Certified CrossFit Trainer Kelly Kelly (CFL3) was a competitive soccer player focused on sportspecific training for much of her athletic career. Kelly, who became a wellknown coach and competitive CrossFit athlete under her maiden name Kelly Clark, says her fitness lacked balance before she found CrossFit.

“The mindset was to strengthen all of the muscles you needed to play the sport instead of to make you a wellbalanced athlete,” Kelly says of her soccer days.

When she decided to make a change, Kelly dabbled in conventional gym training before walking into a CrossFit affiliate — and finding the community and camaraderie she was accustomed to in team sport.

After experiencing positive changes in her own life and becoming more fit, strong, and balanced than she had ever been, Kelly pursued coaching, an experience she says has been incredibly rewarding.

“Coaching made me fall in love with CrossFit more,” Kelly says. “You learn more when you have to explain to people what you’re doing as an athlete. I had to figure out how to break things down and how things worked.”

These days, Kelly spends her time training for the CrossFit Games season and coaching athletes at CrossFit Up (https://www.crossfitup.com/) , an affiliate in Santa Cruz, California, where she works with athletes of all levels, each with different abilities, and goals. Her designation as a Certified CrossFit Trainer and commitment to continued education through that role has earned her the skills necessary to train each individual safely and effectively.

“I love watching beginners who have done nothing athletic in their whole life discover what it feels like to move their body and to be healthy and feel capable and strong,” Kelly says. “It’s just the coolest thing to watch people go through, it’s so transformative for them.”

Kelly says the pairing of coach and competitive athlete has served her and her athletes well.

“I live my life on the edges of human optimization,” she says. “There’s a million things that I do to optimize my performance as an athlete — and no, the regular person is never gonna do even a fraction of those things. But if one of those things can help somebody, then I’m doing my job.”

Kelly missed qualifying for the Games by just one spot last year at the MidAtlantic CrossFit Challenge. You can watch her compete at the North America West Semifinal, May 2528, 2023, in Pasadena, California.

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"The CrossFit Coach” is a sixpart series that highlights the impact CrossFit coaches have in the lives of the people they train, from those who have never walked into a gym to professional athletes in sports of all kinds. The best CrossFit coaches are those who can pair their unparalleled fitness expertise with an equal level of care about each person’s goals. They are continuously learning and seeking out ways to refine their craft and reach new people with the magic of CrossFit. These are a few of their stories.

   • The CrossFit Coach: Scott Panchik  
   • From Team Athlete to Career CrossFit ...  
   • The CrossFit Coach: Sage and the Burg...  
   • How Voiceover Artist John Calvert Bat...  
   • The CrossFit Coach: Adrian Conway Has...  
   • The CrossFit Coach: Cristina Anderson  

Chapters:
0:00 Kelly Kelly's preCrossFit background
1:28 Falling in love with CrossFit through coaching
3:10 Learning to move safely and recover properly
5:45 What CrossFit can teach you
6:46 A master of her craft
9:03 Kelly's longterm goals

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CrossFit is the world’s leading platform for improving health and performance. In the 20 years since its founding, CrossFit has grown from a garage gym in Santa Cruz, California, into the world’s most effective program for improving health and performance through nutrition and exercise. CrossFit is the world’s leading provider of accredited performancebased training courses and certifications and has more than 125,000 credentialed coaches across the world. The program can be modified to welcome people of all ages and abilities and millions of people have already experienced CrossFit’s transformational benefits in more than 13,000 affiliated gyms across 158 countries. CrossFit also directs the CrossFit Games season, beginning with the annual CrossFit Open, through which athletes at every level compete worldwide, and culminating in the CrossFit Games, where top athletes compete for the title of Fittest on Earth®.

Learn more about CrossFit → https://www.crossfit.com/whatiscros...

Find a CrossFit gym near you → https://www.crossfit.com/map?utm_sour...

Find CrossFit Courses near you → https://www.crossfit.com/coursesnear...

View CrossFit workouts → https://www.crossfit.com/workout?utm_...

Learn more about the CrossFit Games → https://cf.games/gameslearnmore

Produced in collaboration with Hamilton Roads Productions.
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