Chad's Story

My fitness journey

By Chad Skier

My fitness journey began around 10-12 years ago a few years after the birth of my twins. The pregnancy was very tough on my wife and I. I kind of let myself go.  As a result, concerns with my health were present therefore, my wife bought me a nutritional and training program at the "Gym" in Montvale as a birthday present. I was out of shape overweight and eating terribly. 

They put me on a zone type nutritional program diet that had me eating 1800 calories a day, nobody thought that I would never be able to do it and figured I would most likely eat 2500+ calories, but to everybody’s surprise including my own I ate 1800 calories a day. I worked out in the morning and did cardio in the afternoon , dropping from about 200 pounds to around 148 pounds my lowest weight. I was frail and far from being fit.

One morning I was watching 2 guys (Mercedes Mike and Dr Santana) working out with Ray in the group workout room, and I asked to join them, this was the start of training with them, from that time forward we have been together almost every day since.... Those guys became close friends and we all held each other accountable.

The group got larger and larger and we did some really fun group workouts. Shortly afterwards we started working out at Ray’s opened his own facility in Chestnut Ridge, New York, this was really fun and there are a lot of great people that were working out with us. 

This was the first true introduction to CrossFit for me. I remember the first CrossFit open workout that I ever did - as many Burpee’s that you could do in seven minutes. The work out came out the night before and we texted back-and-forth for hours, how many would we be able to do? At first this doesn’t seem to be too hard, and I thought, "is the whole work out,  really?"  The next day we did it.... What a killer! I was dead wrong. Presently, I hate the short workouts.

There is something that energizes me about these workouts and about the people that do them with me. No matter how much I complain (which is often) and how I dis like some of the workouts, I still come every day. 

Honestly, I have to thank Ray, and all my training partners for helping me get into the best shape of my life. If I listened to Ray,and would only stop eating sugar, I would have visible abs.......Not bad for an old man.