• CrossFit Level I Certificate
• USAW Weightlifting Certification
• Studied under Strength & Speed Coach Clif Marshall, Performance Director at Ignition® - www.ignitionapg.com

I have been an athlete my whole life and have excelled in every endeavor. CrossFit is my newest and most rewarding challenge yet. Living in Ohio, I played the trifecta growing up and in high school (football, basketball, and baseball). My junior year of high school I picked up track and field, well mostly the field part (discus). When I attended Eckerd College I played rugby, which utilized all of my abilities. With the combination of speed, agility, power, and awareness, rugby was the most complete sport that I ever played. In the last game of my senior season, against Georgia Tech in the Southeast Regional playoffs, I tore the Labrum  in my left shoulder. In the year following the injury and graduation, I found Crossfit.

I began doing CrossFit workouts that my brother, Mike Poppa, would send me each day while I was living in St. Petersburg.  With my left shoulder hanging by a thread, I worked around my inabilities and scaled every movement that I could.  After a year of neglecting my injury and working around confused onlookers at a globo-gym, I decided that I would move home in order to have arthroscopic surgery on my shoulder.  My surgeon told me that I would be cleared for intense exercise (CrossFit) 6 months after surgery, and so I wanted to learn everything I possibly could in that time.  I had surgery on June 10, 2011, and exactly six months to the day on December 10, 2011, I earned my Level I Certificate.

CrossFit has changed my life in many ways.  Graduating with a degree in Business Administration and a minor in Finance, I never imagined a career in fitness.  More importantly CrossFit is a perfect fit for the type of active lifestyle that I live.  CrossFit incorporates the best aspects of my athletic background, as well as prepares me for the unknown.  The intensity and competitiveness of  CrossFit workouts fills a huge void that athletics has created.  The greatest aspect of my story is that it is not nearly unique.  There are much greater athletes than myself out there who have discovered that CrossFit provides something that they otherwise cannot find.