the Games, winning became my goal."
Potterf created a training plan for Edington that involved three days of Olympic weightlifting to build her strength. "I rearranged my life so I could go to these Olympic lifting classes," she says. "I stopped teaching on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and hired teachers to take over my classes on those nights."
In 2013, Edington placed 19th in the Games. She went on to place 3rd and 5th in the following years. And in 2016, she met her ultimate goal: She dominated her competition and placed first in the Masters Women 50-54 age group, winning the coveted $10,000 prize.
"Winning was just like Christmas. It was awesome," Edington says. But she won't let herself get too comfortable. "I can't think about being first anymore. I have to train like I'm second or third. Or even 19th."
Never stop
It's been six years since Edington was laying on that cheap, sticky black mat during her first CrossFit class, and she's glad she stuck with it. Along the way, she's also devoted some time to training her mind: The anxiety Edington dealt with as a young gymnast resurfaced when she started competing in CrossFit, but after working with a sports psychologist, she feels like she has the tools to cope.
One thing that really resonated was an exercise in which the psychologist had her envision what she might say to a child who fell off his bike and compare it to what Edington would say to herself when she didn't perform well. It finally clicked that she was her own worst critic, and that her inner monologue was unnecessarily harsh and adding undue pressure.
With her anxiety under control and her body in peak condition, Edington is preparing to defend her title in the 2017 Games this August. She currently trains three times a day, five days a week—doing a mix of high-intensity cardio, CrossFit classes and Olympic lifting—in an effort to defend her title. "I start my morning with 20 minutes on the air assault bike to build endurance, then do a typical CrossFit class in the afternoon, and focus on whatever other skills my coach has planned for me in the evening," she says.
Edington realises that CrossFit now consumes much of her world, but she's OK with that.
"Sure, it requires more discipline and more focus to be a competitive athlete. It takes over large portions of your life," she says. But after years of prioritising a career, a family, and finances, this is her time to shine.
"I made the decision to become an athlete and it's a different animal. It requires more dedication, more hours in the gym, more hours alone, more coaches yelling, much more of a sacrifice. It takes me away from my career, but this has became a second career," Edington says. "It's wonderful investing in myself."
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