CrossFit changed my life

Recently I have had the opportunity to take over and become the part owner of a crossFit box. I guess this explains all my posts and training and comments on Facebook, and quite honestly, nobody that has been part of the community will ever understand, CrossFit has changed my life!

Competing at my first online competition (back in the black shirt)

Last year this time (I know because Facebook memories told me so) I was going through a tough tough time. I won't get into details but it seemed that a lot on which I had built my life on was falling apart. Its funny that in these moments, they physical things that are taken from you mean nothing compared to the spiritual and mental things. You feel so empty. I was in a dark dark place, a place I thought I had to pretend didn't exist, but it was so real, it was there when I went to ben, there when I went to sleep. My once "safe place" for community and love had become a place of hurt an deception, this isolated me even more. Rewind though some months...

One single meeting would have a ever lasting impact on my life. I met with Henri the Marketing manager of the mall and Francois early one morning to discuss an "Operation Smile" fundraising event. I had been on missions with the organization and raised a lot of money for them through my solo adventurers and my most recent expedition on bicycle from Cairo to Cape Town. The idea was to have a burpee marathon and get donors to give money to the charity depending on the amount of completed burpees.
The Mall would be the venue.
one question...at the end of the meeting,"So what do you do?"
"I run the CrossFit Mammoth, you should come check it out,"

I couldn't forget the words of the young passionate man talking about crossFit, I drove to Pretoria later that day and on the way back I organized to pop in at the CrossFit Mammoth. When I arrived, there was some as we would say now, "clanging and banging" going on, loud music, people laughing, smiling and lifting weights, sweating, lying on the floor and just having a great workout. I was hooked, I wanted in. The next day I checked in for my first workout...

And then two month in, everything seemed to fall apart, literally in the space of a week I had to walk into the box a different broken man. I couldn't hide it. There was something though that kept me coming back. Perhaps it was that there were no mirrors so I couldn't see the reflection of my broken self, or perhaps it was the sound of heavy breathing, of weights hitting the floor of music blaring that helped me ignored everything I was going through.

Back in training after a adventure trip in Europe 

But it wasn't any of those but at the same time was all of those, just mixed with human interaction, care and people just loving being amongst each other training. For a long time I would do three sessions in a row, work so hard that I could hardly move the next day. I cried in that box, laughed, had silly chats and deep conversations about everything I was going through. Not once was I judged, not once was I laughed at, not once was I not good enough. I learnt a lot in that year about patience and love.

Fast forward a year and the box is still going strong after challenges that would have sank the titanic. Sometimes I would sit and watch everything happen and get depressed, this was my home, a place that offered me hope in a time where I had none. So I committed to stay...instead of abandoning the people who were now as broken as me, crying out for help. I stayed and I learnt to look past things and instead forgive and love and never judge. I prayed everyday in the box, over the place and the equipment that it would be a place of hope once again. I spent many nights there with Francois and envisioned such big things for peoples lives to be changed the way mine was.

Yet still I was never really involved until a month ago where I was approached to become a director and co - owner of the box. At first I was confused and then I remembered every prayer uttered...
I was overwhelmed an absolute dream come true for me! And here I am in the community that changed my life, committing to change others lives and give back.

Before I started I used to think crossFit was senseless. A place to throw weights around and push yourself to unhealthy limits, but now I know better. From the moment you walk in the door you are stripping off your CEO, teacher, accountant, secretary, manager, miner...or any other title. You simply leave it at the door. You walk in for the person standing next to you, to be their spot and encouragement, and they walk in for you. You step into the "team" when you walk in the door. Into a community that loves you and is there for you no matter what. We are there to help with your first sit up, jump rope. row for time, muscle up pull up, squat, personal best...but then we are there for your worst, your failures, your stiffness, your aches and pains. Its more than a training gym or program it is a community of health and fitness.

Our Christmass WOD 

And if that doesn't change your life, the physical results will! I have been the fittest, with the lowest fat percentage of my life in my life. On top of that I have lifted the heaviest weights I have ever attempted! To look in the mirror when you get home and say "I am Keegan Longueira, I trained my hardest today, I gave my all at life, I ate well and tonight I go to bed, regardless of any situation, ready for a new day, to give my all, all over again...for me, that is one of the best feelings in the world.

I wish I could share the details of brokenness with you all, but it just doesn't seem right, it would make the story a whole lot better but perhaps one day you will understand why crossFit has changed my life!

Heart Break and getting back

We all been through it, a relationship you know you shouldn't have been in that ends worse than you could have ever imagined. From divorce to a long term relationship break up, the scars and open wounds left will be permanent if we never look to heal them.
My biggest blessing and curse is being able to use a lot of words to describe things and really paint a picture for people. However, sometimes you need to tell a huge story in only a few words, so Im going to give it a try.

I believe a break up hurts for two reasons, 1) we crave to be accepted and rejection kills us, and the second 2) we long to give the love we have to someone and when there is nobody else left to share it with, we are left with a deep sense of loneliness.

1) To deal with the first issue is crucial:
We can to be rejected if it is only "love" we have given someone. Love is a free gift, it asks no favors and demands nothing back it gives unconditionally. You are fooling yourself if you think it is love that caused your rejection or lack of it in return. It is an ugly side effect of twisted love in a twised world that cause our hearts to break and usually those things are safety, dependancy, need, greed...the list can go on forever.
A perfect love is the love that formed us in the womb when God created us in the wound, it had no expectation to be loved back. If God expected us to love him back the way he loved us, we would never live up to those expectations. If a God is so big that we can't even grasp his magnitude or form, then how can we even begin to grasp his love, the tiniest piece we do understand leaves us flat on our backs hands raised. So then why do we think we can fully understand love in relationships. The human mind is fascinating we need to have an end point in our mind and draw a conclusion before we can accept an outcome. Whether right or wrong, we seek these illusive and false "conclusions" some of these may include, "he left me because he doesn't love me," or "He cheated on me because she is better," all of these scrape a pin over a glacier compared to what we should really be seeing.
We cannot even begin to fully understand the reason we do things, when we move into relationship we are now trying to figure out two peoples lives and motives, it is simply impossible. But if we stop trying to understand and start trying to "be" we move back under Gods wings of protection.
You are alive, your heart beats, your blood flows which means you are created. Love is that, an opportunity to "be" in an infinite timeline in the works of God. Satan's biggest lie is to magnify your issues to a point where you think its life and every day depends on it. Life is so much more bigger and when you have an opportunity to share in others lives, serve them, love them, appreciate them and build them up, there is no greater gift for both you and them. And that...requires no appreciation in return because very often the feeling the other person feels in their heart towards you is something that can't be explained.

What rejection can you fear if you are loved by God and your identity is dependent only on what Jesus do on the cross? Then you realize that love for you is not conditional and so then your love you give to others is also not conditional, nor can you take it back, nor can it be demanding.
When someone breaks your heart, what if I told you, your love for them doesn't stop. If you loved them for who they are how can what they did destroy that love? I agree that love changes, perhaps you go from lovers to a mild for of care and maybe appreciation but love in itself cannot be taken back, you can't un love. When we say we have stopped loving and taken love back we sort of admit that we have a limited amount of it and we need to be careful where we invest it, what if I told you the supply is unlimited and you don't own it! If you walk around with the idea that you took your love back, the only thing you really take back is broken dreams and promises, you take back pain and bondage and chains. If you can learn to release that love you give freely, never demanding it back, it sets you free.

So you have been through a break up and you feel unloved. Don't jump back into the next one, you have forgotten your identity in Christ I suspect, be patient, don't go chasing love, instead get rooted in theta love Christ has for us. Learn who you are, what you love. Watch a movie, go on a hike, write a poem, go explore, spend some money, save some money, give some away freely, break the cycles or habit and try to spend some time with yourself. Be kind to yourself, love yourself. Chances are you have a lot of regrets and mistakes you could have avoided, so does every other person on earth, but its gone. You cannot learn from your past, if you don't decide to unlearn everything that lead you there.
2) I used to love freely and as soon as someone loved me back I felt I was unworthy of it. I felt I had no right to it. The problem with people like that is perhaps you may have a "people pleaser" problem. You want everyone to like you but inside you feel it is only a show, and when someone really invests in you unconditionally you step away, thinking you are unworthy. A close friend of mine always speak about the "Orphan Mentality" it is a feeling of being unworthy of anything. Of love, of blessing, of gifts of anything. You need to ask why you feel like that and that could go back to a lack of acceptance you may have experienced as a child to a mom and dad or to an older person who cared for you. You may have done anything you could to just be seen and appreciated and felt like if you didn't live up to that expectation maybe they wouldn't cherish you.

How were you treated when you were sick in bed a child? committing perhaps? a fever? who cared for you, who showed you compassion, and did they. Did they believe you were really sick, could it be that they may have thought you were faking? How did you feel? I think that we give out what we so crave and when what we crave comes back to us, we don't know how to deal with it. We need to break that cycle of orphan mentality by learning again your identity in Christ. You are loved endlessly, you deserve every blessing from God and you deserve to be cherished as a child. God is not wrathful or a God of punishment and the sooner we come to know who we are as children deeply rooted in his love, the sooner we can begin to accept blessings on earth, random acts of kindness and many more.

Your friend offers to pay the bill at a restaurant? Do you accept the blessing?...or do you try steal it away from them. A wise mentor and friend always said to me, "Keegan, don't steal my blessing," when he wanted to bless me for no reason.

Start accepting love in all its forms. And it is the most simple thing to know what it is:


1 Corinthians 13:4-7 4 " Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." 


I love you all, may you have a blessed week.Write to me and tell me your story, share your testimony. 
You can follow my Facebook page here: Keegan Longueira