August - 2025 - Bella Jones

Bella Jones—August 2025 Athlete of The Month

1. Tell us about yourself, your family, your occupation, hobbies/interests.
I am the oldest of seven in our family, I am 17 and I just graduated high school and
homeschooled for just about all of it. We just moved here to the Saint Mary’s area five years ago
after living in a number of different places before. Currently I work at a couple odd places, but my mom and I are working on starting up a mobile cafe which I am very excited for. I don’t have any very interesting hobbies but for fun I like making yummy food, doing nails, and obviously CrossFit.

2. When do you start CrossFitting? Why did you start? Why do you continue now?
I started CrossFitting a little over a year ago, in May 2024. I had mentioned maybe joining a little
while before that, because I was embarrassingly weak and the idea of getting strong and working out was pretty appealing, but then the idea of being weaker than everyone else and then also not knowing anyone at the box was rather unappealing. My dad then convinced me to join because he was going at the time and he said he needed someone who would understand when he wanted to rant about how much he hated working out. Well, it turns out I actually liked it and got over the fact that I was weak when I started to see the results and I felt good about the fact that I was actually getting stronger. I stayed because I liked the results and because it became a part of my routine that felt strange to just quit after coming so far.

3. Do you remember your first WOD? What were your thoughts after your first WOD?
I remember my first WoD a little, I remember it was a team WoD with power cleans and jump
ropes. I remember that there were some rests in between sets when my partner was working and so I didn’t think it was that bad, even though it was definitely hard. But then the next class I had to do the WoD “American Pharaoh” and I decided that CrossFit was a lot more painful than I had originally thought.

4. What do you enjoy most about CrossFit?
I don’t really know what I enjoy the most about CrossFit. I think I mostly love the way it feels when I accomplish something I wasn’t sure I could do but I forced myself too anyway, like doing a workout at a level higher than I am used too, or getting more reps in a movement that was hard before, or lifting a weight much heavier than I thought I could.

5. What is your proudest CrossFit moment?
There have been several proud moments for me, but nothing shocked me more than when I was able to get a toes-to-bar. That seemed like an insane movement to me before I had joined and now I have been able to do several in a row and even in a workout.

6. What is your favorite movement or lift? What is your least favorite?
My favorite movements are Back Squats and toes-to-bar. I like Back Squats because I love how
good leg-focused lifts feel and how strong they make me feel, and I like toes-to-bar because of
how accomplished I feel when I actually achieve one. I also like handstands. My least favorite movements are definitely pushups and thrusters. Anything that is shoulder focused is
automatically terrible in my opinion, and even though thrusters aren’t entirely shoulder focused
they are just an all around wretched lift.

7. Have you had one or two challenging CrossFit goals that you've achieved recently? What are
your current goals and how close are you to reaching them?
Some goals I had were to get a toes-to-bar which I finally managed this past February, and
though they aren’t perfect yet I’m glad I can do them more or less. Another one was pushups,
which I struggled with for so long and I finally got one a few weeks ago when I was just messing
around at home. I really want to be able to do a pull-up next but I am definitely several months
away from getting that.

8. What makes CrossFit different from other fitness programs that you might have tried in the past?
I have never tried any other fitness programs before, although I do know that most fitness
programs will focus on excelling at one thing, whether that is strength, or cardio, or reaching
certain goals; whereas CrossFit is functional fitness and includes a little of everything, the
workouts combining strength, cardio, and endurance in a way that pushes you all across the
board. It’s not about perfecting one skill but being ready for almost anything.

9. What impact has CrossFit Benedictus had on your life, in and out of the gym?
Well for one CrossFit Benedictus has definitely made me stronger physically, but there is a
mindset that I have during a workout that I have learned to apply to my life that I didn’t know I had before. During a hard WoD when I am sweating and my heart is pounding and I’m all out of
breath, I just tell myself that it’s almost over, that I can push through it, that I can make it to the
end, and that it is making me stronger. I have to tell myself something similar many times when I want to give up or quit on something, I tell myself that it won’t be forever and that whatever it is
will be better for me in the end. And then there is also the fact that now all my friends and siblings make me do all the heavy lifting and tough work “Because I do CrossFit”. Because apparently that automatically makes me stronger than all of them.

10. Tell us about your nutrition and how it has changed, if any, since starting CrossFit?
So I am pretty sure my diet is nothing commendable, but before joining CrossFit it was definitely
worse. I used to just not eat more than one full meal in a day and then eat lots of little snacks or
barely eat at all, not to mention the amount of junk food I was eating, but now I really mostly just
try to focus on eating three full meals a day and making sure I eat enough protein, I also have
definitely cut down on much of the junk food from before, but there are definitely days my mom is scarred by how I have eaten. I definitely notice a difference in performance based on my diet of the prior couple days.

11. If you could write a WOD for the classes to do, what would it look like?
I would probably write one that had a little bit of running because I like WoD’s like that, and then
there would also be a little bit of skill work and a little bit of weight. It would be something along
the lines of:

For time
200m Run
21 Hang power cleans
21 Toes-to-bar/ Hanging Knee Raises
200m Run
15 hang power cleans
15 T2B/HKR
200m Run
9 hang power cleans
9 T2B/HKR
200m Run

12. What advice do you have for others about the importance of the dedication of taking care of
yourself, of investing in yourself?
I am not really someone who hands out advice, but I would say that it is important to take care of yourself if you want to live a good life. If you like who you are and who you are becoming both
physically and spiritually then you will live happier and continue to find it easier to do what is hard.

13. What advice would you give to someone new to CrossFit or who is thinking about giving it a try?
I would tell them that the only way to know if they are gonna like it is too give it a shot, that
everyone in CrossFit has different goals and everyone is on a different level, no matter where
they are at it will help them in some way, maybe in somewhere they least expected it too, and the only way to know is too try.

14. Open Forum:
I want to say thank you to all those who make CrossFit Benedictus popular, all of the work you
put in is definitely appreciated! Thank you to all the coaches, for all your help, and for everything
you have done to make me and my fellow athletes stronger, and thank you to all the ladies I
workout with, you make it fun to go and so so encouraging, it would be a whole different place
without all your amazing spirit you bring