“I know that all the pain and challenges helped shape me and also prepared me to be of better service to others.”
Alice Beck, the 30-year-old head trainer at Black Label CrossFit in Mt. Washington, Ken., never thought she would be leading others.
“I had some challenges during my childhood and was seeking escape,” she says. “I had some friends with older siblings and was introduced to drugs at a young age.”
At 17, her parents sent her into the woods for a year to get clean and learn a new way of life. In the New Dominion School for Girls, she lived in a tent and provided for her group through manual labor.
“We did a lot of physical work like cutting down trees and getting in touch with using your body to move through emotional pain,” she says.
She returned to the city sober, but not healed.
Through her late teens and 20s, she tied her self-worth to her appearance.
“I was searching for acceptance, like if I was skinny enough and pretty enough then somehow I could be ‘enough,’” she says.
Since she didn’t know how to stay fit, she tried to control food. For years, she cycled through phases of restriction, and binging and purging.
“After getting clean, I still continued to struggle with an eating disorder,” she says. “I’ve been all different sizes from itty bitty to really overweight.”
In 2009, at age 27, she gained 80 pounds. Looking into the mirror, she thought, ‘Is this really going to be my life?’
Determined to get in shape and stop obsessing over food, she signed up for a local globo gym. Luckily, she stumbled into a boot camp class with programming centered on functional movements, taught by coach Kyle Harrod. He helped her lose weight and learn basic movements. When he opened his affiliate, Black Label CrossFit, she followed.
“I was obsessed,” she says. “I would watch videos constantly and would be up at night practicing stuff in my basement with a broomstick.”
Excited by the movements and what her body could do, she started to measure her achievements by her PRs rather than the number on the scale.
Her coach helped her face her eating disorder head on. Harrod taught her the basics of the paleo diet, asked her to keep a food journal and talked with her about her past and her relationship with food.
“He helped me to deal with what I was covering up with food,” she says. “Seeing how something is self-destructive in my life helps me to critically evaluate it and the patterns that lead to it.”
Although she was still learning about CrossFit and working on her relationship to food, her coach told her he thought she’d be a great coach someday. She was taken aback.
“I thought, ‘Yeah right, how could I ever be a coach?’ she says. “But I guess a seed was planted.”
Nine months later, in 2011, she completed the CrossFit Level 1 Seminar. Now, when she’s coaching classes she doesn’t keep her past hidden. She believes her background has helped prepare her for her new role as a coach and mentor.
“I know that all the pain and challenges helped shape me and also prepared me to be of better service to others,” she says.
“I think the ability to relate and connect with people is such a critical element of being an effective CrossFit coach … When (members of Black Label CrossFit) feel defeated or like their goals are too far away, I remind them that I have been in their shoes and reached my goals.”
Hesitant newcomers who don’t believe they’re athletic enough to start CrossFit are relieved to learn their coach started in the same place.
“It means a lot to look at someone who has come so far and know that if she did it, then she can help me,” member Sheena Knieriem says. “It makes her so much more relatable. I saw a before-and-after picture of her shortly after starting and I knew that she had to bust her butt to get where she is (now).”
Admittedly, Beck is still treading lightly. “I haven’t gone back to any restricting or binging. I don't know that I will ever be able to say that I am cured from all addiction because the tendencies and thought processes are still there, but now I have the tools to live my life in a productive, addiction-free way,” she says.
