3126 Athletics Member Highlight: Kelsey “Phillipa” Hamilton
Our member of the month for October is Kelsey “Phillipa” Hamilton! If you’ve be around the box lately you’ve no doubt noticed her kicking butt and making gains! While she may call her post WOD antics akin to a “wounded wildebeest” we think it’s just how hard she works to be her best!
We got way to many nice things to say about Kelsey, but we’ll let her take it from here.
“I got started 3126 Athletics at the end of January last year. My whole family had already signed up and they kept giving me a hard time about staying home while they all went to the box. I knew they had some 10 drop- in passes from when they signed up so one day I decided I would go.
I signed up the night before under a fake name (Phillipa Sanchez) so that no one would know it was me coming. Then I showed up at my first WOD and surprised everyone that’d I’d finally gotten off my butt. And then when the open came a few short weeks later I decided to sign up for that too. I was a killer 5 weeks, right at one of the busiest points at the last half of my fourth year of university.
After I quit Irish dancing the year before I really hadn’t done any physical activity. I kept making excuses about being too busy with school and other things. I didn’t realize that I was hurting myself making those excuses. I got really down on myself with nothing else to focus on other than the endlessness of work that university is.
3126 Athletics brought me back. It gave me motivation to get stronger physically and I think at the same time I’ve also been able to get stronger mentally. I understand that balance in life is important. It feels amazing to be able to get stronger. I’ve never wanted to be weak.
When I started 3126 Athletics I had next to no arm muscle. I could barely clean 65 pounds. I still can’t do an unassisted pull-up or lift much weight overhead but I’m improving. I feel stronger every day and I want to keep feeling stronger every day. I may not be number 1 on the leaderboard but I’m definitely the number 1 me.
The Open 2017 marks officially 1 year since I bought my 3126 Athletics membership and my goal by then is to finally get my fist pull up and to hopefully be able to do a few of the workouts RX’d. I cannot fully describe in words how much I have come to love this sport and what it has done for me. I love that it had brought my family closer together and that I have also found a second family in all of those that are part of 3126 Athletics. Thank you all!”
-Kelsey