Glen Cancelleire

A guy walks into a bar with some CrossFit fliers.
The bartender says “How do you feel about training fat people with bad knees?”
The guy says “I can train people with no knees.”
So I joined Crossfit.

In the summer of 2009 my knee finally gave up on me. I found out that there wasn’t any meniscus in my right knee; I had developed osteoarthritis and I was born with some weird form of gout that is untreatable. Getting to the gym all of a sudden became much harder that it had ever been. I managed to pack on 60 pounds over the next year. Needless to say, I was getting pretty bummed out. My overindulgent lifestyle had definitely caught up with me and I really couldn’t seem to turn it around. Then Yosh and JT brought CrossFit Somerville into town.

It was a real rough start. I immediately realized how severely out of shape I had become and it was terrifyingly embarrassing. After my first couple sessions with Yosh I decided that I needed to keep doing this. What I learned was that there was really no half assing when it came to these workouts. No matter what, when I showed up for my class I was going to do some crazy shit that I never thought I would ever be able to do.

It started out pretty sloppy and really scaled down, and after about 4 months I really started to feel more comfortable with a lot of the movements. I soon learned that I was pretty good at lifting heavy stuff, but terrible at jumping, pull ups and a bunch of other stuff. But that’s okay because all of those things that I was really bad at I ‘m starting to get less bad at, and that gets me pretty excited.

So I’ve been attending this crazy CrossFit for about 7 months now. I feel about a thousand times better than I did before I started. I’ve dropped over 35 pounds and I can see myself getting stronger by the day. I am by no means close to my personal fitness goals but it feels great to know that I’m actually on my way.

I’m currently the bar manager at The Independent (located across the street from CrossFit Somerville). As a person who works in a restaurant you spend hours on your feet. I really didn’t know how much more of this my knee would take. After only a few months at CrossFit I no longer need to wear a knee brace to get through my bar shifts. This might not seem like a big deal, but less than a year before I joined CrossFit I was using a cane to help me get around on some of those long shifts.

I really don’t know what else to say: CrossFit works. Yosh is the man! Mandy and J.T. are awesome too!!!!

From JT: Hey Glen, we think you’re awesome. Good work. We’ll all keep moving forward together.