If there were a way to bottle up the ‘spirit of fitness’ and all the goodness and sweaty hugs that go with it, you’d name it The Jones Family. Our tagline Nothing is Stronger Than Family should be painted on the side of their house! These guys exemplify this concept beyond any we’ve seen and we are proud to share them in our Fitness Is Who I Am campaign.
Chris was the first who came to FirePower back in 2015. Then he brought Caedmon in 2016, followed by Ben and then Grace in 2017, followed by Anna and Catherine in 2018. They literally kept coming in over 4 years! What caught my eye was the pure joy to simply be together. The playful support each one had for the others during the workouts, and the high fives afterward made my heart smile. They are fulfilled and happy just being together, no matter where they are.
I thought their connection inside the gym was amazing, until I saw them together on the rugby field! The fire in their eyes was mesmerizing: Chris was coaching the high school team at Milton District High School, Caed & Grace were dominating the plays, and Cate was cheering wildly from the sidelines (while explaining the game to me). I sat back and watched the magic happen while they handily won the championship with Team Jones leading the way.
Our intention with Fitness Is Who I Am was to showcase our members who are using their fitness outside the gym to shape their lives. Beyond CrossFit and the rugby field, the Jones family shows us it doesn’t stop there!
In their own words:
From Cate:
Fitness means being together and doing something that we can all feel proud of! It is a way to build memories together whether that be at CrossFit, doing our first 5k, skiing, rugby, canoe tripping, or hiking through the local agreement forest. We like being together and having fitness at the centre gives it an added value.
From Chris:
We’ve always been active as a family… maybe that comes from being 19 and 20 when we had our first child, or maybe we just needed to be active because we ended up with 5, either way - our family has always been busy and active. We’d lug kids around camping and soccer, skiing and BMX’ing and of course most importantly…rugby…. of every kind! Flag, touch, 7’s, 15’s.
For me personally, I first got jazzed about fitness in high school where we had some sort of weird cable contraption in a closet! Then when I went to University in Guelph I fell in love with the barbell! Even then - 25 years ago.I drank it all in! I became a ‘weight training supervisor’ and wrote programs for university kids. My fitness was always a means to and end though. I saw fitness as helping my journey as an athlete and when I stopped playing, fitness kind of took a back seat.
Even though we were active, our fitness was in fits and starts. It really wasn’t until I came to FirePower that I began to view fitness not just as a means to an end, but as an end in itself. The challenge of fitness changes your character and not just your physiology.
Of course I still view fitness as an investment in so many ways - I invest at the gym, so when we’re on the slopes…Dad can keep up! I invest in learning new skills and movements so that I can be a better coach. But it’s more than an investment in my body. Challenging myself, learning I can do something, being with my kids, celebrating their success and helping them struggle and persevere with failure, all of that is the essence of fitness. Being healthy and well in the world so that you can make a difference to the people around you.
That’s fitness…and that’s FirePower!