Markham Community Interview with Steve Cristini

We sat down with Steve Cristini of Cristini Athletics in Markham to talk about Crossfit and the importance of staying in shape. Read his interview below. We hope you enjoy.

The real reason I got into crossfit was because both myself and my brother were fighters in Muay Thai years ago and originally he was looking for a different way of training for a fight outside of the traditional Muay Thai training.  He stumbled upon crossfit over 11 years ago. His first time out, he went and got his ass handed to him by old guys. As a professional fight he though, “ok, something is going on here,” and started investigating further.  He started regularly doing crossfit and then, about a month later, we were doing crossfit together in my garage. At first it was just a grungy, dirty way of getting really fit and really strong.

Yeah, exactly. He went to one of the first crossfit gyms in Canada. After that, we started researching online and learning things on our own. There were no videos or education like there is now, it was about trying things out and if you didn’t die, it went well.

Being an athlete, the idea of athletic training has always been more appealing to me than just exercise. For me, exercising is doing things with no goal. In Muay Thai, for example, the coach would tell us to run 10K, because if you run 10K, you don’t get punched in the face. So there are obvious goals and reasons to train. Going to the gym, you might think “I want to get bigger” or “I want to get lean” which is cool, but that’s not a specific goal, so there was nothing that was motivating me there.

What made me really like crossfit was that every little thing we did, you wanted to make specific measurable improvements on. For instance, I wanted to be able to deadlift my body weight. Once I did that, I wanted to be able to deadlift double my body weight. Then I wanted to be able to squat double my body weight and so on. That was a great way to see the progress which kept me motivated.

At first, I wanted to gain a whole bunch of muscle because I was really skinny, but saying you want to gain 20 lbs of muscle can seem really daunting. Working on specific goals like a bodyweight bench press, and then tracking my improvements, allowed me to reach my goal while having fun. I wasn’t thinking about the big number. I was thinking about being better than I was yesterday and I just focused on my progress.

I like to think of the importance of being fit this way – how important is it to you to be able to get out of bed? Do you value getting up after falling down, especially as you get older. How about shovelling your driveway and gardening? What if you could do all that but with ease.

We take care of cars, and our homes, but we don’t spend time taking care of our most important asset – our bodies. The more fit our bodies are the less risk of injury. You will have greater bone density, a stronger immune system, reduce your risk of heart disease, and less chance of stroke or cancer.  There are positive effects as well. Getting fit helps you better fight  depression, anxiety, stress. I promise you will even sleep better. The question is – why are you not exercising?

The one thing I would change is trying to get people into the gym to  not be afraid or intimidated. That seems to be the number 1 answer I get when I ask why did you not start sooner.

Our Cars need tune ups to run better. Our bodies need a tune up when we’re injured. You don’t leave a car and hope it fixes itself so we shouldn’t expect our bodies to just heal without professional help.

Thanks again, Steve. If you want to learn more about Steve, or try crossfit, check out the Cristini Athletics Markham Crossfit location at 9833 Markham Rd.

And if you’re looking for a Markham physiotherapy clinic – you’re already reading our blog, why not stop in and pay us a visit. We’ll help you move better!