"So I wanted to prove that you can be super fit and a good athlete while you are pregnant and right after your pregnancy."
New mom and two-time South East Regional veteran, Tina Carson, said her goal this year is to set a positive example showing it is possible to be a great athlete, as well as a great mom.
Carson, 25, is currently sitting in 20th place in the South East, all while balancing being a mother, wife, gym owner and athlete.
“My ultimate goal is to show mommies that it can happen,” she said. “Especially new (mommies).”
A power lifter in high school, Carson began Olympic lifting her senior year. After just one year of Olympic training, Carson placed fourth nationally in the 53-kg class. She held that spot from 2008 to 2011 and set her sights on the 2012 Summer Olympics.
She first discovered CrossFit in 2008 while training at CrossFit Springfield in Springfield, Mo.
“I started training with (CrossFit Springfield) while preparing for the 2012 Olympics, and they really began encouraging me to go ‘all out CrossFit,’” Carson said.
Carson began coaching, but her primary focus remained on her career as an Olympic lifter.
In 2009, Olympic coach Don McCauley picked Carson as his athlete, which led her to move to Savannah, Ga.
“McCauley changed my lifting technique, which instantly improved my lifts,” Carson said. “He was more focused on the speed of the lift than my previous coach.”
“Moving to Georgia was definitely a culture shock (from Missouri),” she continued. “My first summer training for the Olympics, I had to place an ice pack on my shoulders after training because I would get so hot. The humidity was a big shock.”
In spite of the hot temperatures and high humidity the South East is famous for, Carson and her husband, Rowdy, decided to plant roots and open their own affiliate, CrossFit Hinesville.
Carson made a name for herself early on in her CrossFit competitive career, making her first appearance at the 2011 South East Regional where she placed 17th overall.
“Regionals 2011 was my first-ever CrossFit competition,” Carson said. “From that day forward it was a little less Oly lifts and a little more CrossFit.”
She was still training for the 2012 London Olympics, but CrossFit factored into her training more than before. Although she wasn’t spending as much time on her specialty, her lifts continued to improve.
However, when it came time to qualify for the Olympics, Carson was out due to a torn bicep. She had to give up on her Olympic dream, but she doesn’t regret it.
“(CrossFit) was the best decision I have ever made. The Olympics was for me and my self-worth,” she said. “Opening a box was for others. There's no comparison. Yes, training for the Olympics was pretty cool, but changing and saving other’s lives—that's above and beyond me going to the Olympics.”
Making her return trip to the 2012 South East Regional, Carson faced new challenges.
“Recovering from my torn bicep made it hard for me to come back for 2012,” she recounted. “In 2012, the one-arm 70-lb. dumbbell (snatch) stopped me. Our gym didn't have a dumbbell that weight, and I had never snatched a 70-lb. dumbbell until then. I was one dumbbell snatch from moving on.”
After she finished 39th at the 2012 South East Regional, Carson became pregnant with her daughter, Piper Reese, but she didn’t let that affect her training.
“I trained until the day I gave birth and then took seven days off,” Carson said. “She was born Feb. 25, exactly one week before the 2013 Open started.”
On her first day back to the gym, only days after giving birth to her daughter, Carson took on Open Workout 13.1, the burpee-snatch ladder.
“Burpees on fresh boobs! Oh!” Carson recalled. Despite the discomfort, she managed to score 169 reps for 140th in the South East.
In the year since her daughter was born, Carson has found balancing parenthood, owning a gym, coaching, and training to be a challenge—but a manageable challenge.
“Piper comes to the gym with us every morning, and she is there with us every night,” she said. “We coach in the morning, and we coach at night, so we spend all afternoon with her. We are not able to get in more than one workout a day because we are coaching and spending time with her.”
“We really have to balance it out between family time, and the fact that we really want to be competitors, as well as run a gym,” Carson added. “When you have a kid, it really changes your priorities. Our priorities have flipped. Our daughter is the most important thing.”
The biggest adjustment Carson has had to make is finding time for her training. Her husband is her training partner and coach, and they juggle training time with his job as a full-time firefighter.
“We are just trying to fit it in whenever we can and get in as much as we possibly can in that time,” Carson said. “We don’t get to work out with our classes, but I think it is really neat that we get to work out together. He and I push each other during the day.”
In spite of her hectic schedule and being sick during the third week of the Open, Carson is holding strong in the top 20 for the women of the South East. Her training is focused on regionals. “We don’t let the Open interfere with our programming. We don’t train for the Open, we don’t train around the Open,” Carson said. “We stay with our regular days off. If we had pull-ups in the workout the day before, we keep pull-ups.”
“The Open is one time a year, and every other day is more important because it is a training day. Your training days are what is going to get you better,” she said.
As for the Open workouts, Carson said she firmly believes the top athletes need to do the workouts twice in order to have a game plan.
“On Thursday night, here in the South East, we don’t get the workout (announcement) until 8 p.m., so we are all exhausted,” she said. “We have been working all day, but we don’t go all out the first time. We are just feeling it out and go about 60 percent. Then on Sunday we go balls to the wall!”
With Anna Tunnicliffe and Emily Friedman moving to new regions this year, Carson said she has a good chance of getting on the podium in Jacksonville, Fla.
“With them leaving, it is going to give those top 10 girls a really good shot and more motivation,” she explained. “We are going to be in a better heat. I think the heat makes a world of difference. I am super competitive and the more competitive the girls are next to me, the more competitive I am.”
Making the podium at regionals has been Carson’s objective since she became pregnant with her daughter.
“I am hoping you will see Talayna (Fortunato), Emily (Bridgers) and Tina,” Carson said. “That was my whole goal during my entire pregnancy. I worked out until the day I gave birth. I didn’t modify anything, and I got tons of PRs.”
“I really wanted to prove a point because everybody says, ‘You can’t do that. You can’t do this. You can’t breastfeed under 18-percent body fat. You’re going to have to eat so many calories, blah, blah, blah,’” she said. “So I wanted to prove that you can be super fit and a good athlete while you are pregnant and right after your pregnancy.”
