“I push myself to no end. It makes my mind and my body stronger. CrossFit has taught me to endure a certain kind of pain I never thought possible. It stopped being a sport a long time ago and is now my way of life.”
Not many teenagers in their senior year of high school are content to stay at home on a Saturday. Fewer still spend that time alone watching CrossFit videos in their basement, and dissecting Olympic lifts in a makeshift gym.
For Jack Martin, this is what he loves to do.
At 17 years old, 6-feet and 160 pounds, the Townsend, Mass., teenager will be the first one to tell you how CrossFit changed his life.
“I weighed 70 pounds entering my freshman year of high school. I was told by my doctor that I would always be a small kid and would always remain in the 10th percentile for my age group,” he says. “That, to me, sounded like a challenge.”
For the next two years, he spent a couple hours a day split training in the high school weight room, but the results were few and far between.
“Near the end of my junior year, I was beginning to think my doctor was right. I couldn’t put on a pound,” Martin says.
Then, Chris Stellato, a counselor at the high school and CrossFit instructor, began training a few of the football players at the opposite end of the weight room after school.
“I was intrigued, but extremely hesitant to approach them. Coach Stellato was moving some serious weight in ways in which I had never seen,” he recalls. “He looked very intimidating, but I wanted in. Once I worked up the courage to approach him, he welcomed me with open arms.”
The school year ended a month later and Martin departed with some remedial knowledge of a handful of Olympic lifts. The true metamorphosis began when he spent some of his hard-earned cash on an Olympic bar and some bumper plates and built a set of homemade squat racks.
“Once summer came around, I had to teach myself,” Martin says. “Every night I’d watch dozens of YouTube videos and then spend hours and hours the following day trying to perfect those moves outside or in my basement.”
The result?
Forty pounds of muscle in three months.
Once school began in the fall, and he was back in the weight room, Martin fully hit his stride. His numbers increased on a weekly basis. Today, he can squat 300 lb., deadlift 345 lb., clean and jerk 215 lb., overhead squat 200 lb. and snatch 175 lb.
“Sometimes my mom has to stop me if it’s too late,” he laughs. “She loves my dedication and inspires me to never quit … unless it’s after 9 p.m. of course.”
Martin jumped at the opportunity to compete in this year’s Open.
“I know I have only been doing this for eight months, but my dream is to become an elite CrossFit athlete and to one day open my own box and be a strength and conditioning coach, so there was no question that I begin competing now,” he says.
Martin posted an impressive 150 reps in the first Open workout at his affiliate, CrossFit Lando. His tireless work ethic and his dedication to CrossFit are rapidly gaining him notice.
“I push myself to no end,” Martin says. “It makes my mind and my body stronger. CrossFit has taught me to endure a certain kind of pain I never thought possible. It stopped being a sport a long time ago and is now my way of life.”
